In an industry first, Clear Channel Media and Entertainment (CCM+E) today launched the Audience Delivery Optimizer (AuDiO), a groundbreaking, proprietary radio targeting tool developed specifically for political advertisers.
This first-of-its-kind radio optimization tool enables local and national political campaigns across the country to precisely target key voter segments using radio — which was confirmed by recent research to be one of the most effective and efficient consumer advertising vehicles. AuDiO will be available to political candidates nationwide for the 2014 campaign cycle.
AuDiO matches key information about 245 million Americans who listen to Clear Channel’s 840 U.S. terrestrial radio stations to leading political databases to make actionable predictions about which desired voter segment is listening to which stations at which times.
Using the 10 most common political segments (from “Super Democrats” to “Ultra Conservatives”[1]) AuDiO can ascertain how many target voters radio reaches in any political district around the country.
Moreover, AuDiO can identify the media preferences of any target segment, giving advertisers key information about which media are best to reach which voters. AuDiO works at all levels of national, statewide and local elections.
The launch of AuDiO means that Clear Channel is now uniquely able to match broadcast listener data – for any of its 840 stations, at any time of day and in any political district nationwide – to multiple third-party data sources to identify which listeners fall into any given political district and, within that district’s listening audience, which segments are present and in what numbers.
In a recent Clear Channel study using data from Pennsylvania’s 13th Congressional District, AuDiO revealed that a key swing voter segment there, representing 11 percent of all voters in that district, spend more time listening to radio than they do with any other medium. The same research showed Clear Channel stations reach 95 percent of these voters.
“Ninety-two percent of Americans listen to radio every month — but despite radio’s incredible reach, campaigns have never had a tool like AuDiO for radio before,” said Nathan Daschle, Clear Channel Media and Entertainment’s Executive Vice President for Political Strategy.
“AuDiO takes the guesswork out of radio buying by replacing wild hunches with actionable and precise models so that campaigns know which of their desired targetaudiences are listening, when and to whom. This means that campaigns, political parties and other groups across America have the ability to use radio in a much smarter way to reach their target voters.”
“For decades, political campaigns were forced to rely on generic and outdated demographic information to guess which radio stations reached which voters,” said Sara Fagen, Founder of Deep Root Analytics and former Political Director for President George W. Bush. “Tools like AuDiO are changing that. They allow political strategists to more efficiently target the actual people who will determine the outcome of an election.”
The launch of AuDiO follows the recent results of a study undertaken by Nielsen Catalina Solutions, which revealed that radio offers the highest return on investment of any medium. Brands included in that study averaged sales lift of more than six dollars for every dollar spent on radio ads, “an ROI double that of even the best results of many recent studies of digital or TV media,” according to Advertising Age magazine.
“This new platform addresses a critical need, not just for political advertisers, but for the radio industry as a whole,” said Radha Subramanyam, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing Research at Clear Channel Media and Entertainment. “AuDiO changes radio advertising in the same way Rentrak changed TV buying. It is just the most recent enhancement to radio measurement and analysis.”
[1] The 10 segments are: Super Democrats, Conservative Democrats, Left Out Democrats, On the Fence Liberals, Green Traditionalists, Informed but Unregistered, Unconnected and Unregistered, Uninvolved Conservatives, Mild Republicans, and Ultra Conservatives.
