Radio Brands Work Cannes To Get AM/FM In The Ad Conversation

With the global advertising industry gathered on the French Riviera, radio is making its presence felt at the Cannes Lions festival, cutting through the celebrity sightings and yacht parties with data-driven arguments about AM/FM’s performance advantages.

US broadcast groups like iHeartMedia and Nueva Network were represented along the Croisette, with Audacy personality Joshua “Bru” Brubaker joining Nielsen panels to highlight how creators, data, and technology are reshaping media strategy. In these conversations, audio is emerging as one of the strongest-performing channels in today’s media mix.

Brubaker, a former Radio Ink 30 and Under Superstar, shared insights from Audacy’s State of Audio 2025 report, which shows that 40% of marketing executives cite improved ROI measurement and attribution as a critical priority. According to a separate Boathouse survey in January, 71% of U.S. CEOs now want their marketing teams focused on sales and revenue, not just reach and awareness.

That’s where radio comes in.

Compared to other formats, audio advertising is delivering outsized results. The report shows audio outperforms video ads by 55% in driving conversions, beats search by 28%, and surpasses social media by 13%. With today’s cross-platform measurement tools, marketers can directly track listener exposure across broadcast, streaming, and podcasts to actual outcomes like website visits, app downloads, and sales.

Yet despite these performance gains, radio continues to fight perception issues with advertisers. Nielsen’s 2025 Global Annual Marketing Survey and Global Compass Benchmarks reveal a persistent disconnect between what marketers believe and what the data shows. While social media, search, and video receive the highest confidence scores, with 62% to 67% of marketers rating them highly effective. Radio ranks lower, with just under 50% perceiving it as a top performer.

But when actual ROI is measured, radio tells a different story. Despite its lower perception ranking, radio delivered one of the highest returns on investment across all media channels, trailing only slightly behind social media, with a weighted average return of nearly $1.90 for every dollar spent. Radio outpaced print, podcasts, TV, out-of-home, display, and video in real-world ROI, exposing one of the sharpest gaps between marketer perception and financial performance.

Even podcasting, often touted for its highly engaged audiences, produced lower ROI when compared to AM/FM’s broad reach and well-established monetization models.

As for this year’s Cannes Lions winners for audio, VMN New York took home a Silver Lion for Use of Radio as a Medium in an ad for Oreo, with the Audio Grand Prix going to Budweiser’s “One-Second Ads” campaign by Africa Creative DDB, Sao Paolo that was used on TikTok.