Radio Show: Pittman, Field Talk Radio's Strengths

Moderator Stephanie Ruhle with iHM's Bob Pittman and Entercom's David Field

At Tuesday's opening session of the NAB, RAB Radio Show in Orlando iHeartMedia  Bob Pittman and Entercom CEO David Field argued that radio doesn’t have an effectiveness problem, it has an attribution issue.

“Radio works really well but we haven’t been able to demonstrate it as ostensibly and effectively as the Googles and Facebooks of the world,” Field said. “It’s like radio showed up to a gunfight with a knife.”

With radio delivering a 6-to-1 ROI according to a Nielsen Catalina Solutions study, far exceeding TV’s 2-to-1, Pittman argued that AM/FM is underpriced – and under-appreciated – by advertisers.

“We’re sitting on the most effective medium in the business,” he said. Meanwhile, some billion-dollar advertisers are revaluating their media spends after going big on digital and not seeing the expected sales bump. “Guess what? It was more measurable but not more effective,” Pittman said.

The advertising business is in the early stages of a pendulum shift back to traditional media, Field said, spurred in part by problems of brand safety and fraudulent data at digital media.

“As we get better at delivering targeted audiences at scale, and if as an industry we come together around common platforms and standards… there is a real opportunity for us to pull advertisers away.” Data is the lynchpin to a “fundamental shift in the conversation to enable radio to be able close that attribution gap right now,” Field said.

Pittman pointed to the return of consumer-packaged goods giant Procter & Gamble to radio as evidence of marketers going too far on digital, only to retrench, according to InsideRadio.

The session was moderated by MSNBC anchor & NBC News correspondent Stephanie Ruhle.