ARN now reaches more than eight million Aussies across the country via 135 stations

ARN is integrating their regional offering to give advertisers even more opportunities to create connections, with access to more than eight million Australians each week.

In January, ARN completed their acquisition of Grant Broadcasters, the largest regional radio operator in the country, which now brings ARN’s total stable of owned and represented brands to 135 stations across 71 markets. 

Over the last few months, ARN has worked alongside Grant Broadcasters to align the businesses.

Ciaran Davis, ARN’s CEO, says, “We knew we had bought a great regional radio business, so our priority has been to ensure that these operations continued to run smoothly. Our focus has been on team alignment and creating opportunities for our commercial partners that deliver national scale in a meaningful way.”  

More than 100 breakfast teams produce local content daily, further amplified through the continued innovative ethos that has served the metro business so well.

Davis continues, “We’ve heard from some major media buyers that regional radio has often been a ‘tick box’ exercise for advertisers, but we believe it plays a vital role in connecting with the communities it serves, and we want to give advertisers the benefit of unlocking that connection.”

“The untapped potential of regional radio is significant, justified by the sheer volume of people that it reaches. We look forward to being a part of what we think is an important shift in ad spend for companies small and large alike.”

In the initial months as a truly national radio broadcaster, ARN has been developing the capability to implement mass reaching commercial schedules across the nation and products that allow advertisers to take advantage of the power of talent via integrated ideas and its world-first Dynamic Audio offering, which brings the personalisation of digital to the scale of broadcast radio.

This has been underpinned by the rapid expansion of ARN’s iHeartRadio. All stations are now available on the digital audio platform, allowing regional audiences to listen to their favourite local shows wherever they are and on the device of their choosing.

On the impact of the network extension, Davis says, “We have already seen rapid uptake of the iHeartRadio app by regional audiences while listening on site has also exponentially grown.”

“It’s our job now to retain those audiences and grow their audio consumption with the plethora of content we deliver through the platform. We’re extremely happy with the early results, as it means we can immediately offer advertisers the benefits of broadcast and digital reach together.”

The combined power of broadcast and digital audio makes ARN one of Australia’s highest reaching media vendors, giving its commercial partners the ability to access more than a third of Australian consumers in one transaction.