Audio Ads Have the Power to Move Your Audience
"Audio is one of the most intimate forms of media because you are constantly building your own images of the story in your mind and you’re creating your own production. And that of course, is something that you can never get with visual media." - Emma Rodero, Communications Professor, Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona
This intimacy of audio gives the medium a certain power unlike any other. In 2015, iHeartMedia partnered with Lightwave to conduct a study to determine the impact of audio on ad effectiveness where they discovered that "sound got the brain firing across-the-board showing both physical and emotional engagement."
And that's not all. They also compared memory encoding - the first step in creating a memory that can be recalled later - for audio ads against that of TV ads. Audio ads outperformed TV ads in seven of the eight tests they ran. At one point, the memory encoding for audio ads was 220% greater than for TV ads, demonstrating the superiority of audio when it comes to engagement and ad recall.
However, audio's power doesn't stop at engagement and ad recall. It also has the power to move your audience towards making a purchase. In another study conducted by iHeartMedia and Mediavest, consumers' media usage habits were analyzed. In particular, the study looked at the media the consumer was exposed to immediately before considering, deciding or making a purchase, finding "...the strongest correlation between media exposure and each of those actions was for audio and out-of-home. Significantly, there was a 90% or greater correlation between purchase consideration across categories and exposure to any audio or any out-of-home media in the half-hour prior, far exceeding the numbers for digital video (33%), print (53%) and television (55%)."
So, if you're looking for a medium that has the power to engage your audience, make them remember your ad, and eventually move them to make a purchase, it's time that you consider audio advertising.
