Radio360 – a new hybrid audience measurement system for the GfK metropolitan radio surveys – officially launched its first phase in the market on Tuesday, June 6th, 2023 as part of Radio Ratings Survey Three.
The first phase of the Radio360 rollout saw streaming added to broadcast audience figures for each radio station across the five major metro markets. GfK survey three revealed almost 26% of listeners streamed commercial radio while the number of total listeners hit a high of 12.24 million.
One of the key findings from this additional information was the strength of talk radio in audio streaming, with Nine Radio leading the way. Due to this. Mediaweek caught up with Tom Malone, managing director – radio for Nine, to discuss this new innovation in radio ratings which he described as a landmark change.
“We’ve always known that we needed to update our measurement system,” said Malone. “GfK, with the support of CRA and the members, have done a great job to get to this point. For the first time, we’re talking about streaming numbers, as well as AM, FM and DAB+ numbers.”
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When asked what the elevator pitch is to advertisers about this change to such an established system, Malone said it will allow the radio industry to be even more clear to stakeholders about the true value of radio.
“We know how efficient and effective radio is from an advertising point of view. This will enable us as an industry to further enhance that message as we’re able to connect our listeners, with our advertisers. We’ll be able to decouple the linear audience from the streaming audience. From an industry point of view, it’s an incredibly important day that we hope will be the beginning of driving private commercial outcomes for the radio industry.”
Nine and Radio 360
When asked about how measuring streaming has impacted Nine, Malone said it’s an amazing day for the broadcaster and talk radio in general.
“We think the future of streaming is talk. It’s evident in the numbers, the commercial shares are extraordinary and we’re really excited about what this means for the radio industry, especially for talk radio as a format moving forward. It’s an exciting day for both our stations and for the industry more broadly.
“What Radio360 does is it shows the incredible surge in audience share for our stations through online or streaming. When a listener goes from a linear to a streaming environment our content proposition is so strong. If they want music, they may go to an aggregator, but our content proposition is so strong in that streaming environment. Whether they want news, sport, weather, entertainment, opinion, or traffic.
“2GB breakfast is doing a 47.5% commercial share of the streaming audience. 3AW, breakfast is doing a 53% commercial share of the total streaming audience. It bodes so well for us and our future and our business when we think about the ability for us to have a unique relationship with our listeners through a connected device and serve them content that’s more bespoke to them. We can then make sure that we’re connecting listener and advertiser in a much more efficient way too”
When asked about how this success will impact the bottom line, Malone said that Nine’s history in monetising their BVOD product, 9Now, will give the radio arm of the business a leg up.
“The pitch for Nine’s stations is we have these great local conversations in each market. We’re then able to aggregate those and deliver an advertising plan to perform at scale with data and technology. We can then trade that inventory with the advertising agencies. At Nine we have the experience of what we’ve done in the BVOD space. Over the last eight years, we’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way. We’ve been able to enhance both our product from a content and technology point of view with the audience and our products from a technology point of view with the advertisers.
“We have a huge data lake, we’ve got first-party data through single sign-on, and we’ve got great experience at maximising the impact of that for advertisers. You’re gonna see that ability to connect with a local audience, but do it at scale across our talk radio business.”
The future of radio ratings
The second phase of Radio360 is scheduled for 2024 and will introduce podcast metrics, as well as special reports from data collected by GfK MediaWatches.
When asked if further innovations were needed to the radio ratings system, Malone said that it’s a significant first step, but more is yet to come.
“There will no doubt be iterations of Radio360 and the industry’s already flagged looking at including podcasting down the track. There’ll be other things that we do to make it even more efficient over the next 12 to 24 months. Today is a really important day and enables us to have those discussions now about reaching frequency buyers across a digital data set. That’s going to be really important for the future of our businesses for all of us.
“The latest numbers that we see out of the IAB, which now includes the CRA’s numbers show that the digital audio market in Australia is now in excess of $200 million per annum. There’s no doubt that it is a meaningful market and that total audio is in growth. When you combine the traditional five-city metro market with the digital audio market, we are seeing positive growth over the forward estimates for the total radio industry.”
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Nine’s Podcasting Strategy
When asked about Radio360 counting podcasts in the future and about Nine’s own podcast strategy, Malone said that it comes down to what’s the best content distributed across the best platform for the right audience and commercial return.
“We’ve pursued a profitable and sustainable podcast strategy where we’ve been extending Nine brands like Married at First Sight, The Block, and Stories of Origin and then we have been creating bespoke podcasts, especially in sport. Catch-up radio has a role to play but you got to make sure it’s complimentary to your live offering. There’s also a role to play for original content and brand extensions of other great TV shows as well.“