Radio Has Big Disconnect Between Perceived And Actual TSL

In February 2023, Advertiser Perceptions, the gold standard of advertiser and agency sentiment, surveyed 305 marketers and agencies to learn about their perception of the average American’s media habits. Media decision makers tend to believe their media habits are pretty much the same as everyone else’s. But how do Americans actually spend their time with media? Do perceptions match reality? Turning to Nielsen’s Total Audience Report, this week’s Cumulus Media | Westwood One Audio Active Group® blog compares actual U.S. time spent with devices and platforms versus perceived media use.

In their book 'How Not To Plan: 66 Ways to Screw It Up', Les Binet and Sarah Carter remind agencies and brands, “We’re marketing and communication people, we’re different from the majority. In the US and UK, we’re less than 1% of the population. We tend to be younger. … And we live in a handful of big cities. So it’s all too easy for us overlook how different our lifestyles and perceptions are from the people we talk to.”

Colin Kinsella, the former CEO of Havas Media North America concludes, “The biggest risk for AM/FM radio is the 26-year-old planner who lives in New York or Chicago and does not commute by car and does not listen to AM/FM radio and thus does not think anyone else listens to AM/FM radio.”

Key takeaways:

• Marketers and agencies underestimate American time spent with TV, smartphones, Internet-connected devices, and AM/FM radio.
• The greatest time spent disconnect between agency/advertiser perception and reality occurs with AM/FM radio. Marketers and agencies dramatically underestimate time spent with AM/FM radio.
• Marketers and agencies overestimate time spent with tablets and the Internet on a computer.
• To create informed planning decisions, marketers and agencies should take the “me” out of “media” and fully understand today’s actual media behaviors.