Radio Doesn’t Need A Trust Filter-Yet.

A reputation for trust is very hard earned.  And quickly lost.

Regardless of all the problems radio has competing for advertising dollars and attention, trust is not one of them.

Our listeners trust us because we care about them and try to deliver entertainment and information that improves their lives. And even our much maligned ads are far less offensive than any other form of advertising because  we try to make ads another part of the listening experience. Not a rude interruption.

Because our listeners trust us: our advertisers trust us. We may not have the sexiest channel in the advertising universe,  but it’s real and it’s trusted.

Radio has trust that other channels would kill for.

And if we’re not very careful – right now – we’re going to lose it.

The digital advertising explosion has seen lots of changes in a very short period of time. From simple adwords and Facebook likes, advertising technology is now supersonic: programmatic.

In the US programmatic platforms are big business.

They’re also big trouble. In double-digits.

These platforms are a haven for fraud.  A study by the AANA last December determined that bots cause 23% of all video impressions, 11% of display ads and would account for $US6.3 billion in losses in 2015.

In the worst cases fake ads can deliver viruses.

And now, programmatic has arrived in Australian radio.

Less than a month after US programmatic company Jelli declared that “radio is new frontier for programmatic” – a US programmatic company has sold its services to an Australian network.

Currently, the Australian radio industry has no fraud, quality inventory and an average error rate of 5% across the whole industry, (ARN’s is less than 1%.)

Hopefully it will stay that way.

In the US, the programmatic platforms don’t pretend they can prevent all the problems.

Instead, there’s a new industry to monitor advertising inventory and advertising platforms.  These companies are called trust filters.

Hopefully, Australian radio won’t ever need them.

About The Author:

Verity is a former radio journalist. She spent more than a decade in radio newsrooms around Australia and then retired into PR for accounting firms and organisations. In 2001 Verity helped her partner Dave Cox launch AudioNET – and she’s been stuck there ever since.