Lots happens in the radio industry each week so here’s a summary of the week we just enjoyed.
Here’s what happened
Let’s talk about advertising. Advertising pays the bills in radio a lot of the time, so it’s important to keep an eye on what’s going on in that market. The good news is Radio ad spend was up in 2022, so things are going relatively well.
Spend on radio ads was up 9%, but it’s important to remember we were stuck in a pandemic in 2021. As a result we can assume this is more of a correction than major growth, but still, it’s good to see.
- A total of €158.1 million was spent on radio ads in 2022, that’s up 9%
- We had a 20% boost in spend from retail. Every little helps and all that.
- Ads from the finance category were up 11%. It will be interesting to see what happens in this sector for 2023, with banks closing, will ad spend go down?
- Then we had the return of the industry’s that got hit during the pandemic. entertainment and media was up 53%, and travel made a great comeback, going up 54%.
It’s great to see things getting back to some level of normality, well, normality within reason. Trends have continued to shift, and ad spend on digital audio is continuing to grow at great pace.
- €125.6m came from traditional spot revenue, up 7%
- €27.1 million came from sponsorships and all those kinds of partnerships. OB’s etc
- And digital continues to grow hitting €5.4 million. These numbers don’t include big audio streamers, but it’s good to see this number growing.
That digital revenue needs to grow in the industry going forward, so let’s hope 2023 sees digital services taken more seriously. all the big brands have quality apps now, so 2023 is the time to use them.
It’s fascinating to look at who’s spending ad money and how. Radio looks to be in a good place, so let’s hope these trends keep going.
As we just saw, sponsorship has a huge part to play in the radio industry, and some stations are already off to a strong start for 2023.
Life pharmacy are the new sponsors for Matt Cooper’s the Last Word on Today FM. The deal includes stings and promotions to help promote the 95 pharmacies across Ireland.
meanwhile, Supervalue Insurance have teamed up with 2FM to sponsor Drive It with the 2 Johnnies. We don’t have much detail about the deal but it’s great to see.
It’s deals like this help keep media going, so hopefully the sponsors want to invest more in radio over the next year.
Read more on the Today FM deal here
Check out the tweet from RTÉ Media Sales here
Finally this week, a big congratulations to the team at Christmas FM for another successful year.
The team have a target of raising €1 million over the next 3 years as part of their magic of Christmas campaign. The campaign is a departure from the station’s traditional model of having a single charity partner each year. So what was raised in 2022?
A total of €294,706 was raised which is a massive achievement. Hopefully this will go towards helping those in need over the next year.
Very well done to everyone involved, and best wishes going forward.
Quick Bits
Dee Forbes has said credible media may die out if the government don’t reform the funding model
Did you know that 20% of ads from government agencies must now be in Irish?
Its4Women have been announced as Today FM’s traffic sponsor
RTE are adding to their collection of sports podcasts with a new running podcast
RTE have a problem with rats in the canteen
The head of the BBC has spoken about the cuts at BBC NI
Corks Red FM are hosting transition year students thanks to funding from the BAI
And that’s the summary for this week. Come back to radio land next week for more radio news📻 and be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram for extra stories.