Advertisers want to know that the advertising money they spend is working. That’s always been a challenge for radio salespeople. Relationships are important of course. To be able to add solid data to that strong relationship is critical.
How do you give advertisers rock-solid proof so that every client you close will be with you forever?
During a packed Wednesday webinar the executive team from AnalyticOwl detailed a new free service for radio sellers to help them show advertisers radio’s health Return on Investment. The data, culled from 4 billion advertising responses, in over 200 markets, is compiled in an easy to use portal for sellers to access.
We spoke to AnalyticOwl Founder David Ballinger after the webinar to get more details.
Radio Ink: Tell us about the new product you introduced in the webinar Wednesday.
David Ballinger: Self Serve Attribution website for anyone to use data as benchmarking or to use to close a deal (an advertiser cares more about response than ratings – they want to know what will happen if they spend money and that’s what the new website product provides…predictive response data by industry and by market that’s more in keeping with digital advertising offerings.
Radio Ink: How long have you been working on this product and where did all the data come from?
David Ballinger: Started at the beginning of the pandemic – realizing that we can help, but if we don’t make it easier we won’t be able to help radio as much as we can. The data is from actual advertising campaigns in the market – all aggregated and anonymized so we know historically what website, search, social and foot traffic response advertisers received.
Radio Ink: How will this product help radio sellers close sales?
David Ballinger: Predictive response data helps close deals – go to a car dealer with an estimation of listenership or here’s how many responses you will get…response wins every time. Again, digital has trained advertisers to care about response and they expect the same level of data on the radio side. A rep can enter website address, industry and market and have immediate data based on all the historical campaigns we’ve tracked as an indication of response.
Radio Ink: Why will salespeople and advertisers believe it’s accurate?
David Ballinger: Because it’s the largest radio attribution dataset that we know of, from over 4 billion ad responses and of course because we created radio attribution first, we’ve had a head start on everyone else trying to catch up to what we’re doing – we’ve also had more time, being first, to solve problems and use cases that our competitors may not have been exposed to yet.
Radio Ink: How and why are you offering the product for free?
David Ballinger: Free for the first insights because we want to give every radio seller a simple way to use data to sell – if you need sales, you need data. We know that some folks are not comfortable with data, so we’ve made it really simple to get involved with our attribution data that can help close a deal, hoping we can train the entire radio industry on simpler more accessible data at scale that really helps in their every day sales.
Check out the portal HERE
No question, having this predictive response data is a major asset towards facilitating advertisers’ opportunity to use radio. That said, opening the Pandora’s box about ROI and predicted results is a slippery slope. – Digital advertising mediums guarantee their results to an advertiser, using available analytics. So advertisers very well could expect radio to guarantee results also, once we start using predictive response. …And how many stations are in a position right now, to guarantee the results like digital does?