In 2023, radio helped tax preparation businesses greatly improve their web traffic. Now new research from the 2024 tax season shows radio breaches an even more impressive barrier: despite twelve times higher ad spend on television, radio still outperformed TV.
The Cumulus Media/Westwood One Audio Active Group again conducted a series of studies measuring the impact of AM/FM campaigns on tax prep services, including site and search attribution, location tracking, and share of search measurement. While these companies spent twelve times more in TV advertising than in OTA radio, brand familiarity held significantly stronger among heavy AM/FM listeners compared to heavy TV viewers.
Motionworks discovered that markets with heavier AM/FM advertising experienced a surge in visits to tax preparation offices. In January, areas with the highest AM/FM ad weight saw a 245% greater increase in location visits compared to markets with lighter advertising.
MARU/Matchbox found these heavy radio listeners are 26% more likely to pay top dollar for tax preparation services compared to the average US consumer and 35% more likely to consider using major tax preparation brands.
In line with last year’s findings, LeadsRx found that radio campaigns generated a 35% increase in website traffic for the tax preparation brand, with web interactions peaking in January and February – the early months of the tax season. Compared to the 2023 tax season, there was a 59% growth in website traffic in 2024.
The collective findings from these studies illustrate the effectiveness of AM/FM advertising for tax preparation services. Despite lower advertising expenditures compared to television, radio has proven to be a more impactful medium for building brand familiarity, driving website traffic, increasing physical visits to tax preparation offices, and enhancing overall consumer engagement.
As tax preparation services, who do most of their ad spend in the first quarter, consider where they’ll buy, the continued results suggest they would be wise to do so with radio.
100 years into this experience and Radio still on the back foot. Constantly proving its effectiveness yet no one with the purse strings seems to be listening. Or if they are they don’t seem to care.
Agencies will direct clients to areas most profitable for them. Shameful.