New Radio 360 measurement system to go live, providing first look at streaming audiences.
The commercial radio industry’s new audience measurement system, Radio 360, goes live tomorrow with the release of the third GfK metropolitan radio survey of the year.
Radio 360 will provide a first look at the size of radio’s rapidly-growing streaming audiences following the strong uptake in recent years of listening over connected devices such as mobile phones and smart speakers.
The move marks a historic transition to a sophisticated new hybrid measurement system developed by GfK that will provide accurate and granular information on radio listening across all platforms and devices, anywhere, anytime.
Ciaran Davis, chair of industry body Commercial Radio & Audio and CEO of ARN Media, said the new system was the result of significant investment and strong collaboration across the entire industry and ratings provider GfK.
“With one in four Australians now streaming live radio on a weekly basis, we are at the start of a broad, positive shift to digital listening.
We are proud we now have a measurement system that allows us to demonstrate the reach and influence of radio on all platforms, supports our ambitions to become a much bigger player in the digital audio advertising space and is built to meet future needs.”
CRA ECO Ford Ennals said: “The industry recognises the need to better deliver the granular measurement and deep customer insights that brands and media agencies are hungry for.
“We hope Radio360 will encourage advertisers to allocate more of their digital and audio spend to Australian radio. We have independently verified measurement – something many of the big tech players still don’t offer – and radio delivers both scale and targeted audiences.”
GfK Media Measurement Director Deb Hishon said: “We are genuinely excited to bring Radio 360 to market. It’s a credit to the industry that Australia is one of the first countries in the world to introduce hybrid measurement to solve the complex challenge of measuring listening across so many places and platforms. This is just the start and we now have a foundation for future development and integration.”
Radio 360 key benefits
- Uses multiple data sources (surveys, live streaming data and wearable meters) to provide robust and granular measurement
- The first and only source of deduplicated data on each radio station’s separate streaming and broadcast listeners, including information on streaming by age groups and day parts.
- Deeper audience insights to allow media agencies to better plan and target campaigns to optimise advertising effectiveness
- Audited and independently verified by GfK with continuity from previous surveys
- Gold Standard compliant analytics
- Future-ready for integration of podcasting, special reports using real-time monitoring and connectivity to other data sets.
