For roughly one third of advertisers surveyed this fall by Borrell Associates, radio unmistakably got the job done for them in 2024. The advertising and media research firm’s latest survey, which canvassed 1,130 direct ad buyers and 122 local ad agencies, found 34% of participants said AM/FM radio was very or extremely effective. That placed the medium in a seventh-place tie among 20 marketing channels Borrell studied. Search engine marketing, social media, broadcast TV and direct mail were the top five finishers in terms of their effectiveness for local businesses across the country.
While streaming audio came in toward the bottom of the stack —18% of respondents rated it as very or extremely effective — the channel has curried noteworthy favor among local ad agencies. About half of them (48%) said streaming audio was very/extremely effective and 42% indicated they plan to boost their investment in streaming audio in 2025.
Although one third of local advertisers say radio works for them, according to Borrell’s “What Will 2025 Bring,” they’re evenly split on whether they plan to increase or decrease spending on the medium in 2025. The four channels where ad buyers said they’re most likely to up allocations next year are events/sponsorships, social media, website ads and search engine marketing.
In unfurling its latest advertiser survey results, Borrell offered a more visual angle on the growth potential of various media channels. This came in the form of a quadrant analysis that plotted data points on a graph with an X and Y axis, dividing the graph into four quadrants to visually compare and categorize media channels based on two key criteria: ad effectiveness and intent to increase/decrease spending. Here radio hugged the most desirable quadrant, the one where survey respondents said they found the channel highly effective and were likely to increase their spending on it.
“Sixty percent of that [radio] bubble is up in the good quadrant,” Borrell Associates CEO Gordon Borrell shared in a Thursday webinar. “There’s a reason for that, and it’s pretty much how they feel about radio reps.”
As reported Friday by Inside Radio, 36% of survey respondents say radio sales reps are seen as sporting more marketing know-how vs. 30% for broadcast TV, followed by newspapers (25%), cable TV (25%) and direct mail (21%).
So, what is it about radio people that local ad agencies like? Six in ten (60%) said they had significantly or somewhat greater local market knowledge than other media companies. And 53% indicated it was access to local audience reach that drew them to AM/FM. Cost effective solutions (47%), innovative ideas (40%), and transparency (24%) were also cited.
The local agency scorecard for radio: 38% said it was very/extremely effective and 26% said they plan to spend more on AM/FM in 2025.
Radio has found success selling — or reselling — digital advertising. The latest Borrell survey, conducted from September-November, finds 41% of local ad buyers purchase digital ads from at least one type of media company. Radio came in fourth in this area, with 21% indicating they buy digital ads from a radio company. The only other traditional media that scored higher was newspapers at 24%.