Silver Award winning RadioGAUGE

The project has been a huge success; ‘RadioGAUGE’ has won a Silver Medal for the Best Research Initiative at the Media Week Awards (being beaten into second place only by our own Online Multiplier study).

Historically, advertisers would use the radio once and then not return, largely because of two factors; accountability and creativity.

With a ready availability of data such as page views and click-thru rates, online advertising has shifted advertisers’ expectations of accountability from individual media. This has had a knock-on effect on investment into all other non-TV media i.e. those not effectively measured by advertiser funded tracking studies. From a radio perspective, this was the major factor contributing to a 100% increase in “churn” away from radio between 2004 and 2007.

RadioGAUGE is our response. We want to provide EVERY radio advertiser with evidence of the impact of their radio advertising. Given the scope of the project, we’ve designed an efficient system that uses the latest technology to increase survey quality and reduce costs.

RadioGAUGE has shown new ways of identifying which parts of a commercial are really driving or retarding a campaign’s performance. We know of no other research team with the same ability to engage in positive debates with clients about creative strategy.

Our unique approach means we can show when things go wrong with a script and provide targeted advice on how to improve the creative for the next campaign.

The creative analysis is a combined effort of both RadioGAUGE and RAB, using the unique 5i’s framework to quantify creative effectiveness. Other lines of enquiry supplements these quantitative survey questions with our own creative engagement technology.

Despite the toughest market conditions in living history, the project’s success has led to a £35m revenue benefit for the UK’s Commercial Radio industry and returned £103 for every £1 invested in the research (ROI of a massive 103!).

The success of RadioGAUGE in driving national revenue led to the RadioGAUGE National model being adapted to cater for campaign measurement at a Regional level. ‘RadioGAUGE Regional’ was therefore born in 2009, and the number of advertisers tested continues to grow year on year.

RadioGAUGE International

RadioGAUGE is being adopted in other countries around the world: RadioGAUGE South Africa launched in May 2010, and we’re talking to other operators around the world.

If you want to know how this exciting venture can benefit your national radio industry, click here.