After four decades in radio research, the Coleman Insights president believes radio still works. Now he’s focused on helping the industry prove it. Warren Kurtzman has spent most of his life studying how people listen to radio. These days, he’s just as focused on what happens after they hear the ad.
That focus sits at the center of Validate, the attribution platform Coleman Insights now represents worldwide. For an industry that watched Google and Meta win the measurement war, Kurtzman believes it could be a turning point.
A Radio Geek From the Start
“I’ve been with Coleman Insights for 31 years,” Kurtzman said. “I’ve been president of the company since 2008, so 18 years leading the company that Jon Coleman founded.”
Before that, he worked in research for Kurt Hanson, running his AccuRatings service. He started his research career with six years at Arbitron.
His roots go back even further. “I’ve just been a radio geek most of my life. I used to be on air. I used to run a radio station when I was at Cornell,” he said. “So I’ve been in the radio industry for about 40 years now.”
Known Before You’re Needed
Kurtzman doesn’t ignore radio’s headwinds. Still, his core belief hasn’t changed.
“Despite all the challenges that radio faces, including declining audience, more competition from other sources of audio and other sources of content that consumers can spend their time with, a really well executed radio campaign still delivers results for advertisers,” he said. “And does so very efficiently, especially if radio is used the right way, which is as a long-term brand-building tool.”
He often borrows a line from longtime friend and former Arbitron colleague Pierre Bouvard of Westwood One.
“Pierre always says to me, ‘You need to be known before you’re needed,’ and I use that line all the time,” Kurtzman said. “I think what radio is really great at is implanting local brands in consumers’ minds, so that when it comes time for them to make a purchase or use a service in a particular product category, they will go to the names and brands that they have been hearing about on the radio for years.”
The catch? “Radio needs a really good way to demonstrate that,” he said.
The Attribution Gap
Today’s advertisers live and die by ROAS, or return on ad spend. Google and Meta can show a client exactly what every dollar did, often in real time. Radio, for years, couldn’t. As a result, the dollars followed the data.
Kurtzman heard the same frustration from the top. We spoke while he was in Cleveland for the semiannual RAB board meeting. Fittingly, it all started at one of those meetings about two and a half years ago in Nashville.
“All I kept hearing about from these heads of radio groups or these executives at radio groups was, we need something that more effectively demonstrates the impact that we have for advertisers,” he recalled.
Weeks later, at Radiodays North America, he met with Pattison Media. The company owns about 75 stations in markets like Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and Winnipeg. “They are not one of the biggest groups, but they’re a significant player, mostly in Western Canada,” he said.
Validate
Pattison had built its own attribution tool, called Validate. “When I saw the methodology that fueled it, I immediately called a couple of clients of ours,” Kurtzman said. “I said, after coming to the RAB board meeting and seeing the demand for this thing, I have now seen the answer to it, and it’s called Validate.”
Coleman Insights became Validate’s exclusive U.S. representative. Jeff Warshaw at Connoisseur Media and Rob Babin at Cox Media Group were early advocates and clients, and the RAB provided a lot of support. A few weeks ago, Coleman announced a new deal to represent Validate worldwide.
“I think it’s really a great solution for the challenge that radio has faced, which is we need a tool that shows how over-the-air broadcast spots can influence consumer behavior,” he said. “For the first time, radio can be looked at like other media are looked at, where advertisers can look at a dashboard and see the influence that their radio campaigns are having in real time, and that’s tremendous.”
How Validate Works
“Validate connects directly with the radio station’s traffic system,” Kurtzman explained. “So we have information about every spot that airs, and it also connects with the station’s streaming platform.”
From there, an algorithm fueled mostly by Nielsen PPM data estimates the broadcast audience. For example, say 1,000 people are streaming a station at 8:03 on a Monday morning. If streaming makes up 10% of listening at that hour, the math follows. “What we would then estimate is that 10,000 people heard that spot across broadcast and streaming,” he said.
However, impressions are only half the story. “The more exciting part about Validate is that we also provide the advertiser with what we call a conversion tag,” he said. “It’s a simple line of code that they can put in the header of their website.”
The tag tracks people exposed to the campaign on the station stream “and whether or not they go visit the advertiser’s website anytime while the campaign is running, and up to 90 days afterwards.”
What It Means?
Kurtzman is careful about what that means. “We’re not saying that people heard the spot, took out their phone, went straight to the website, and checked it out,” he said. “What we’re able to track is the influence that being exposed to that radio campaign has on driving traffic to the site.”
He used a familiar example. “Let’s say your air conditioning system breaks down, and you’re immediately like, ‘Oh, I need to get an HVAC company in here,'” he said. “You may do a Google search, or you may just plug it into ChatGPT and ask for recommendations for an HVAC company near me. The brands that come up, you’re going to go to the ones that you know because you’ve been exposed to their radio advertising and have a positive perception.”
Validate can also see what visitors do once they arrive. “Did they fill out a contact us form? Did they make a purchase? Did they download some exclusive content?” he said.
One credit union client rotates its creative among mortgages, car loans, and CDs. “What we’re able to actually see is when people are hearing a spot, let’s say, about mortgages, is that driving more traffic to the mortgage page on the credit union’s website?”
Brand Building, Not Just Clicks
Kurtzman draws a clear line between radio and digital. “When you buy a digital campaign, you are generally looking for almost instantaneous response. It’s a very tactical thing,” he said. “I’m not saying that radio can’t drive tactical behavior like that, but where radio is most effective, as I’ve said a couple of times, is this long-term brand building.”
And there’s more coming. “We do have plans to take this a lot further. We want to integrate it with foot traffic data,” he said. “But we’re taking it one step at a time.”
Growing, But Not Plug-and-Play
“We’ve got probably across the U.S. and Canada now about 250 radio stations on the Validate platform,” Kurtzman said. “I’d like to have 10 times that in the next couple of years.”
Cox and Connoisseur came first, and Hubbard Radio and Bonneville International have followed. Several public media stations are also on board.
Meanwhile, the pipeline is full. “We have discussed this with every one of the 10 largest radio groups in the United States,” he said. “Virtually every one of them has seen a demo of it, and nobody has said no yet.”
Still, he won’t oversell it. “I won’t tell you that every salesperson turns this thing on, completely understands it, takes it to clients, and is successful with it,” he said. “In fact, one of the things that’s interesting about Validate is we will not sell it to a radio station unless they commit to a year of usage, and the reason why is there is a ramp-up period.”
“I have sat in on a number of meetings with radio salespeople and their clients, looking at data and explaining to them what it means,” he added. “Ultimately, salespeople should be able to use this data relatively easily.”
Radio’s Two Perils
When I asked about the biggest danger facing radio, Kurtzman asked if he could give two.
The first one, he admitted, is familiar. “There are going to be Coleman Insights clients who may read what I say here and go, ‘Oh God, Warren’s saying that again,'” he said. “It is the lack of investment in external marketing of radio brands.”
“The industry stopped marketing our brands almost at the exact time that a huge array of new competitors entered the market,” he continued. “I’m old, but when I was growing up, everybody knew every radio station. Now people don’t know them as well.”
“While I don’t think that all of a sudden pouring money into marketing is going to reverse all of the industry’s challenges,” he said, “we are hamstringing ourselves by not investing in these brands.”
The Second
The second is programmatic. “There are so many dollars being spent on local advertising that radio doesn’t even have a chance at getting, and the reason why is most of that advertising is being bought programmatically,” he said.
“I can buy everything from display at the screens that sit on top of urinals in the sports stadium to ads that are going to run when I’m pumping gas, to digital audio, to over-the-top television,” he said. “I can’t buy broadcast radio that way.”
That’s why Coleman and Pattison plan to launch Resonate, a programmatic platform for broadcast radio, in the next couple of months.
“A lot of radio broadcasters have been fearful of the word programmatic, because they think it represents a race to the bottom in terms of rates, and it doesn’t have to be,” he said. “If you’re a 30-year-old media buyer, you’re not going to Kansas City and calling each of the major groups and getting their rate proposals when you can go buy something else with a couple of clicks.”
Importantly, he’s not writing off the local seller. “There is still absolutely a place for the traditional radio local seller, local advertiser relationship. That’s not going away,” he said. “But we can supplement all the income from that with programmatic selling.”
“It’s not that those advertisers think poorly of radio; they don’t,” he added. “It’s just that we’re not in the platforms that these media buyers are using to place local advertising.”
What It Means
I’ve long believed streaming is radio’s most undervalued asset. Kurtzman agrees it matters, but he also sees why over-the-air measurement is the real breakthrough.
“Doing attribution for digital is easy,” he said. “But doing attribution for over the air is really hard because it’s analog. Validate actually has come up with a way that allows us to do attribution for over the air.”
That matters because the broadcast signal still does most of the heavy lifting. “According to the latest data from Edison Share of Ear studies, over the air still accounts for more than 85% of all radio listening,” he said. “We need to get value for that in addition to the value we’re getting for our digital streaming.”
Radio didn’t lose ground to digital because it stopped working. It lost ground because it couldn’t show its work. With Validate and Resonate, Kurtzman is betting radio can finally speak the language buyers use today. After 40 years in the business, he sounds as energized as ever to help it happen.
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