Understanding the Radio Listener with Megan Lazovick of Edison Research, Lamar Johnson of NPM and Susan Leland of NPR

Understanding the different permutations of an audience – their behaviors and preferences - is pivotal to the success of any venture. That’s why NPR, in partnership with Edison Research, crafted a study designed to fully dimensionalize not only NPR’s audience specifically but the radio audience in general. The result is their recently released Radio: Live on Air and Everywhere which teases out six specific and unique radio audience segments, matching them to NPR, to AM/FM Radio listeners and even to Television.

Why Do the Study?

“We really wanted to take a fresh look at the radio platform and the role it plays in people’s lives, particularly to help media buyers,” explained Susan Leland, NPR's Associate Director of Audience Insights. In an increasingly digital world, it was important to prove out that radio is still very important. And it is.

The current state of radio is robust. Leland shared that, “Radio consistently has the largest reach of any media. It was 88% in the latest Nielsen data, just ahead of smartphone apps. It also counts for the largest share of audio listening and when in the car, radio counts for the majority of listening time.” In addition, Edison Research found that 63% of Americans listen to AM/FM radio each day and 89% listen each week.

For NPR in particular, this study comes at a momentous time. “This spring, NPR celebrated its 50th anniversary. We have a great legacy in the radio space,” explained Lamar Johnson, NPM Vice President, Marketing. “Part of that legacy involves having an understanding of the radio listenership and the audience. It is an ongoing objective for us,” he added.

Radio: Live on Air and Everywhere Methodology

NPR and Edison Research used three studies for this report. “First is share-of-ear which is a diary study of over 4,000 people age 14 and older that we conduct in the U.S. quarterly. We measure the amount of time people are spending with audio. That’s how we identified the growth in time spent with spoken word,” explained Megan Lazovick, Vice President, Edison Research who added, “We followed up on that share-of-ear information by conducting some in-depth interviews via zoom. Things that we learned from those in depth interviews were used to put together an additional survey … a national online survey of 1,000 monthly spoken word audio listeners, which is about 75% of the US population.”

Six Unique Radio Audience Segmentations

One of the major takeaways from this study is the clear delineation of the radio audience into six distinct and unique segmentations, each with their own preferences, demographic skew and behavioral patterns. “One of the interesting things about the six groups and the spectrum is that the more engaged group is, the more open they are to advertising,” stated Leland.

Radio Heads. These super fans essentially use radio for everything. They are more likely to be female under the age of 54 and over-index among African Americans. They listen to all formats on all platforms and spend more time with AM/FM than any other segment. Not only are they advertiser-friendly, they have the money to spend to purchase products and services because they have high employment, higher education and higher average income. Radio Heads represent 9% of all radio listeners.

Connection Seekers use radio as a way to connect and understand. They tend to be older women and are the second heaviest users of the medium. They gravitate to the spoken word, tend to listen at home and are also very advertiser-friendly. They represent 16% of all listeners.

Infomaniacs where listening is driven by news, skews male. They tend to listen in the morning, prefer the spoken word and gravitate to formats such as news, sports, personalities and talk. They index high for NPR listening and are open to advertising and sponsorships. They represent 18% of listeners.

Rhythm Rockers whose listening is driven by music, is heavily younger female, Latinx and of lower incomes. They are more likely to stream, but AM/FM is king in the car. They represent 27% of all listeners.

Laid-back Listeners who listen to radio in the background tend to be age 35+ who are radio-centric, preferring to listen on traditional platforms rather than streaming. More than half of this group listen to ads and prefer music over other formats. They are 17% of all radio listeners.

Habitualists listen to radio when it’s the only option available. They also skew 35+ and are not that interested in audio in general. Yet, more than half say that they listen to ads on radio and still spend three hours listening in an average week and would miss radio if it were no longer available. They prefer to listen on traditional platforms and not on streaming ones and their preferred format is music rather than the spoken word. They represent 13% of all listeners.

NPR Listener Segments

For NPR listeners specifically, “You will find them in every segment, but they are particularly likely to be Infomaniacs, which are news driven users, which makes a lot of sense, and they also tend to be pretty heavy listeners,” noted Leland. They're also more likely to be Radio Heads and Connection Seekers. “Our audience tends to be heavy listeners to radio. It keeps some listeners company throughout the day with the news and especially the conversations. It’s like having a friend in your house who's with you all day,” she added. “The thing the thing that most distinguishes the NPR listener on any platform is that they tend to be really interested in learning and have a sense of real civic engagement and responsibility.”

For Johnson, a notable takeaway from the study was, “the increase in listenership among African American Latino and female women listeners, particularly in the younger 13-34. It's important for us at NPR to attract more diverse and younger audiences. Those are two fairly big takeaways that were pretty eye opening for us.”

Open to Advertising

The heavier the listener, the more receptive they are to advertising but, according to Lazovick, all segments of radio listeners, even those who are less engaged, are open to advertising. “They are getting exposed to advertising. They (may not be) as engaged but they are still there they're still open to the messaging, just not as intensely as other segments. The more engaged a group is with radio, the more likely you can influence them with the advertising.”

She added that, “Most people believe that ads are a fair trade for their listening time. They understand the value that they're getting through radio in exchange for listening to a few ads.” When it comes to NPR, “We asked specific questions to NPR listeners and a final key finding is that NPR listeners are very open to sponsorship members’ messages.”

According to Leland, “We asked people on the survey about actions people have taken as a result of hearing advertising and we saw that the more engaged a listener is, more likely they are to say that they considered a product and purchased a product because of an ad they heard on radio.” Lazovick noted, “And because we know NPR listeners tend to be that more engaged listener, their numbers are higher in terms of those same questions about gathering information about a company product or service, purchasing things, recommending products. They are more likely to have done that than the average AM/FM radio listener. The numbers are high on both sides, but NPR listeners are a bit higher.” Local advertising in particular can benefit from a radio presence.

Radio Compared to Television

When it comes to attracting a focused consumer, advertisers are strongly advised to turn to radio. Even compared to television, radio shows superiority in terms of focusing attention. “When we watch TV, most people these days are doing it while they're distracted with another device. They may be watching streaming that doesn't have any advertising and they may be watching broadcast and avoiding the ads by switching to their smartphone. But when people listen to NPR content, they really are engaged,” stated Leland who added, “We find that people are much less likely to multitask when they're listening to our content in part because they are less likely to multitask with other media. They're going to be multitasking other ways - doing chores, cooking dinner, going for a walk - but they're not going to be trying to listen to a conversation on Fresh Air and watch TV at same time. You need to give you the whole attention of your brain.”

Pandemic Impact

While broadcast radio declined early in the pandemic when lifestyles were disrupted, it has been on the upswing and getting back to normal now. “While we saw people shifting away from broadcast radio, we also saw more people tuning into station streams,” Leland noted. In fact, NPR’s listener hours on streams were up from last year. But, as Leland explained, as Americans get back into their cars and commute, there will be a strong return to AM/FM listenership.

Next Steps

This is the first study of its kind for NPR but not the last. “This study was really enlightening to us in terms of understanding the segments and the behaviors. We'll be talking further about what we might do in this lane in the future,” Johnson concluded.

National Public Media Leads Spoken Word Audio Innovation for Marketers.

When you have a company as diverse and expansive as NPR, the competitive marketplace can range from legacy radio to podcasting start-ups and news companies such as newpapers that have shifted online. 

For Erica Osher, National Public Media Vice President of Sponsorship Products, this offers sponsors a compelling proposition. “NPR is obviously a leader in audio,” she explained, “We still have our very strong radio presence. But we’ve been on the path, in the past decade, with the growth of podcasting and other digital platforms and explorations on new emerging technologies.”

NPR’s Path to Expansion

For Osher, the Spoken Word Audio Report results confirm the success of NPR’s efforts to, “explore how NPR can continue to reach new audiences, younger audiences, while still servicing and providing a great content experience for the people who have always loved NPR and have been here from the beginning. It’s a balance but it is something that we are very excited about.” This has led to great experimentation, “seeing what sticks and then see about how to make it sustainable,” she stated. “I think NPR has come a long way in the last decade or so in achieving that.”

All of this focus on the listener experience across the array of present and future platforms makes NPR a must-have for sponsors. Osher noted that, “We were ahead of the game when it came to brand safety and trust, protecting the user experience, having an authenticity and respect for your audience - All of those things that are really on trend. The way we do sponsorship on NPR really lends itself to conveying that trust to our sponsors and in their messaging as well. And that, beyond anything, is our biggest value proposition.”

But it is not just the environment that provides value. She explained that, “We have also developed some interesting, different products,” in areas of programming and research. “As NPR has grown and distributed to more platforms, we have iterated and grown more and more new products and evolved with the technology to offer custom audios, sponsorship experiences that really invest in storytelling and branding, but also more data tools and attribution technologies and better targeting.” There is also the effort to, “craft the way we deliver and create those sponsorship messages so that they are resonant on whatever platform they are on and whatever audience is engaging on it.”

Sponsorship Opportunities

For those marketers who seek the advantages of NPR’s content, audience and measurement tools, there are a myriad of opportunities for sponsorship. “It really depends on what your campaign needs,” she began, “and that is what I like best about this. When we talk to clients, the first thing we ask is ‘what are you trying to achieve in your campaign, who are you trying to reach and how are you measuring success?’ You have to understand that before you can come up with a media plan and suggest creative options.”

From a more direct sales brand which may gravitate to a digital platform to a brand seeking scale with audience targeting with less focus on storytelling or a branding campaign with a social responsibility message that seeks to engage via audio with a deeper user experience, all options are available. “What we have tried to do is to create that range,” she stated. “And to make products that work no matter what the brand is looking to achieve for their campaign and then, because of the breath of our platform and the breath and diversity of our audience, it puts us into a really good position to be able to craft the plan and to target that audience to create the right assets to go with that brand.”

Arguably one of the more compelling value propositions with NPR is lack of clutter. “We’ve always had a very low sponsorship load which benefits the user experience, it sticks with the aesthetic and mission of NPR and it also offers sponsors more value because there is less distraction,” she explained.

The Audience is Key

Respect for the audience, gleaned through careful research, gives NPR a clear brand message opportunity for marketers. “From my perspective, it really comes to what the audience is most interested in and crafting the right creative to fit the audiences’ interests. I think the one common denominator across all of our platforms for our audiences is that they want it to be authentic. They’re curious minded so they want to be informed and they don’t want it to be overly promotional. They want things based in fact rather than huge claims,” she concluded.    

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

 

NPR One Personalized Radio. Interview with Thomas Hjelm of NPR

Thomas Hjelm is a digital media veteran with 21 years of experience spanning such corporations as NBCU (both in their Entertainment group, where he was a founding members of the first interactive media team, and the Local News division), AOL, LivePlanet and New York Public Radio. 

He joined NPR in April as the organization’s Chief Digital Officer –a role which draws on his background in digital strategy and operations, audience development and marketing, business and content development, writing and producing, product and technology.

I spoke with Hjelm about his new role at NPR, what he calls the ‘genius' of the public media system, innovation within the NPR network and NPR One, the personalized listening app which has seen +124% year on year growth in app users and is providing important insights into listener behavior.

Charlene Weisler: What is your current role at NPR?

Thomas Hjelm: I’m responsible for defining and executing NPR’s strategies for innovation and growth across current and emerging digital platforms. I also work with our many partners across public radio to develop collective, system wide strategies for building platforms, audiences and value. I manage a few different divisions at NPR that work toward these goals. In Washington, we have a large team of digital strategists, product managers, developers and technologists, producers, program managers and analysts who build and support the core platforms of NPR.org, NPR One and other properties, as well as cultivate partnerships with third-party platforms and distribution channels. In Boston, we have another unit supporting a suite of products and services that are made available to more than 200 NPR member stations. And then across NPR we have a number of other digital specialists in a variety of functions, starting with news, but also including social media, audience development, and revenue. Digital is a department, in other words, but more importantly it’s an organizational concern, one that’s central to every part of NPR and the public radio system as a whole.

Charlene Weisler: Public Radio is a collection of fairly independent stations. How do you help maximize collective efforts?

Thomas Hjelm: That’s true. As a system, public radio is quite decentralized, even diffuse. There are 264 NPR member stations out there, all of them under their own management and marching to their own strategic drum. And that is part of the genius of public radio. Stations in huge markets and small markets and in-between markets have their own voices and identities. As local institutions, they have a direct and intimate connection with their listeners, and they reflect those communities back to themselves in ways no other media organizations can.

Being a distributed network can also bring advantages in digital terms: when I visit stations (I’m talking to you from Madison, where I just spent a day meeting the team at Wisconsin Public Radio), I’m so impressed by the innovation and creativity of these shops, and the great work they do in digital journalism, audience engagement, even product design, and almost always on very lean budgets. On the other hand, there’s something to be said for a collective network strategy. If everyone is doing their own digital thing, inevitably there’s redundancy, inefficiency and lost value, to say nothing of a fragmentation of the audience. So how do I handle that? Well, I’m still just a few months into the job, but in an effort to find common ground my first task has been to define and socialize a common value chain that links all of us across the system. It’s simple: we’re all in the business of growing the audience, knowing and understanding the audience, engaging the audience and ultimately monetizing the audience through membership and sponsorship. This narrative applies to NPR, it applies to New York Public Radio, to Vermont and Abilene, but above all it applies to the network as a whole. So if we can all get behind that, it begins to clarify our respective links in the big value chain, the roles we play in relation to  each other, the investments we make and the priorities we set. It’s a first step, and obviously those are very broad terms, but it’s critical if we’re going to, as you say, maximize our collective efforts. 

Charlene Weisler: How has digital evolved since you first started 21 years ago?

Thomas Hjelm: My career has been spent working for so-called legacy media companies that have decided, in one way or another, to transform themselves. When I started, no one knew just what digital media was or would become, but people who took a long view of things saw that it was worth experimenting with. I was at NBC at the time, and we were given permission to create an “online network” of original content. It was a lot of fun, though it certainly didn’t produce much money or many viewers. Today, it is a real business, with a real audience, and the technology has caught up with our creative ambitions. And digital departments are no longer just the guys in shorts sitting in the corner. Digital is woven through every modern media company. I often say my job is to make my job obsolete. We don’t have a Chief Radio Officer here, why a Chief Digital Officer? I’m still fighting that fight, but I’m getting there.

Charlene Weisler: Tell me about NPR One.

Tom Hjelm: NPR One is a smart phone app that delivers audio content from NPR and most member stations and public radio producers in a form that’s personalized, based on the user’s listening tastes, interests and location. It’s an experiment in making our content available in ways that map to the changing behaviors of listeners – especially younger listeners. Yet in other ways it builds on the standing model, format, even business model of public radio. It’s geo-targeted, so when you download the app, it will call up an instance of the local member station. So in New York, you get a WNYC-branded version of NPR One. You get content produced by WNYC alongside NPR content, and you can pledge your membership support to WNYC there, too. There’s also a mix of sponsorship inventory – some sold by NPR and some available to the member station’s local sales team. It’s like radio then – only using algorithms (plus some editorial controls) to tailor the audio experience to the individual. If you tend to skip certain content, over time it will deliver less of that; and if you like certain types of content, you’ll gradually get more of it. And the more successful we are in engaging the listener through this “personalized radio,” the more we learn about them so it becomes a powerful data and engagement tool.

Charlene Weisler: What have the results been so far for NPR One?

Thomas Hjelm: The retention, satisfaction and demographic numbers are all very encouraging. Thirty percent of users come back to use it within a week. That rate is far greater than is typical for an app. The satisfaction score is 4 out of 5 based on our surveys. Best of all, the basic demographic skews younger than traditional radio, with18- to 34-year-olds making up a third of the audience -- and they’re as affluent and educated as our current NPR audience. It’s a big step toward taking the enduring value proposition of public radio and making it available in new ways for new listeners.

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com