Southern Cross Austereo‘s (SCA) digital audio platforms have reached new highs with more people tuning into Hit and Triple M than ever before, recording a record 1.5 million* live radio streaming listeners during August, a jump of 88% year on year.
SCA audiences are listening longer and more often, with 10 million listening hours, an increase of 46% year on year.
Smart speaker listening continues to record extraordinary growth, reporting 2.2 million listening hours in August, up 95%* year on year, now accounting for almost a quarter (22%) of total listening. Smart speaker listening has an average session duration of 2 hours and 16 minutes^.
PodcastOne Australia’s original podcasts have also reported record listening growth – rising 167% from March 1 to August 31**.
Listening on demand, including live radio streaming across mobile, tablet and smart speakers, as well as radio podcast listening, has soared again in August:
“Digital audio in all its facets continues to explode and SCA is at the forefront of this transformational market. Audiences are embracing all digital audio and we are seeing massive growth in new, addressable advertising inventory that provides audiences at scale. It’s a compelling new opportunity for advertisers and enhances the ability for agencies and advertisers to target campaigns,” SCA Chief Sales Officer, Brian Gallagher, said.
“This includes, but is not limited to, weather and proximity targeting. As we enter spring, clients want campaigns that activate with changes to the weather such as ‘Pollen Count’, or that target specific radius catchment areas or post codes to deliver hyper-personalised brand messages.
“SCA’s significant mobile app audience also creates new opportunities for call to action for brands with our ShakeMe audio creative. By developing a script to encourage the audience to ‘Shake your phone now’, the creative drives website traffic, app downloads or can even place a call to a brand’s customer service line. Many of our clients in August saw the benefits with the new attributable audio creative generating high interaction rates with ad completion of more than 97%.”
Sources:
* Adswizz Audiometrix August 2019 v August 2020
^ Omny Studio August 2019 vs August 2020
** Omny Studio March to August 2020