The 2020 campaign season is shaping up to the be unlike any other in numerous ways, including a quadruple threat of political advertising—Audacy. No other audio platform offers attribution, target-ability, local connection, national scale and flexibility. Let’s break it down.

Yes, you read that right – attribution. You thought only digital channels could truly show attribution and measurement? Think again.

Over the last two years, Audacy has been introducing new technologies and partnerships that put radio attribution on par with other media channels, ending the decades-old myth that radio advertising is lacking in ability to target, attribute and measure. Here’s a peak behind the curtain.

While digital platforms may use IP addresses and TV can gather set-top box data, Audacy has found a unique path to understanding who is tuning in. Unlike other digital audio competitors, Audacy is live and local, meaning that people call, text and interact with stations, providing an initiation point for first-party data collection which is then matched through third party services with other critical information about them, such as physical addresses, purchasing behaviors, interests, and political affiliations, just the way an IP address would be used in digital ads. Then, using “match back” data that connects the identity of consumers’ who took a particular action, like visiting a store or making a purchase, with identities of those most likely exposed to a brand’s ad as well as self-reported survey data, Audacy can measure impact. Hence, radio attribution was born.

This essentially takes radio’s targeting and measurement capabilities to the next level. Both over the air and online, Audacy can identify consumers via location and other demographics, behaviors, interests and any combination of those that an advertiser desires. In a campaign season with perhaps more at stake than ever, granular segmentation is critically important to reach supporters and undecided voters. That’s why Audacy teamed up with Deep Root, an audience-powered analytics company. The partnership is part of Audacy’s commitment to data-driven capabilities, including increased audience insights and measurement, leveraging its robust first-party data platform.

“Expansive reach and national scale allow radio and digital audio to serve as a reliable platform for brands and political campaigns to reach engaged consumers. Now more than ever, it is our responsibility to support these advertising partners with increased targeting to accomplish their specific goals,” said Dan McKinney, Vice President, Data and Analytics, Audacy.

The partnership enables agencies, advocacy groups, and political campaigns to identify and reach Deep Root’s custom voter audience segments when advertising throughout Audacy’s robust portfolio of broadcast and digital assets. This includes access to Deep Root’s issue advocacy and political audience segments, such as swing voters, blue collar voters and environmentalists.

As if advanced targeting and OTA radio attribution weren’t breakthrough enough, Audacy boasts several other advantages over audio competitors. “Listeners come here for content they can’t get anywhere else,” says Michael Biemolt, SVP of Sales. “This is a complete audio destination, with music, podcasts, sports, news and talk. Spotify and Pandora have a different content offering, primarily centered around music.” In fact, Audacy stations reach 170 million listeners[1] and our digital audience is about 68 million[2]. A majority of our digital listeners follow their favorite stations to the Audacy app, and 63%[3] are unduplicated on competitive digital audio destinations. That’s because they are tuning in to stations based in their communities with personalities they know delivering news and information they care about and a curated sound tailored to the audience’s preferences. At the same time they are part of a network that offers national reach as well as all the digital capabilities of Audacy.

“We deliver engaged listeners who lean in to the content,” Biemolt says, demonstrated by sharp increases in year-over-year streaming (+16%) and smart speaker (+104%)[4] Total Listening Hours. “Ad messages are less intrusive to ‘leaning in’ listeners who are actively participating with news or sports talk than they are to people who are passively listening to music and may consider ad messages an irritating interruption to their experience, if they don’t tune them out altogether.”

Finally, producing ad content—especially video—in a Covid-19 environment can be even more complicated and costly than usual. But not for Audacy, which offers more flexibility for pre-produced spots as well as turnkey opportunities. For one, nearly all political ads are welcome here, from :05 to 2 minutes. With the ability to reach a total audience across over-the-air stations, the Audacy app and podcasts, social media and email databases, options run the gamut.

While all of these reasons stack up to an efficient and convenient buy this campaign season, here’s the clincher – 9 out of 10 listeners are registered voters. In other words, Audacy listeners have the power to influence, and Audacy has the influential voices they trust.