A new study from Cumulus and Westwood One’s Audio Active group shows some good news for radio sales reps to take to their clients. Listeners of sports radio tend to hear the messages stations and advertisers want them to more often than listeners to other formats and users of other platforms.
It should come as no surprise that listeners to spoken word formats tend to be the ones most likely to hear and remember a sponsor’s message. Sports tops all of them with Spanish formats, NPR, news/talk and religious formats rounding out the top 5.
Radio also showed the highest audience retention through commercials. The study asked participants how often they skip or actively avoid ads on a variety of platforms. 35% of listeners to terrestrial radio answered “rarely or never”. 27% of those that regularly consume audio via the online streams of terrestrial stations gave the same answer.
Finally, the study showed that sports radio has a particularly engaged audience. Those that listen to play-by-play on the radio tend to be very aware of who advertisers are and more interested in what is coming through their speakers.
