Radio is still one of the most important mediums in everyday life. However, the entire media industry is facing some major challenges, both in content and marketing. In this blog post, you'll learn all the relevant insights we brought from our visit to Radiodays Europe 2021 in Lisbon as well as clear ideas and suggestions for the radio of the future.
The Transformation of Radio
The conference highlighted the major challenges for radio as a medium and as an industry. Radio is not "just" radio. The industry is moving more and more towards an extended audio industry - accordingly, radio providers have big plans for the future.
On the one hand, there is the aspect of trust. Radio is one of the most trusted media for the masses. Especially during the Corona pandemic, this trust in classic media formats - first and foremost radio - was once again clearly demonstrated. Radio has to prove itself as a trustworthy medium in times of ever faster spreading fake news.
The transformation of radio advertising
On the other hand, there are economic and entrepreneurial challenges due to constantly changing market conditions and the reaction to such developments. Here, radio has to find new ways of monetization or optimize existing models. For example, although there are more people listening to the radio than, say, reading newspapers or watching audiovisual content - there is still less investment in advertising on the radio. This gap must be closed, e.g., by better adapting the corresponding advertising content for the target group on the radio (and taking advantage of a possible leap of faith) or by means of alternative advertising formats (including video advertising or in-app sponsoring). Furthermore, the relevance of auditory advertising must be used more optimally - building an auditory brand (i.e., an auditory corporate identity) can offer enormous potential for long-term customer relationships.
The technological transformation of radio
In addition, the focus is on technological challenges and opportunities. Radio advertising can benefit enormously from technological developments: by means of text-to-speech technologies, many more brands can use radio advertising. In the past, radio commercials had to be produced in a complex way, but in the future, technology could do a lot of the work - without the commercial sounding like it was spoken by a machine. One provider for the technologized production of radio advertising is the start-up Trinity Audio (https://trinityaudio.ai/).
Away from the many challenges from a marketing perspective, content and the user experience can also be optimized and improved through the use of innovative technologies. Users need to be engaged with their own brand (so as not to lose them to one of the big third-party providers) and content should be tailored and played out individually to each listener. The many ways of consuming media today - in the car, at home, on public transportation, via voice control, or in a virtual reality environment - vouch for many opportunities, but at least as many challenges in implementation and execution.
So what's next?
We are happy to support you in the digital transformation of your radio company - based on many different projects with and for radio providers, we have been able to gather a wealth of experience and understand the industry better than almost anyone else.
Learn more about one of our reference projects Radio.likemee (Part of “Regiocast” - one of the largest radio providers in Germany) (https://computerrock.com/en/our-work/radio-likemee) or contact us directly (https://computerrock.com/en/contact-us).