SCA launches two attribution products ‘Footsteps’ and ‘Soundcheck’

Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) is ramping up its push to prove the power of digital audio advertising with the launch of two new products.

SCA Footsteps tracks consumers’ movements after they’ve been exposed to an audio advertising campaign via SCA’s live radio steaming or SoundCloud. Their location data on their smartphone will be matched with that of tech provider Hyp to identify store or location visits across Australia.

SCA said Footsteps would help quantify the power of digital audio with tangible metrics to prove campaign ROI. It was recently trialled with a leading automotive group which used digital audio ads to drive in-store traffic prior to Father’s Day. SCA said the campaign measurement showed a 61% uplift in visitation compared to a control group who had not heard the audio ad.

The other product launching today is SCA Soundcheck, which will be housed within SCA’s research and insights division, SCA iQ.

SCA Soundcheck will use ad tracking and retargeting technology to identify listeners who heard an ad. These listeners will then be hit with a campaign study questionnaire, allowing comparison to a control group of internet users who have not heard the ad.

SCA said the control versus exposed research methodology provides comprehensive results to inform advertisers of overall campaign effectiveness, including increased consideration, ad recall and purchase intent.

Both new products can be used in conjunction with SCA Fanbase, a data-driven audience targeting product for digital audio campaigns that uses first-party data collected through SCA’s apps and websites to create specific audience segments as well as third-party providers.

SCA’s national head of radio sales, Nikki Rooke, said audiences are listening to digital audio more than evwer before, and it can drive consumer purchasing behaviour “like no other medium”.

“It is the personalised, one-on-one, intimate nature of the digital audio experience for listners that makes it so powerful,” she said. “Our launch of SCA Footsteps and SCA Soundcheck now bring the ability to accurately measure campaign effectiveness in real time, also helping to determine strategies for future campaigns.”

Head of streaming sales and operations at SCA, Jonathan Mandel, said the new attribution products have been created due to demand from brands, agencies and programmatic teams who require tangible ROI results.

“By coupling this attribution with data-driven audience targeting through SCA Fanbase, advertisers can now complete the digital audio consumer journey by providing attribution such as in-store footfall from SCA Footsteps and increased consideration and brand perception through SCA Soundcheck.”

Radio Today confirmed with SCA that the data is anonymised and that whilst there is a log-in option for the apps, it’s not mandatory.

In terms of SCA accessing people’s location data and how long after using the SCA app a consumer is tracked, SCA said: “Although many SCA App users have location services switched on to provide access to their closest station around the country, the users/listeners do not have to have location services turned on for this to work. The audio ads are appended with 1×1 impression tracking pixels which is then matched with Hyp’s cross-device location technology to measure the location footfall.”