Tuesday 17th saw The Independent Broadcasters of Ireland (IBI) and RTÉ Radio jointly launch RadioGAUGE to the Irish advertising community. Scott Williams – CEO of Q102 and chair of IBI – led this morning’s session in Dublin’s Westbury Hotel and described the initiative as an important collaboration between the IBI (Independent Broadcasters of Ireland) and RTÉ, and a giant leap forward for radio measurement and effectiveness within this marketplace.
What is RadioGAUGE?
Simply, it is an initiative that enables radio owners to increase their revenue by demonstrating the effectiveness of the medium to advertisers. Currently it remains the only global standard for measuring radio effectiveness, as well as evaluating creativity. While RadioGAUGE was originally launched in the UK to help grow commercial radio spend, it has since established itself in South Africa, Germany and Canada.
This morning’s session took media owners and agencies through the three criteria under which RadioGAUGE measures. These are to:
1. Measure the performance of radio campaigns for brands in any market sector
2. Evaluate the performance of the radio campaign’s creative strategy and execution
3. Educate brand owners to use the lessons of their last radio campaign to improve their next use of the medium.
The presentation this morning focused on 3 case-studies undertaken in ROI from within the Food, Car Insurance and Financial sectors towards the end of 2011. The findings proved that both creative and media planners understood the medium and were turning around campaigns that met with best in class findings from the UK. Under the heading of creativity – both food and Car Insurance fared better than our nearest neighbours. While under media, the food case study showed that when media planning was done effectively, it offered the client the best return on investment and delivered ahead of all planning benchmarks. So some pats on backs all round (well – with the exception of the financial case – which was ominously ignored).
Currently the UK undertakes 3 pieces of research per week – meaning they have a minimum of 156 pieces of data each year to benchmark findings against. The plan for RadioGAUGE in ROI is to run 4 waves of research across 2012. This will give us 15 samples at the end of this year (including the 3 samples presented that morning) – leaving us a far distance away from getting a robust benchmark in place. The likihood is that we will be referencing ourselves versus the UK for some time to come. It might be beneficial, therefore, in the immediate term that we focus on a few categories, rather than looking to spread the samples too thinly.
Looking ahead – while this system will be free to advertisers it comes with a €100,000 price-tag to IBI and RTE. At €25,000 per wave this is not a cheap system and one that IBI and RTE need to make sure offers a return. In the current climate this price-tag seems costly and as an agency we will be watching that this is not passed onto clients (as noted this morning – there is no such thing as a free Breakfast). So while the research is free, the data not exactly “confidential” – as this morning’s snigger fest launch proved – and if benchmarking remain against UK advertisers rather than ROI, then the attractiveness of advertisers to come on board may be difficult (even if there are only 12 spaces).
Overall this is a step in the right direction for the sector – but we need to be making sure that we are delivering a system that delivers for all sectors and gives clients, and agencies more justification for placing spend onto the airways.
Image by Speredenn on Flickr Creative Commons
