Radio buyers: Programmatic is still a ways off

By the editors of Media Life

This is one in a number of stories on radio in Media Life’s ongoing series “The new face of radio in America,” examining all the changes taking place in the medium. Click here for earlier stories. 

Many different media have pushed quickly into programmatic buying.

Magazine companies such as Time Inc. have set up exchanges to sell print inventory.

NBCUniversal recently rolled out an exchange to be used across its cable and broadcast networks. A handful of Super Bowl commercials have been purchased programmatically since 2015.

Out of home has experimented with automated buying, too.

And of course digital immediately embraced automation.

There’s one glaring absence from that list, though: Radio.

Radio would seem ideally suited to programmatic considering how much total volume of advertising is bought and how many local ad reps are needed to do it.

But radio has been very slow to embrace programmatic at the local level, which accounts for the bulk of radio advertising. In fact, Jon Mansell, vice president of marketplace innovation at Magna Global, says less than 1 percent of all radio buys are made programmatically.

Why so low?

Well, a major reason is lack of opportunity. As one agency contacted by Media Life pointed out, nearly all the existing programmatic options are for national radio buys.

“We’re hoping to test it locally once more options roll out,” the agency noted.

Mansell agrees that radio options have been slow to develop.

“Traditional programmatic buying teams are not used to utilizing audio-only assets, whereas budgets from TV are more easily transferred over as video was already being transacted programmatically,” Mansell says.

Another hurdle: Disorganization.

Right now, there are dozens (possibly hundreds, depending whose opinion you trust) of vendors rolling out programmatic buying exchanges across different media. The industry is still so young that there isn’t any one brand that’s emerged as the industry standard, as Nielsen quickly became for TV ratings, for instance.

For radio, that’s complicated by the fact that individual stations then could choose any of those platforms. Buyers might have to deal with a dozen different exchanges for just one market.

But perhaps the most difficult thing to overcome will be the disdain for programmatic within some segments of the buying community.

One buyer says this form of buying is suited only to branding, or “buying the impressions” without consideration for when, how or where those impressions would come from.

That doesn’t fit for most clients.

“The direct response nature (measure, manage, optimize) of most of our clients’ campaigns require a more hands-on approach that precludes programmatic buying,” he says.

Others say programmatic is a poor option for radio no matter what the aim of a campaign.

“I would not buy programmatically, not even at the national level. Strategic radio planning requires actual conversations with a station’s seller, promotions director, and/or program director about what makes their station distinctive and how it’s a good fit (or not) for a particular client,” another buyer says.

Still, Magna’s Mansell says within a few years, more than half of radio buys will be handled programmatically. He says attribution will drive heavy adoption of the technology.

“The utilization of mobile phone foot traffic attribution will make the real-time optimization of radio a possibility for stores that have brick and mortar locations,” he says.

Tags: local radio, media buyers, programmatic, programmatic radio, radio buying, radio programmatic, the new face of radio in america