The Irish radio advertising market enjoyed revenues of €76.5 million for the January to June 2023period, up 3% on the same period last year. Revenue for quarter 1 (Jan – Mar’23) was up 6%, while quarter 2 (Apr-Jun ’23) was a little more challenging with revenue flat for this period.
The €76.5 million revenue was made up of €59.6 million of spot revenue (radio commercials) which was up 1% for the period. Branded content revenue(sponsorships, partnerships, content solutions) came to €13.6 million, up 5%,while digital audio revenue was €3.3 million for the period, up 40%. The digital audio revenue is made up of revenue from Irish radio operators, it does not include revenue from global audio players such as Spotify or Acast. Revenue from media agencies came to €52.8 million, up 2% while revenue coming directly from advertisers was €23.7 million, up 6%.
The largest category spender on radio for the January to June period was retail, followed by finance, government spending and the motor category. The motor category enjoyed very strong growth over the period, up 28% on the same period last year, there was also strong growth in the pharmaceutical category (+18%), travel and transport (+17%) and business to business (+11%). There was also very strong growth in the alcohol/alcohol free category which recorded an increase in spending on radio of 39%, albeit from a relatively small base. The largest decline in category spend over the period came from Government with spend on radio decreasing by 12% over the Jan to June ’23 period.
The JNLR listenership data confirms that radio enjoys huge audience numbers with 91% of Irish adults and 87% of 15-34 year olds listening to radio every week. Radio also delivers for advertisers according to recent research published by dentsu U.S. in partnership with Lumen Research, which measured attention to various audio formats. The research revealed that radio drove higher attentive seconds per thousand impressions compared to other digital, social and TV benchmarks. Radio shined as the most efficient of the audio formats studied, proving to be 10x more efficient when compared to the average online video ads measured through the research.
