Our ad agency, Team Watkins Advertising, is in the process of making several annual radio advertising buys for local clients. This past fall, the Seattle market finally joined others nationwide with Arbitron's new "people meters" that keep tabs of people's listening habits. The bottom line? It's a lot more accurate. The results? A lot of changes in the rankings. Most notably, talk stations took a big drop, and some stations who rode the middle for years moved to the top. There we a lot of surprises.
As we look for radio "partners" to help us promote and brand our clients in 2010, we're careful. Stations that haven't fared as well with the new rating system can still be good partners. We'll look at their listener profiles, loyalty and qualitative information, then compare the numbers. While we expect a few changes in the stations we buy for 2010, we don't plan on dumping those whose formats have not fared well in the new rating system. And we'll keep our minds open to looking at stations we didn't consider in the past.
Our clients are keeping their budgets level in 2010, which is good news after a couple of years of reductions. With our radio buys, we'll be looking at what we can do with the radio station's web site. While stations might include some free promotions on their sites, they aren't giving web ads away. So our online ad budgets will include buys on radio station sites. It makes good sense.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
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