Volatility in the radio ratings; Our retail media program revealed
Welcome to a midweek update from Unmade.
Below, we explore some unusual gyrations in yesterday’s radio ratings, and even further down, Seven’s share price hits another three-year low on the Unmade Index.
Reduced price earlybird tickets expire for our retail media conference REmade tonight. See the program and book tickets on the REmade website.
Full program for REmade announced
Cat McGinn, curator of REmade – Retail Media Unmade writes:
We can today announce the detailed program for the next edition of Unmade’s retail media conference REmade, which takes place in Sydney on October 11.
The program has been developed to offer insight and relevance to all marketers, no matter whether they are in the early stages of retail media transformation, or seeking to optimise their capabilities. The agenda also aims to broaden the scope of understanding of retail media networks, beyond the grocery category.
The lineup features industry-leading speakers who have been at the forefront of retail media innovation. They’ll delve into its potential, sharing success stories, the obstacles and challenges overcome in building a successful retail media network, best practices, and forecasting trends.
Our first REmade event brought the retail media community together. As speakers said, a rising tide lifts all boats. It’s an incredible opportunity to network, exchange ideas, and discover collaborative possibilities.
And we are also offering a reduced price via our earlybird tickets, which expires at the end of today.
Our program:
Amplifying the retail media opportunity
Newly formed premium retail media business David Jones Amplify and retail
media experts Sonder will discuss the journey they took to value, build and operationalise a retail media business from scratch. They will address the opportunities they uncovered, the challenges they faced and the solutions they found that worked best.
The panellists include:
Angus Frazer, Founding Partner, Sonder
Melissa Polglase, Head of Category and Retail Media, David Jones Amplify
Liz Ormando, Buying Manager, David Jones Amplify
Levelling up: lessons and learnings two years into omnichannel
Two years into the retail media adoption curve, learn how The Warehouse Group is optimising its retail media network to deliver a true omnichannel experience through partnerships, evolving practices around measurement and standardisation, and dialling up the impact of the connected network on and offline.
Bel Harper, Executive Group Director – Product Strategy at oOh!
Phil Bonanno, Client Partner – Meta
Troy Townsend, CEO, Zitcha
Alex Lawson, Head of Market Media, The Warehouse Group
How marketplaces are changing the game through network effects
The Europe-based Colin Lewis will return to the event to discuss how marketplaces are booming globally to become one of the most significant parts of global eCommerce. Two-thirds of global eCommerce transaction volume is concentrated within six players – and all are marketplaces.
etailers such as Carrefour, Walmart and Boots are all adding marketplace capability to deliver more choice and convenience, achieve scalable growth without increased inventory cost and most of all, create a flywheel for their retail media business.
During this keynote, Colin will offer insights and practical use cases about how Australian brands and retailers can tap into this phenomenon and why retail media is the flywheel that powers the success of marketplaces.
The Connected Customer
Retail media leaders share their approach to customer data and experience in the omnichannel journey in this panel discussion. The panellists will offer a deep dive into changing consumer behaviours, buyer expectations, and share engagement strategies across physical and digital touchpoints.
Hear how Uber and Booktopia use data to engage with audiences at different moments across the buying journey, developing omnichannel approaches built on deep understanding of the customer to deliver client outcomes.
Gai LeRoy, CEO of IAB, will reveal insights from new IAB research into customer trends and how to best harness this data to create seamless, integrated experiences for today’s connected consumers.
Panellists:
Adam Freedman – Head of Brand and Communications, Booktopia
Matthew McGinley – Senior Client Partner, CPG, Uber
Gai LeRoy, CEO, IAB
Meet the retail media leaders
Once again the heads of Australia’s biggest supermarket retail media businesses will share the same stage, joined by Brandcrush’s co-founder Teresa Aprile, to close the conference with predictions about the next phase of retail media evolution, their expectations for the sector and the challenges the industry will face over the economic downturn. They will also be joined by a marketer, to be confirmed shortly
Mike Tyquin, managing director of Woolworths’ Cartology;
Paul Brooks, general manager of Coles360;
Teresa Aprile, co-founder and GM, Brandcrush
Champagne and raised eyebrows in the new radio ratings
Tim Burrowes writes:
Yesterday’s radio ratings release delivered some of the most volatile numbers we’ve seen for a while. Some of the blips and bumps:
Gold FM’s Christian O’Connell lost his lead in Melbourne to Fox’s Fifi Box, Brendan ‘Fev’ Fevola and Nick Cody;
2GB’s Ray Hadley lost 26% of his average audience in Sydney in a single survey;
Kiis FM’s Kyle & Jackie O Show lost more than 100,000 from their cumulative listening number;
ABC Radio National’s Breakfast jumped from its second lowest audience on record to its best in a year;
Mix overtook Triple M for top station in Adelaide;
Nova rose to an astonishing 18.1% share of Perth listening
As is always the case when there’s a big swing, some of those who have lost out have raised questions about whether the issue is really a rapidly changing audience habit, or an issue with the methodology. Given the arrival of Radio 360, seeking to integrate streaming listening into the data, back in June, that’s a more reasonable question than usual.
Let’s start there….
Ray Hadley’s correct to be asking questions
Ray Hadley, who presents Sydney’s 9am to noon slot on Nine’s 2GB in Sydney, got the most headlines yesterday.
His listening share fell by 4.2 percentage points, from 17% to 12.8%. That was despite his cumulative audience – how many tune in at some point across the week – hardly moving, falling from 334,000 to 332,000. However, his average listening fell from 119,000 to 88,000, a drop of 26%.
Although he retained number one in his timeslot, Hadley told his listeners yesterday: “I know we have a new methodology, but someone better explain to us in the radio industry how every station in Sydney can go down by such a mammoth amount.
“Statistically you can’t go down by 4.2, and I’ve gone back through my records over 19 years, and I’ve never gone down by 4.2 … it’s ridiculous.”
I chuckled at that point that every station is going down at once. When it comes to share, everyone’s battling for the same pie. If one station loses share then another gains it. Silly Ray.
Except…
He’s right.
The GfK data doesn’t include the full 100% share – some listening doesn’t appear in the survey because the station’s owners haven’t paid to be there – for instance, Bill Caralis’s Super Radio Network, home of John Laws, or community radio.
To address Hadley’s complaint, in Survey 4, the published stations amounted to 84.8% of the share. In yesterday’s Survey 5 numbers, that dropped to 81.2%.
If there’s a decent theory for such a swift change, I’d love to hear it. (Paging Steve Allen…)
Not that 2GB’s owner Nine Radio can complain too loudly about this volatility through. Its Melbourne station saw a similarly hefty 3.1% percentage point increase in listening to 3AW Breakfast with Ross Stevenson and Russel Howcroft. That was off the back of a 14% jump in the number of average listeners from 146,000 to 166,000.
Every now and then you get a one-off survey with some anomalies, so the remarkable jumps in share should probably be treated that way, for this survey at least.
RN Breakfast recovers a little
Listening to ABC Radio National has picked up a little after hitting the doldrums.
This survey saw average audience lift from 49,000 to 57,000. That’s still an unacceptably low number, but an improvement nonetheless.
Speaking of the ABC, share of listening to its metro stations improved in four out of the five cities (with ABC Adelaide the one exception).
The Kyle & Jackie O rocketship recaptured by gravity
The cumulative numbers for Kyle Sandilands and Jackie Henderson on Kiis have defied reasonable explanation for the last year or so.
We’ve now had two surveys in a row where they’ve come back down, from the high of 921,000 to the new (still remarkably high) number of 755,000.
We may never get a reasonable explanation of what drove it so high in the first place.
The cume winners
Speaking of which, the Kyle & Jackie O show still tops the market for one city cume.
This is the top five nationally:
Kyle & Jackie O – Kiis FM ,Sydney – 755,000
Fifi, Fev & Nick – Fox FM, Melbourne – 675,000
Bogart Torelli – Smooth FM, Sydney – 589,000
Ben, Liam & Belle – Nova Melbourne – 581,000
Fitzy & Wippa & Kate Richie – Nova Sydney – 573,000
Seven’s freefall continues on the Unmade Index
The Unmade Index remained narrowly in the red yesterday, dropping 0.12% to land at 623.6 points. The Index monitors the daily performance of ASX-listed media and marketing stocks.
IVE Group and Seven West Media dragged the Index down with respective drops of 2.84% and 1.67% in share price. The last time Seven’s market capitalisation was this low was in December 2020.
Despite the overall encroachment into red territory, more stocks lifted rather than dropped in share price yesterday. Enero rose 6.21%, while Southern Cross Media lifted 1.34%.
Pureprofile saw a 6.90% increase in share price, while ARN Media lifted by 0.57%.
Coles this morning announced the return of the big red hand, confirming Unmade’s story of August 9. Read our analysis before it goes behind the paywall:
Time to leave you to your Wednesday. We’ll be back with an audio-led edition of Unmade tomorrow, in which Seja Al Zaidi talks to former ABC Insiders host Barrie Cassidy in an interview which may create a ripple or two.
If you’d like to support Unmade please consider becoming a paying member.
And don’t forget to got your ticket for REmade – Retail Media Unmade before the price goes up at the end of today.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher – Unmade
tim@unmade.media
