(By Elliott Hurst) NAB Show 2025 made it crystal clear: the radio industry isn’t collapsing, but it’s contracting – slowly, but persistently. Ad revenue is expected to dip again this year in step with the last decade (-2.2%); however, now national spots are concerningly down (5–6% annually).
Meanwhile, digital audio is growing at nearly 10% per year, and podcast ad revenue is booming (+22%). Digital advertising accounts for an average of 24% of all revenue as broadcasters adopt a more consultative approach with their trusted clients and now sell them a myriad of marketing services, including ad extension.
Yet in most radio sales departments, digital remains a reluctant afterthought.
That disconnect is the problem. Buyers today know their customers are interacting with digital content, and some are even hiring younger decision makers who frequently employ a digital-first mindset, even when they love radio.
Here’s how to shift your pitch and mindset this week:
Adopt a more consultative approach to your advertisers. Leverage your trusted relationship to establish yourself as their go-to for advertising strategy. Try avoiding the usual approach and DON’T start your proposal with your airtime inventory.
DO Start with:
- Who the client wants to reach (e.g., new movers, soccer moms, weekend warriors)
- Where they live online and off (e.g., radio mornings, mobile at lunch, TikTok by night)
- What behavior change the advertiser wants (visit, click, RSVP, redeem)
Then — and only then — explain how your radio plus digital plan moves the needle across all those touchpoints. Remind your advertiser about the proven lift that campaigns that involve both on-air and digital components show a significant boost on recall and conversion than just one medium alone. They’re often looking to spend on digital, it might as well be with you! It shouldn’t be in a vacuum, it should be part of their strategic campaign you developed with them.
At SoCast, we see this every day: sellers who lead with business goals and then offer omnichannel solutions close more deals – at higher average orders.
3 Moves to Make This Week
- Audit Your Proposals
Pull three of your recent proposals. Are you still leading with “spots + impressions”? Flip that — start with the problem you’re solving.
- Use Digital as the Closer
Radio builds reach. Digital drives action. Every pitch should include an option to have a digital CTA: retargeting, geofenced mobile, lead form, or QR code campaign.
- Borrow This Line
“We build a strategic campaign around your customer’s journey, not just our airtime. We’ll move them from awareness on-air to action online.”
Your advertisers live in a multi-platform world. Your pitch needs to as well.
Broadcast radio advertising sales aren’t dying, they’re changing. Got a digital sales challenge that’s been stumping your team? Or, have a question about anything in this column? Send me a note and let’s tackle it together.
Elliott Hurst is Co-Founder and CEO of SoCast, the leading digital partner for over 2,500 radio stations. Elliott holds an MBA from the Schulich School of Business with a diploma in Arts and Media Management, and is focused on helping stations thrive in today’s competitive digital landscape.
Dave, you’re absolutely right. This is exactly what we’ve been hearing from sales teams. You’ve laid out a hard truth that many of us working inside and alongside the industry recognize all too well: there’s a problem with top-down buy-in. When leadership doesn’t fully commit to selling digital, there is very little motivation for sales teams to learn how to sell digital better.
But I want to remind leadership that while radio is sitting on a powerhouse of assets, radio also often falls short of fully capitalizing on them due to a lack of consistent investment in people and process. This is a change management issue, not a digital issue.
Your comment about radio bringing a battalion to the battlefield while other media bring one soldier — but better trained and equipped — really hits home. This speaks directly to one of the root causes radio has been wrestling with for years: the underinvestment in upskilling and rewarding local radio sales teams to confidently sell in a digital-first advertising environment.
Your point about the pacing report being the ultimate truth-teller is spot-on. It’s a scoreboard of how well your training, tools, and strategy are actually working. But too often, the tools used in radio are stuck in “spot world,” while the market has moved on to “audience world.” If we’re still measuring transactional sales activity when advertisers are expecting consultative strategy and performance data, we’re bound to miss the mark. I know I’m preaching to the choir here, and I can hear the frustration in your comment.
We agree — sales teams aren’t soldiers to be tossed on the battlefield and expected to “figure it out” as fast as they can…largely on their own.” Dedicated training, commission incentives, and the appropriate software should be provided as a result of unwavering leadership’s top-down commitment. When leadership doesn’t prioritize digital as a core part of the business (not an add-on), sales managers can’t create the support structures or training required, and sellers are left exposed. We’ve seen the difference when organizations fully commit. We’ve seen some of our clients experience success, but only after leadership remained steadfast in their commitment. It didn’t come without patience, pain and sacrifice. But we’ve seen firsthand how both small and large market broadcasters have built repeatable success stories where digital became a standalone revenue stream. These broadcasters have transformed their businesses and we believe others can too, if they have the will to see it through. It is a core competency radio teams need to own themselves. Training is key but there are also proven models, workflows, software and services that are now there to help.
Thanks again for your comment and for adding to the discussion, which really cuts to the heart of the issue. The article was meant to take what we’ve learned from working with those clients who have effectively incorporated digital into their sales. We see many broadcasters starting to embrace this new reality and we believe radio can evolve to thrive in the digital era. This article is meant to be a practical first step for those broadcasters who are starting to embrace this evolution.
Elliot,
You’re clearly a smart, well educated, accomplished guy. It’s difficult to share a practical, actionable sales game plan in a single, short article because you’re forced to leave so many pieces of the puzzle out. Let me put a few pieces of the puzzle into your article. Radio spending has not kept pace with overall media spending in the last 100 years because the radio industry continues to field untrained sales people who barely understand their own products and know even less about other media choices. Radio’s pitch has been “Radio out-reaches every other media. Our radio station is the best. We’re sold out. Here’s the rates that will clear” for the last 7 decades… It’s a stale slug line and not entirely truthful.
To suggest that radio sales people and sales managers march into a client’s office and start explaining how they should allocate their ad budget into an intelligent mix of traditional broadcast and digital platforms is the right idea, but it requires some serious training to be able to pull it off convincingly. Most sales managers simply don’t have a process in place to provide that level of training. Plenty of sales managers aren’t even trained themselves and couldn’t pull that off either—and don’t even get me started on the GM’s. This is where your great idea dies.
Meanwhile, pay per click powerhouses like Meta and Alphabet fully train their sales teams and generate twice as much revenue in a single month than the entire US radio market does in a full year—and radio had an 8 decade head start. Do you think there’s a cause and effect relationship there? A missed opportunity? A dropped ball?
Radio Ink features intelligent people like you daily, but revenue for the first quarter in 2025 is off to a shaky start across the board. What does that tell you? Is anyone paying attention? Is anyone applying great selling suggestions? Is anyone leading? Is anyone teaching, training, supporting, empowering their sales staff? Is anyone building a process to continuously make their team better each quarter by capitalizing on smart, effective ideas and putting them to work in the field in front of clients? The answer is in the revenue pacing reports. They never lie. They display the full impact of the effectiveness of your entire sales process every day. So, how are your pacing reports looking? Start there. That’s’ exactly how effective your current sales process is.
Elliot, I realize that radio stations can hire your company for help, but the way I see it, if General Managers and Sales Managers are already on staff and being paid, shouldn’t they be expected to step up? Isn’t their responsibility to form a strategy to grow revenue—which involves preparing people properly to do so? Radio Ink facilitates access to very smart people each day for free, but revenue is slipping out there. Why? What am I missing here? Why is this so difficult? Radio’s value and impact is without equal and the variety of platforms that the industry brings to the table is unmatched. It’s not even close. If marketing was a war, every other media choice shows up with one soldier. Radio shows up with a battalion.
Why has this astonishingly powerful collection of unique platforms been so hard to fully monetize? I have my theories and all I can say is it comes from the top down. If media sales is a war, pay per click’s soldiers are fully trained and equipped. Radio’s soldiers are tossed on the battlefield and expected to “figure it out” as fast as they can…largely on their own.
Who’s winning the war for media spending market share right now? Trained sales people or untrained sales people. Enough said.