Metro commercial radio advertising holds steady for 2023 financial year: CRA

Industry body Commercial & Audio (CRA) reports that metropolitan commercial radio stations recorded advertising revenue of $685.961 million for the financial year ended June 30, 2023.

The figures were steady with the previous year’s result of $685.995 million.

CRA CEO Ford Ennals says “Radio had a strong start to the financial year but the market has been softer in the second half in line with conditions in the broader macro-economic environment.”

“Growth in broadcast revenue ended flat with the previous year, but we are continuing to see very strong growth in digital audio advertising, which is not yet included in these figures.”

“Podcasts and streaming remain areas of opportunity for the industry, particularly with the enhanced data capability under the new Radio 360 audience measurement system launched last month. This shows commercial radio has a weekly radio streaming audience of 3.3 million listeners and growing.”

CRA will begin to include digital audio ad revenue figures in its metro radio revenue reports from the September quarter.

For the last financial year, Sydney was the strongest performing market, with ad revenue increasing by 2%to $205.460 million, followed by Melbourne, which grew by 1% over the previous period to $227.335 million.

Brisbane and Adelaide finished the year 2% lower to $104.352 million and $60.430 million respectively.

Perth declined by 3% to $88.384 million.

The industry ad revenue figures include agency and direct ad revenue and are compiled by media data analytics company Milton Data.

Radio ratings provider GfK released Metro Radio Survey 4 last week, only the second survey since the launch of Radio 360, which provides insights on radio streaming audiences for the first time.

CRA says the research showed commercial radio weekly audiences near record highs at 12.21 million people across the five metro markets, a gain of 220,000 listeners over the past year.

Nearly 27% of commercial radio listeners, or 3.29 million people, stream radio each week, for an average of four hours.

CRA plans to make further enhancements to the next stage of Radio 360, including with the integration of podcast listening data and the provision of special reports using data collected by the GfK MediaWatch.