Kurt Edwards, Talksport, international commercial director, argues that radio's digital renaissance will extend into programmatic, thrusting 'the wireless' into the forefront of the digital revolution.

Radio, that great trusted medium, is enjoying a real renaissance amongst western audiences and has never been in a better place. TV with its plethora of music stations, the past rise of CD buying, and even the onset of new music devices hasn’t dampened the public’s love for good old wireless.

Recent listening figures in both the UK and US market suggest that over 90% of adults are tuning into radio every week. The latest RAJAR numbers in the UK show an astonishing 1.03 billion listening hours are being delivered weekly which offers huge potential for advertisers and agencies alike.

Delve deeper into these UK numbers and you will see that listening to radio via a digital platform has grown some 10% year on year with over 27 million people listening via a digitally enabled receiver (DAB, DTV, online) which accounts for 36.1% of all listening hours. DAB is still the most popular device when it comes to listening digitally. However when you look at online listening through desktop or portable devices the increase is much steeper.

In particular people listening to radio via a mobile phone is now at 25%, which is an increase of 32% year on year. This increases to 45% when looking at 15-24 yr olds. The majority of mobile phones have an FM chip already inserted and it’s surprising how many are still not used by manufacturers.

The large difference between the UK and the US in terms of digital listening comes primarily from in-car listening because auto manufacturers in the UK have been slow to embrace this new technology. However, this is expected to increase dramatically over the coming years as the new connected cars on show at Mobile World Congress highlighted.

It’s not just traditional radio companies enjoying audience growth but the pure play digital audio companies which are also embracing this opportunity.

“It’s the last mass market medium moving online” says TuneIn’s CEO John Donham whose TuneIn app aggregates over 100,000 radio stations from around the globe and has had over 50 million downloads to date. The ability for a single radio station to reach audiences around the world has never been easier. At Talksport, we typically have listeners from over 200 different countries tuning into our content every month thanks to our unique position of being the global audio partner of the Barclays Premier League.

Couple this with the rise of music services like Spotify, Blinkbox, Deezer and Soundcloud and podcasts and you realise how much opportunity exists within the world of audio for commercial brands. Digital listening is no longer a trend, it’s every day behaviour for many people.

The Targetspot Digital Audio Survey from 2012 and the annual Edison “The Infinite Dial Survey” are only two of many studies in the US that highlight the growing responsiveness from digital consumers and the improved results that advertisers are seeing in this space.

This space in the US is already worth a lot of money with 2013 forecasted to see $1bn dollars spent across digital audio. This will be double digital growth yet the UK market has hardly even started to take off.

Media agencies in every market are looking for efficiencies in buying and it’s easy to understand why trading desks are keen to get involved in digital audio because the chance to deliver increased targeting supported by third party data means improved results and more spend going through their desks. It also means we are very close to that moment when all media platforms can be bought programmatically and an advertiser’s campaign can be delivered and measured effortlessly across a typical consumers media day.

One of the companies leading the charge in the US markets is Triton Digital who have launched the first digital audio exchange A2X. This plugs into the trading desks and marries up existing third party data sources providing rich audience data with digital audio inventory from a huge numbers of partners. Benjamin Masse, senior VP of Triton Digital states: “most trading desks are now up and running such as Xaxis, Affiperf, Amnet, VMM, Accordant and the difference here is they are not buying spots they are buying audiences.”

A Xaxis Radio project team has been specifically formed to look at the opportunities on a global scale and the UK, alongside the big European markets, are the next big opportunity. On the UK market Benjamin remarked: “We’ve already experienced significant traction amongst the trading desks and digital agencies. Absolute, Talksportand other broadcasters are already doing in-stream ad replacement at scale, thus helping create the market beyond audio pre-roll, which can be limited in scale and value.”

With Global and Bauer also looking at this market it’s only a matter of time before the available pool of inventory greatly increases.

This means traditional radio broadcasters will be fighting for digital spend alongside the traditional radio advertiser spend. In the UK market Spotify has achieved notable success by targeting digital teams within agencies alongside traditional radio buying teams and with the availability of daily analytics across digital platforms it’s becoming easier to offer up KPI’s and reporting that digital buying teams come to expect.

Amongst European markets the audio media buying process is still very manual so there is an appetite across all the main markets and broadcasters to streamline this and automate the process. Adswizz, a leading European In Stream company, who works with some UK broadcasters already is working on a project to do just that and a future integration with trading desks but it needs to happen quickly if they want to maintain a competitive edge. New UI’s are being worked on all the time by companies like Jemm Media in the UK that are looking to speed that process along.

As much as the industry is excited about what’s coming it’s also very mindful about digital audio, not just being about better bought spots. It’s a broadcaster’s ability to deliver additional content around audio that is getting advertisers excited. Absolute and Spotify are two companies that have offered some really exciting campaigns which engage user’s passion points with targeted content delivered at that key time when a user is listening.

So it’s an exciting time for digital audio in the UK. The IAB’s Audio Council has set its stall out to accelerate the education of both agencies and buyers and make them realise the huge opportunity that is unfolding around them.

Agencies need to work with broadcasters over the coming months so we can apply any learnings from other platforms and go to market with one voice aligned in our approach to increase advertiser spend.