advertising

Dial Global and SoundHound will work together to extend radio ad campaigns to mobile platforms (and make them interactive) using the new "SoundHound for Radio."

SoundHound is a music identification app: it identifies audio a user's phone can "hear."

With the new SoundHound for Radio technology, advertisers can offer interested listeners exclusive content, contest entry, and other promo offerings. Users just need to "SoundHound" the broadcast they're hearing.

The idea is to give radio advertisers the ability to, at least somewhat, measure campaign effectiveness via digital engagement.

A pilot campaign run by Geico during the Superbowl gave listeners access to a Tim McGraw interview and the chance to preorder his new album. According to AdAge, the SoundHound for Radio platform will roll out first on national radio shows, and then be available to local stations later this year.

Read more in AdAge.com here.

Borrell Associates, in new research for the RAB, says radio's local digital ad revenues grew 22% in 2012 over the previous year -- slightly higher than the local media average of 20%. This follows news (in RAIN here) that radio's overall digital revenue was up 11%.

However, for the past three years radio has been losing local online market share to newspaper, TV, yellow pages and Internet companies, and radio's share of local online sits at just 2%.

"It looks like quite a few groups are breaking out and challenging their newspaper and TV competitors for a slice of that very large digital pie," said Borrell Associates CEO Gordon Borrell (pictured). He expects online ad revenue to pass $420 million this year for radio.

RAB CEO and president Erica Farber (also pictured) said, "Revenue opportunities continue to grow for those who are pushing the digital limits with online and mobile initiatives." Farber, by the way, will keynote RAIN Summit West April 7 in Las Vegas. Please see more information here.

The new report is called "Benchmarking: Local Radio Stations’ Online Revenues," and is available to RAB members here. The RAB and Gordon Borrell will present the findings with a free webinar Thursday, March 7 (more info here).

Read more in NetNewsCheck here.

American Public Media's Marketplace Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson this morning said, "You know, I have to say, in all the mobile advertising that I experience in my life the only ones that I actually pay attention to are when I'm listening to Pandora and I hear, basically, a radio ad for thirty seconds or something like that... I listen to those."

Hobson was speaking with Derek Thompson, senior editor at The Atlantic, about Thompson's recent article on the ineffectiveness of most mobile advertising.

"Mobile platforms, from phones to tablets, now command one-tenth of our media attention, but only one one-hundredth of total ad spending," Thompson wrote here.

He explains how advertising has powered much of the information and entertainment media for decades. But now advertising on mobile platforms, which is where our attention is headed, isn't working. Thompson calls it a "business crisis."

One of the reasons, he says, is that we simply don't expect to get "advertised to" on our mobile devices. So when ads do come, they just seem intrusive and get in our face, and it makes us less likely to engage with that which is advertised.

But the difference with audio ads in an Internet radio stream is that we're comfortable with advertising when it appears in familiar places. We've heard audio ads on radio all our lives, and we're familiar with the concept of advertising between songs on the radio. We're simply still uncomfortable with it in mobile, and until marketers and publishers can figure out how to change that, Thompson's "business crisis" will continue.

Hear the (very short) audio interview from Marketplace here.

Online audio ad network TargetSpot has added six new partners to its network, including Songza and Radionomy.

Songza is a webcaster that offers mood- and activity-focused playlists. Radionomy is a free service that allows users to launch their own webcasts.

In addition to those two services, TargetSpot will deliver in-stream audio ads for just hear !t, Thefuture.fm, Soundtracker, and HulkShare. TargetSpot CEO Eyal Goldwerger said, "Our research shows that Internet radio users switch between streaming sites multiple times a day. Our highly diversified network lets advertisers reach their desired target audiences regardless of the service they listen to or the device they use."

With today's news, the TargetSpot ad network now includes more than 85 radio groups and pureplay online music providers.

Webcasters (including broadcasters regarding their online streaming) need to rid themselves of the CPM-driven advertising style of broadcast, and instead offer buyers the real-time insight into campaigns' performance that digital technology enables.

That's the point Ken Dardis makes in a recent Audio Graphics blog. He writes, "As long as advertising is sold the same way online as it's sold over-the-air, there is no business model for streaming."

Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey recently told BloombergTV, "We don't see a business model for streaming." Dardis says this is because most broadcasters are looking for "bulk" so they can sell CPM ("cost per thousand") campaigns.

But online radio doesn't have the massive listenership for this style of advertising. What online radio does have is the ability to monitor the effectiveness of campaigns in real time, and tailor messages "on the fly" to maximize effectiveness.

"What Google, MSN's Bing (which now includes Yahoo! Search), and any of the numerous ad serving platforms like Zedo, Adconion, ValueClick, etc, are presenting advertisers with is campaign metrics," Dardis writes. This style of advertising "allows savvy media buyers to dissect the numbers as their clients' needs require to improve campaign response. In many cases this campaign improvement can be done in the middle of the campaign."

Read more from Audio Graphics here.

A forecast from a new eMarketer report, "Internet Radio: Marketers Move In," has the U.S. Internet radio audience growing 11.1% to 147.3 million this year. "Expansion will continue for the next several years, though rates will taper off to single-digit percentages," says eMarketer.

During that time, eMarketer expects U.S. Internet radio ad revenues to hit $970 million, then grow to $1.31 billion by 2016 (this includes all streaming, website, text, e-mail, and mobile advertising, and advertising on HD Radio). The news source points out that while positive, these growth forecasts are more modest than those for other digital media.

"Still, advertisers are eager to attach their brands to internet broadcasting and other music-streaming properties. There are several reasons for this, among them: the appeal of associating a brand with a particular genre or artist; the extent to which internet radio is driven primarily by ads; and the appeal of in-steam audio ads, which are harder to avoid or skip than other forms of digital advertising," reads the eMarketer press release.

See more, including a link to purchase the report, here.