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The internet can provide limitless opportunities
to enhance radio. While most radio stations
streams their audio over the internet, and
most now include the playing song information,
very few use the rich media capabilities
of a browser to enhance it, and commercialise
it, with effective visualisation.
"The
internet is increasingly going mobile; mobile
phones have fantastic colour screens, connectivity
and can pick radio up either via FM, DAB
Digital Radio or streaming over 2.5 and
3G networks. The mobile phone displaced
the portable radio as the most ubiquitous
personal device a very long time ago, and
we probably haven't been as active as we
should have been to get back onto such a
widely owned device. Mobile internet is
predicted to grow hugely over the next year
from 1.2 billion to 2.3 billion page impressions
per month in the UK," he emphasised.
On the other hand, the arrival of DAB Digital
Radio has provided another opportunity for
visual accompaniment, and whilst DAB is
capable of supporting some very sophisticated
visualisation techniques, receivers only
implement text information, which is known
as DLS – Dynamic Label Segment.
"However, text is not the end of the
journey for radio entering visualisation.
It is just the beginning of a finely timed
dance between us, our listeners and device
manufacturers. Adding better displays to
radios will be expensive, and we need to
educate and inform our consumers on the
value of visuals so that they can make an
informed decision when buying a receiver,
and make a choice to pay more for a receiver
with a bigger screen knowing that it's going
to give them more real value. Once we've
moved listeners to better mono screens showing
text only, we're on the way to colour screens
showing graphics – but it's one step
at a time," Piggott cautioned.
So how do we persuade a listener to pay
more for their radio, or to choose a device
that has got radio with visuals over one
that doesn't? "Two things are true.
No amount of great technology will make
bad content better. And radio programmers
need a lot of persuading to divert any attention
or resource away from what comes out of
the loudspeaker. Radio works on very short-term
targets, with survey results every 4-12
weeks, so trying to get a programmer to
think about something that might need two-three
years to develop is a big ask," he
said.
While the demand for visual radio is there,
it needs to be commercialised too in order
to generate additional revenue. "One
starting point for understanding the value
of this proposition is to identify the value
in adjacent opportunities and extrapolate
that out," he said.
In the UK, The Outdoor Advertising Association
(OAA) and the Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB)
have co-operated to study the effectiveness
of a campaign that combines radio and outdoor
images. Their conclusions are that the two
media are entirely complimentary and that
a combination of the two accelerates the
learning of new brand messages.
"It also reconfirms that radio continues
to have the lowest ad-avoidance rating of
most mainstream media, with only 16 per
cent of radio listeners categorised as "Ad
avoiders," compared to 68 per cent
for newspapers and 44 per cent for TV.
Piggott said that studies showed that people
were more likely to look at a screen to
know about something they are interested
in. "So from an advertising point of
view, it appears that visual radio can be
positioned as extending the benefits of
combining radio with on-line and outdoor,
and benefit from the methodology used to
measure the delivery on outdoor video screens.
UK figures show that advertisers spent as
much on on-line advertising in 2005 as they
did on radio (£ 624 million); the
outdoor digital screen market isn't reported
separately yet, but is estimated to be worth
about £ 34.5 million in 2006,"
he said.
"We don't have time on our side. We
can't wait much longer. If the consumer
demand for visual accompaniment continues
to grow, and the traditional radio companies
don't provide it, someone else will,"
he added.
In conclusion, he said, "Media is going
through unprecedented change created by
technological innovation. Radio has the
opportunity to create a new visualised radio
product that listeners want and like and
use, but needs to create some technology
to make it happen. We haven't been very
good at that in the past, and there are
no guarantees that new entrants won't be
far better at it than incumbents. The lines
of battle in the radio business are broadening
and the smart will deploy some troops there
now."
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