Mobile FM radio ads shown to drive incremental store traffic

Mobile FM radio spots provides an average of 22 percent lift in incremental store traffic and up to 32 percent lift for specific categories, according to data out Thursday from radio attribution company Dial Report with the Radio Advertising Bureau.

The study looked at 10 brands across four categories, analyzing a total of 1.5 million radio spots that were exposed to 107,000 FM smartphone listeners. AdIDs were then matched to location data provided by Freckle. The report examined store-traffic lift for the automotive, home improvement, beauty and quick service restaurants (QSR) categories.

Why you should care

Attributing store traffic to radio or any broadcast medium has always been difficult. Typical digital attribution techniques can provide useful data on where, when and how an individual consumes mobile radio, but there’s no way to directly tie it to store visits. Marketers have yearned for a way to do this for years.

But by comparing store traffic on days that ads ran to days when they didn’t, Dial Report was able to provide a link between the spots and in-store visits, giving marketers a way to justify their ad spends and forecast for the future.

Other companies are also ramping up their quest for radio attribution solutions. Just this week, publisher iHeartMedia, programmatic radio platform Jelli and location-based discovery service Foursquare announced the launch of a new broadcast radio attribution product.

More from the study

1. Day of the week has an impact. Ads playing on Saturday showing a 39 percent lift, followed closely by Wednesday at 35 percent.

2. Not surprisingly, time of day also makes a difference. Weekends from 6 am to 7 pm showed a 28 percent lift, while weekend day overnights only managed 14 percent.

3. Format also matters. The report found that ads playing on Top 40 stations brought in a 29 lift while hip hop showed only an 8 percent bump.

4. Though the category/brand sample size was small, lift did range widely across categories — from 4 percent for a home improvement retailer to 45 percent for an automotive company.