It is great news that in . It is also without doubt good news for many in the advertising industry that most of the traditional mediums saw impressive growth.
Radio has once again proven its resilience with exceptional growth of 7.2% in 2014 – the best performance for the medium since (the almost pre-internet era of) 2003.
Not bad for a medium that is not necessarily a first consideration for advertisers and agencies and often wrongly considered to be in long-term decline.
We shouldn't forget that radio remains a huge medium in the UK with 91% of adults tuning in every week, of whom 34 million listen to the commercial sector.
Our top advertisers certainly haven't – only three of the 20 biggest radio spenders didn't increase their radio spend in 2014.
The average increase across these advertisers was 37% with advertisers such as 02, British Gas, Vodafone, Heinz, Morrisons and BT, increasing their spend significantly (in the case of the latter by over 500%).
Unsurprisingly given this list sectors including political advertising and government advertising, retail and telecoms have all increased spend by a combined 121.09% bringing in extra £41m into our medium.
Radio also had a strong run-up to Christmas, with £127m spent in Q4 (+11.5%). Many advertisers are committing more to the medium than ever before. They have a better understanding of how it is working for them and how to use it to drive their overall business.
In October 2013 the RAB brought out its ground-breaking research Radio: The ROI Multiplier research. Its keys findings proved to advertisers that an average campaign ROI is higher when radio share increases.
The research, highlighted that the optimal level of radio investment is 20% of a total media plan, at which point overall campaign ROI is 8.5% higher.
Innovations like Radioplayer, the Digital Audio Exchange (DAX), individual station apps and targeted online advertising all mean that radio offers advertisers new opportunities to connect with consumers.
Over the past decade, consolidation has taken commercial radio from being a complex offering of many different stations to become a rich ecosystem consisting of defined local stations complemented by the mass reach of branded national networks which has helped facilitate the planning and buying process.
Armed with our most recent research, Audio Now, we are now reminding the advertising industry that commercial audio is bigger than ever and within this live radio remains the dominant audio format.
In a new era of audio commercial radio is complemented not threatened by the rise of on-demand services and the RAB is more determined than ever to drive consideration for audio as a long-term brand building tool so growth should continue this year and our industry intelligence suggest that this will most definitely be the case.
Lucy Barrett is client director of the RAB