This guest column is contributed by Larry Rosin, President of Edison Research. It was first published on The Infinite Dial blog.
Imagine you are a national advertiser and you need to get a message out TODAY. In one day. To as many people as possible.
Well, if you want to use audio, no matter what broad age group you are targeting, Broadcast will get you the most people by far (the only age group that is close is 13-17s). Fully 75% of respondents in our Fall 2014 Share of Ear study recorded at least some listening to AM/FM Radio in their one-day listening diary. (Note — this is for reach. Previously I reported on time spent with forms of audio with regard to teens only).
Even among 13-24 year-olds, broadcast provides the most daily reach by a large margin. But one can see how this is changing. While broadcast reaches 62% of 13-24s in a day, Pandora all by itself reaches 23% (or put another way — Pandora has more than one-third the reach of Broadcast all by itself). Fast-growing Spotify — which is increasingly being consumed on its ad-supported tier — reaches 14% of 13-24s.
The classic radio “money demo” of 25-54s sees almost 80% listening to Broadcast Radio each day — no doubt in part because most radio stations target this group. Pandora now reaches more than one-in-six of all 25-54s itself as well.