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how radio can cash in on booming digital ad spending

How Radio Can Cash in On Booming Digital Ad Spending

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With brands spending at record rates on mobile, digital audio, and digital video, radio stations can showcase their best products and add new offerings to grow revenue.

Here’s some good news for radio broadcasters: The digital ad market is surging and now is the time for local stations to cash in. Local radio companies have invested heavily in digital audio, mobile and digital video, positioning them to grab a larger share of digital ad dollars. Consumers are shifting their media time to mobile devices and that’s good for radio’s digital products.

Just how much money are we talking about?

  • U.S. marketers spent $28.4 billion on digital advertising in Q1 2019, up 18% from Q1 2018, according to a new report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. 
  • The strong quarterly growth comes after a banner year in 2018, when digital ad sales jumped 22% to $104.7 billion, compared to 2017 levels. 
  • Mobile advertising spending doubled last year to $70 billion, compared to 2017 levels. 

As more consumers turn to their smartphones for entertainment, digital audio and video streaming are booming, and advertisers want to reach these audiences.  

  • Thanks to red-hot podcasting and digital streaming, brands are doubling-down on digital audio, spending $2.3 billion last year, up 23% from 2017’s $1.7 billion. 
  • Digital video is similarly growing at a breakneck pace, with ad spend up 37% in 2018 to $16.3 billion, compared to 2017.  

So what are the takeaways for broadcasters? Here are a few suggestions

Keep your mobile apps fresh

The best radio station mobile apps feature live streams, on-demand content, podcasts, and user-favorite features like contests. These are all key components to creating a positive mobile experience for your users. Make sure your mobile app is easy to use and continually revisit to explore new features and integrations. And don’t forget that with the growth of Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and SDL, mobile apps compatible with these technologies are your ticket into the connected car in a meaningful way.

Podcasts, podcasts, podcasts

Your listeners and your advertising partners can’t get enough of podcasts, so focus on developing more original on-demand audio and make your broadcast content available for on-demand, time-shifted listening. Offer advertisers opportunities in your on-demand audio including exclusive sponsorship and even branded podcasts. 

Develop mobile ad opportunities

For local advertisers, offer mobile ad opportunities that go beyond banner ads. You can create branded content, including video and podcasts, and you can also offer sponsorships for popular sections of the app, such as weather or traffic. Lastly, make sure that your live stream quality is as strong as your over-the-air broadcasts to ensure users have a positive listening experience. Pre-roll, midroll, and post-roll video ads give local businesses a chance to get into digital video. Also, be sure to present podcast ad opportunities, these are a major growth area for digital audio.

Dig into digital video

Both users and marketers are clamoring for more digital video. Radio stations can shoot video in studio or in the community. Local events, sports and concerts all offer opportunities for video. There’s even opportunities to create video to accompany original podcasts. Local businesses can buy pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll video as standalone or in conjunction with audio spots. Radio can also produce branded video content for local advertisers, leveraging both their production and sales capabilities.

So how do you tackle all this to-do list? Futuri Media can help. 

  • Top-quality mobile apps: With Futuri Mobile, we can design mobile apps with custom features to showcase your best content and create an immersive mobile experience. Our apps are highly customizable; choose from one of three starting points and create a station app that has any of literally hundreds of customizations. 
  • Get into the video business — without derailing other parts of your business: To help time-strapped hosts and producers with content, we’ve added TopicPulse Instant Video. Subscribers can access dozens of videos daily, based on the day’s hottest topics that they easily can customize with their station branding and even their own PPM-encoded audio. Distribute these on your mobile, web, and social channels. And our POST podcasting system makes it incredibly simple to turn your audio into a video with a licensed image and a dynamic waveform designed to drive engagement. It’s a great way to take advantage of YouTube and other video sharing platforms for your audio content.

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By embracing mobile, digital audio, and digital video, your station can participate in the fast-growing digital and mobile ad boom, as well as bring more innovative and exclusive content to your audience. That’s a win-win for everyone. 

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As In-Car Entertainment Options Grow, Radio Keeps Pace

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With robust digital offerings, radio can maintain its place as the no. 1 in-car media

Radio enjoys the enviable position as the most popular in-car media, but the car is quickly emerging as the new battleground for audio. As more vehicles with advanced entertainment systems and WiFi connectivity hit the road, drivers can tune into online radio or apps for their audio, and that’s giving radio new competition.  

According to Edison Research’s latest Infinite Dial report, 56% of drivers named AM/FM radio as their top in-vehicle entertainment choice, but that slipped from 63% just two years ago. At the same time, digital audio increased its share from 8% in 2016 to 12% in 2018 and podcasts inched up from just 1% to 3%.  

At the upcoming 2018 Radio Show in Orlando, Edison Research will share new data on in-car listening, which is sure to garner plenty of attention. Radio currently enjoys a strong position and is often the only time many consumers are using the radio. Among overall respondents, 54% say they only listen to AM/FM radio in the car and 62% of 13 to 34 years old say the car is the only place they tune in to radio.

As more cars feature advanced and integrated technology, broadcasters need to be ready with their digital products. Streaming audio services, including Pandora, iHeart Radio and Spotify, are pre-loaded in some car systems, and a growing number of new vehicles also feature Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, which allow in-dash screens to mimics a smartphone screen so drivers can easily access any apps, including audio apps. By 2025, the Radio Advertising Bureau predicts all new cars rolling off production lines will be connected to the Internet, giving drivers access to an unprecedented number of entertainment options.  

But, here’s the good news for radio: Local broadcasters are well-positioned to embrace new in-car technology and, potentially, to grow their in-car audience. Along with traditional AM/FM listening, radio stations can offer drivers high-quality live streaming audio and on-demand content, including podcasts, and deliver it all through the latest in-dash systems. If a driver has a radio app on their phone, it appears on CarPlay or Android Auto. Drivers with cars that feature Alexa voice-technology can even use that to access their favorite radio station skills.

To stay ahead, radio stations need to make sure their digital products are cutting-edge, including high-quality live streams that offer a seamless listening experience, intuitive apps, a strong lineup of podcasts, and easy-to-use Alexa skills. After all, these are the key ingredients to any positive digital audio experience and the car is no exception.

At Futuri Media, a global leader in SaaS technology for broadcasters and media companies, our solutions make it simple to create, distribute and share content across digital platforms — including the car — and to produce and integrate ads for digitals channels. Our audience engagement suite features:

Futuri Streaming offering the finest-quality streaming audio to your mobile app and web player through our reliable technology solution with 24/7, VIP support.

Futuri Mobile: an interactive audience experience featuring more than 50 customizable features, including contests, push notifications, audio and video streaming, podcasts and more.

Our custom-built Alexa skills can deliver your content, promotions, and sponsor messaging to Alexa-powered smart speakers.

The upcoming 2018 Radio Show, will feature more insights about this latest Edison research study on in-car audio data.  Join broadcasters on Sept. 25-28 at the Hilton Bonnet Creek and the Waldorf-Astoria in Orlando, FL, and hear Edison’s Larry Rosin share the latest findings on in-car audio data from Share of Ear, Infinite Dial, and NPR.

Futuri Media is a proud sponsor and contributor of the 2018 Radio Show. To schedule time at the show and learn more about our audience engagement technologies and how it can help brace your brand for the future, contact Futuri Media here.

 

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Five Ways to Boost Engagement with Your Radio Station App

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To Drive Usage, Promote Your App’s Best Features

The adage, “If you build it, they will come,” doesn’t necessarily apply to mobile apps. Your local radio station may have a robust mobile app packed with engaging features, but unless you educate your audience creatively and regularly, your app could get lost among the millions of available apps on the market today. At Futuri Media, a global SaaS provider of technology for broadcasters, we suggest you promote your app’s best features, with frequency, to educate the audience and drive engagement.

We’ve identified five winning ways to tout your mobile app to boost downloads, burnish your brand, and increase activity. 

1. Educate your audience: This may seem obvious, but you need to remind your listeners frequently that you have a mobile app and highlight the best features, then make it easy to find. Position the link to your mobile app prominently on your website and regularly post about it on social media channels. On the air, have talent reference the app using live reads and recorded promotional mentions. Leverage your promotional inventory to spotlight your branding, tout functions, and lead users to the app.  

2. Promote a single use and keep it brief: To generate interest and excitement, replace generic 30-second promos with crisp, 15-second spots that feature a single app feature. Tout the weather or traffic feature during morning and afternoon drive. The key here is to tell your users what the app can do for them – and break it down, one feature at a time.

3. Be specific: Let your audience learn how your app is convenient, exciting, and engaging. Develop messaging that is as specific as possible.  By tying your app to a specific season or special event, you are making your app a digital “destination” into your entire station’s brand ecosystem. Your promotions team should create a monthly promotional schedule for your app and be consistent in executing the messaging and promotional strategy.

4. Put the app to good use: After tragedy or natural disasters, local broadcasters have a long tradition of providing support and information to their communities. Your app can help with deliver news, and options for fundraising and donations. On-air and online, direct users to the app to make contributions and communicate with the community.

5. Work the features: At Futuri Media, clients can choose from more than 50 customizable app features to spotlight your station’s assets. Some of our favorites include:

  • “Open Mic” to get listeners to vote on songs or engage on a particular topic.

  • Flash Contesting to drive the audience to your app to win prizes during a specific period of time.

  • Push Notifications are versatile and perfect for station promos, song alerts, and local news and information.

  • Integrate with Futuri’s #engage platform to incorporate seamless social media messaging.

  • Integrate news, weather, traffic and community/station event listings, and more.

Ready to see how your station can maximize your Futuri Media mobile app and craft better promotions? Contact us for more details.

 

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Summer is the Time to Drive Digital Engagement

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Consumers turn to digital in the summer more than any other time of year. Engage your audience across all digital platforms using technologies proven to boost both audience engagement and revenue.

This summer, as more Americans stream audio in cars, on smart speakers, Bluetooth devices, and smartphones, online audio is primed to be more popular than ever. For radio broadcasters, this equals new opportunities to engage with audiences and attract advertisers.

In recent years, online listening for both radio broadcasters and pure play services has been booming. About 57% of Americans, or 160-million users, are streaming digital audio weekly, up from 53% last year and just 17% in 2010, according to the latest “Infinite Dial” report created by Edison Research. The average listener consumes more than 13.5 hours of digital audio per week, including music, spoken word formats, and podcasts.

In-car digital audio is also rising in popularity, 44% of consumers listening in-car, up from 40% in 2017 and 21% in 2013, Edison reported.

Meantime, radio stations are working to maximize new revenue streams from digital platforms. Last year, radio digital ad revenue jumped 13.4% to $700-million and is expected to reach nearly $800 million this year, according to the Radio Advertising Bureau and Borrell Associates. On a per station level, digital accounts for 7.5% of the average station’s ad revenues, up from 6.3% last year.

At Futuri Media, a global leader in SaaS software for broadcasters, our solutions make it simple to create, distribute and share content across digital platforms, and to produce and integrate ads for digitals channels.

Futuri Streaming delivers the finest-quality streaming audio to your mobile app and web player through our reliable system and comes with 24/7, VIP support.

Our team can create a custom mobile app just for your station. Optimize mobile with Futuri Mobile, our app platform that boasts more than 50 customizable features, including contests, push notifications, audio and video streaming, and more.  

POST, our exclusive content delivery and management system, enables on-air talent and producers to easily create digital content, including podcasts. The in-studio, touch-screen system makes it simple to grab and upload content for digital and on-demand listening, and to create exclusive digital audio.  

To help monetize digital, POST’s audio is PPM encoded, which enables broadcasters to measure their digital listening in the same ratings system as on-air audiences. POST also offers ad-insertion to create custom messages for podcasts and digital audio.

With #engage, our interactive programming tools, stations can keep up with trending topics. Our customized actions, including song alerts, text and email notifications, push alerts, and song voting, boost mobile and social engagement. Stations can sync social posts to song lists.  

Our custom-built Alexa skills can deliver your content, promotions and ads to Alexa-powered smart speakers.

Keep up with your audience’s trending chatter with TopicPulse, a real-time monitoring system that tracks the stories of interest to your listeners and provides fodder for on-air, online and social posts.

Let us help you be the soundtrack for the summer. Contact your Futuri Media partner rep or contact us here.

people looking at their phones at a train stop

Mobile Usage in America Reaches All-Time High

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Radio Must Respond with Mobile-Ready Content

How many times a day do you check your smartphone? The answer is probably much more than you think. In fact, the average American checks their phone every 12 minutes, or 80 times per day, and nearly one in ten Americans peek at their phones every four minutes, according to a recent study by Asurion.

Among smartphone users, streaming audio and podcasts rank as top activities. Radio broadcasters are eager to connect with these mobile consumers – and with good reason. Each day, 40% of Americans stream audio on their smartphones, according to the latest findings from Edison Research Infinite Dial. In fact, 75% of podcast listeners engage with programming content on a mobile device more than any other source.

Through mobile apps and websites, radio stations can offer live streams, on-demand music, podcasts and more to their consumers. Mobile serves as a tool to extend the life of on-air content as stations time-shift their most popular shows, or offer replays of live shows and music events.

Now more than ever, radio broadcasters need to be mobile-ready. According to Pew Research Center, smartphone penetration is at an all-time high, with ownership reaching 77% among adults, up from just 35% in 2011. The smartphone penetration reaches its highest loyalty with consumers between 18-29 with 94%; and 89% own a smartphone with adults 30 to 49. The boomer generation of adults ages 65 plus, have yet to make the consumer conversion to smartphones with the lowest ownership rate of 46%. 1:10 Americans are smartphone-only Internet consumers, following an overall market trend to more mobile connectivity and fewer broadband households, according to Pew Research Center.

Media consumption is driving Americans’ mobile usage, with 50% of Americans relying on their smartphones to receive breaking news alerts, while the device also serves as a buying tool with 51% making online purchases via their device, and 28% searched for work.

At Futuri Media, a global leader in SaaS software designed to drive audience and revenue growth for broadcasters, we believe smartphones are key to grow listening and the bottom line.

Futuri Media’s suite of tools can help you create, distribute and monetize your digital content across platforms. Allow us to share a few ideas:

Futuri Mobile:  Our mobile app platform offers more than 50 customizable features, including contests, push notifications, audio and video streaming, and more. Our team can design your mobile app with the features that are most important to your station and audience.

POST: With our exclusive content delivery and management system, on-air talent and producers can easily convert content for on-demand consumption. Producers can grab and upload benchmarks and exclusive interviews, and create bonus content, such as an after-show podcast or in-studio visit from a musician and local personality.

TopicPulse: Our real-time monitoring system tracks the stories your specific target audience is responding to now so you can talk about it on the air, on a blog and on social channels.

Futuri Streaming: Deliver top-quality streaming audio to your mobile app and web player through our reliable system, which includes 24/7 support.

#engage: Stay on top of what’s trending with our interactive programming tools. Designed to increase your mobile and social interactions, we offer customized actions, including song alerts, text, email and push notifications, and song voting.  Stations can even sync their social posts with their song lists so listeners can build their own playlists.

Want to learn more? Contact your Futuri Media partner or reach us here.

 

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Futuri Media Makes a Broader Set of Patented Interactive Features Available for Licensing

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Cleveland-based technology company holds patents in more than 150 countries worldwide.

Cleveland, Ohio, April 18, 2018 – Futuri Media, a global leader in SaaS technology designed to drive audience and revenue growth for broadcasters, today announced that it is making a broader set of its most popular intellectual property available for license to media companies who desire to use its award-winning IP in their own applications.

Futuri, named Tech Company of the Year 2017 by OHTec, has an extensive portfolio of intellectual property assets. These include patents (of which the company has 11 published or pending), trade dress, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets. Futuri has protected IP filed in 151 countries, and has licensed IP to media companies in twenty countries to date.

While Futuri’s IP licensing agreements are typically in connection with product subscription or service agreements, Futuri is now opening up licensing for features and systems of interest to media companies desiring to build their own apps or other software in the likeness of Futuri’s award-winning IP.

Futuri’s product offerings include Futuri Mobile™, highly-customized and engaging mobile apps; on-demand and podcasting system POST™; the TopLine™ sales research and data visualization app; story discovery and show prep tool TopicPulse®; interactive broadcasting system #engage®; high-quality, ultra-reliable Futuri Streaming™; and smart speaker skills for broadcasters.

“Since Futuri Media launched in 2009, we’ve invested millions of dollars in innovation, feature set development, and new technologies. Along the way, we’ve taken considerable measures to protect Futuri’s unique intellectual property – not just our products, but the underlying technology that powers each of them,” said Futuri Media CEO Daniel Anstandig. “We’re pleased to open discussions regarding licensing to partners who want to build on our current innovations while Futuri continues to focus on our core mission – driving audience and revenue growth by deepening consumers’ trust in, affinity for, and loyalty to brands and the teams who represent them.”

For more information on licensing Futuri’s intellectual property, please contact Kelly Johanns at kelly@futurimedia.com.

 

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Futuri Media Reflects on a Year of Growth

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We were honored to be named OHTec’s Tech Company of the Year 2017, and honored again when they reached out to us to get an update on what we’ve been up to since winning. This article originally appeared on the COSE website.

What a thrill it was for Futuri Media to be named OHTec’s 2017 Tech Company of the Year!  Ever since we launched our company out of a tiny Rocky River office in 2009, Futuri has maintained a deep belief in the quality, passion, and promise of the Northeast Ohio technology community. Today, we employ nearly 100 people, our SaaS technology solutions are relied on by more than 1,000 broadcasters in 20 countries worldwide, and all of this happens right here in Cleveland. That’s a clear testament to fact that Northeast Ohio’s technology industry is thriving, and we’re incredibly proud to be leaders in this community.

In the months since receiving OHTec’s 2017 Tech Company of the Year honor, Futuri Media has continued our rapid growth.  In August, Futuri was named to the Inc. 5000 List of America’s fastest-growing private companies for the fourth consecutive year, and this year, we took the coveted #1 spot for percentage of three-year revenue growth among all Northeast Ohio software firms. Obviously, revenue growth means that we can hire more people to create, market, sell, and train partners on Futuri’s innovative SaaS technology solutions, so we’re very focused on an Inc. 5000 five-peat in 2018.

Speaking of hiring more people, the size of our team has more than tripled in the past three years, and we’re currently hiring for several new positions. We’re sure that many who have worked in a fast-growing startup environment know that growing pains frequently manifest themselves in the office, in the form of a lack of personal space. It’s hard to do brilliant work when you’re packed in like sardines! So this year, after working from a series of spaces that couldn’t accommodate our faster-than-anticipated growth, we moved into a new headquarters.

On the product side, our incredible technology team once again outdid themselves by creating, maintaining, and constantly improving on dozens of new features, and in some cases, new products. Our entire family of audience engagement and sales SaaS technology solutions has been deployed around the world – interactive broadcasting tool #engage; podcasting and on-demand platform POST; sales research and data visualization app TopLine; data-driven story discovery tool TopicPulse; high-quality Futuri Streaming; our smart speaker skills division, Futuri Voice; and our app division, POST, our podcasting and on-demand audio platform, was one of our highest-growth products. While this might sound unsurprising to anyone who’s familiar with the incredibly fast pace of growth in the streaming audio market – a recent Nielsen Audio report showed that 2017 saw a 59% increase in year-over-year on-demand audio streams – we built POST to stand out in a very crowded technology market. For example, understanding that visuals are a great driver for on-demand audio consumption – and that an increasing number of brands are getting fined for unauthorized usage of copyrighted photos – we built a library of fully-licensed images into the product.

We completely redesigned TopicPulse, our real-time story discovery tool that delivers audience-specific insights based on engagement on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and 100k+ sources of verified news sources. As one of our TopicPulse partners, Emily Stone at Fox 5 DC, recently said during a panel at a convention of television executives, “You used to go into your news meeting with a stack of papers…you’d assign your reporters, and you’d start your day. Now, everything would be different by the time you printed the paper.” Media has never been in such a period of rapid change, and it’s critical that the art of story selection be paired with the science that tools like TopicPulse provides. Now, broadcasters can see in real time not only which stories are predicted to go viral with the specific demographic they target, but they can also see which stories their audience is tiring of, and find fresh angles on ongoing stories to keep their audiences engaged.

We’re committed to generating strong ROI for our partners.  In January, we launched the Futuri Ad Network to help our partners take better advantage of on-demand audio growth. Now, POST and Futuri Streaming clients have very flexible ad insertion options, where they can sell all of their advertising inventory, some of their inventory, or none of it. Inventory is available through the Futuri Ad Network and our clients are compensated for their time.  Of all the reasons we’re excited about this, it’s gratifying that our technology now gives our partners direct access to revenue opportunities.

Futuri is well positioned for another banner year. There are several new product developments and partnerships that will be announced over the coming months, and as always, we continue to cultivate a company culture centered around trust, speed, passion, and proactivity. We’ve consistently found that the best talent thrives in that type of culture.

We’re very much looking forward to future events OHTec and its technology partners have in store! It’s so important to take the time to celebrate Northeast Ohio’s incredible technology community. We’re a fast-moving, forward-thinking, change-minded group of people, and to see this sector booming is incredibly gratifying. And we love all the opportunities Tech Week provides for us to meet our peers, share ideas, talk about how what we’re doing to shape the future, and encourage each other.

Learn more about Tech Week, of which the Best of Tech Awards is a part, by clicking here.

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Futuri is the leading provider of cloud-based audience engagement software for the enterprise. Brands rely on Futuri to make their content more relevant, accessible, engaging, and results-driven. Founded in 2009, Futuri holds 11 published or pending patents in 151 countries. Named to the Inc. 5000 List of America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies for six consecutive years, Futuri is the only audience engagement platform that includes solutions for sales, marketing, and content teams.