As part of its "Attention Economy" research in partnership with Lumen, international agency Dentsu has measured attention in audio advertising for the first time in the ad industry.
For the study, attention was measured across various audio formats as part of three studies, in partnership with other companies, focused on podcasts, radio, and music streaming.
The results confirmed the growing popularity of audio advertising and how effective it has become, as well as that audio advertising garners significantly more attention compared to other ad platforms.
According to the study, 41% of audio ads generated correct brand recall, compared to the Dentsu norm of 38%.
"Dentsu has been pioneering attention research via our Attention Economy for more than five years, codifying, longer than anyone else, the value of engagement in video and display channels. Now, we’re thrilled to unlock new insights on attention in audio — a meaningful first for the industry," stated Doug Rozen, the CEO of Dentsu Media Americas.
The study also revealed the unique strengths of each format.
An unexpected insight into audio advertising within podcasts was that brand choice uplift was higher for host reads compared to a traditional format of audio ads within podcasts.
Similarly, for music streaming services brand recall was highest for ad-supported streaming music when played on Alexa-enabled devices.
Radio drove higher attentive seconds per thousand impressions in comparison to other digital, social, and TV benchmarks.
"This enables us to uniquely serve clients by proving the value of their audio, video, and display ads based on real engagement measures that drive growth," added Rozen, speaking on the insights from the study.
The audio advertising study is the latest to be released by Dentsu and Lumen as part of its "Attention Economy" project, launched in 2018.
Edited by Nikola Djuric
