RAIN Summit Examines "Connected Dashboard"

Delivering Internet audio to the car is hard. Everyone on the "Dashboard Discussions" panel, which led off yesterday's RAIN Summit West in Las Vegas, agreed on that.

So far, implementations are all unique and different, and it's expensive to work with carmakers.

Amy Van Hook

Entercom Director of Digital Operations Amy Van Hook explained that's why her company is sticking with aggregations like TuneIn, or Entercom's mobile apps, to connect to cars for now. Chia-Lin Simmons, Aha by Harman VP/Marketing & Content, said it can cost a million dollars to get integrated into the car "head unit." Moderator Roger Lanctot of Strategy Analytics verified that automakers make hard to "scale" integrations.

But it's incredibly important to be in the car. Broadcasters can't walk away from this vital listening "theater," and newer audio sources need that audience to grow. jacAPPS president Paul Jacobs reminded the crowd that the car is both radio's number-one listening location, and carmakers are radio's number-one client.

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Erica Farber

RAB CEO/president Erica Farber's message at RAIN Summit West on Sunday: "The only way we can increase radio's share is to not take from each other, but from our actual competitors."

Farber gave the first keynote of our Summit event yesterday in Las Vegas.

TV, cable, magazines and newspapers, and pure-play Internet content is radio's real competition, including for local digital ad dollars, she stressed.

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