Spot advertising is growing at an impressive rate within digital radio, podcasts, and music-streaming services, due to the increase in listening over lockdown. What many advertisers do not yet appreciate, is the level of ad fraud in the industry.
Digital audio listeners will spend an average of two hours and 12 minutes per day with digital audio; 80% of time spent with digital audio will occur via mobile.
84% of the UK population listen to the radio, 44% stream music and 22% use the internet to listen to podcasts. 48% say that they listen for entertainment, and 34% to relax (TouchPoints, 2020).
Digital audio affords listeners the control to listen to what they want, at any time, on their preferred audio device, and advertisers the ability to target people based on a number of demographic and behavioural attributes.
Whilst the medium, and the targeting offer an attractive opportunity to communicate with prospective customers in a receptive mindset, a surprisingly low number of digital media professionals see digital audio as being vulnerable to ad fraud in the next 12 months (3%).
Monitoring the growing digital audio market
Juniper Research reported that global digital advertising fraud grew 21% to $42b in 2019 and is estimated to cost advertisers $100b by 2023.
It’s important to look out for anything which seems unusual; Single IP addresses delivering hundreds of impacts, unknown providers, low cost yet high volumes.
Auditing, and purchasing through a trusted platform is imperative. As it the guidance of an experienced digital media team, who will be able to talk you through the best practices to avoid bot traffic and fraudulent clicks.
All Response Media viewpoint
Avoid lowest cost impacts. Often referred to as ‘fishing in the cesspool of the internet’, purchasing the lowest cost impacts, regardless of their provenance, is likely to increase your chances of attracting non-human traffic. The premiums in place with the major broadcasters and content providers are worth paying to ensure quality placement, and genuine traffic. Your ARM team will put in place a clear and transparent measurement plan to ensure that all paid traffic is measured against your performance metrics.
Go the extra mile and make sure that you have the tagging triple checked against your KPIs. At ARM we have a unique proposition in the UK market for tracking digital audio results. This all but eliminates fraudulent traffic.
Consider presenter-reads, partnerships and sponsorship. At ARM our favourite campaign to date has been Charles Tyrwhitt’s partnership with “The Good, The Bad, and The Rugby” in which James Haskell waxed lyrical about the brand, with the other presenters, for 5 minutes.
The secret here, was to select a brand which had a genuine connection with the presenters; Charles Tyrwhitt is the official clothing provider for the England team. If you are considering digital audio campaigns, please speak with the ARM team who will be pleased to show you some case studies, and talk you through best practice.
