MEDIA advertising planners observe that at its worst, the advertising spend for radio stays constant. “Radio adspend is strong today and has not declined but remained steady at its worst. We live in a tight economic era today and nobody is willing to waste even RM1. Radio provides clients with an affordable medium and it is good value for money,” says Andreas Vogiatzakis, CEO of Havas Media Group Malaysia.

"We do witness radio stations coming in and out but that, to me, doesn’t demonstrate the inability of the medium to connect and be successful … but rather demonstrates the inability of operators to provide value to the audience and connect with them,” he adds. 

Citing Business FM (BFM) as an example, Vogiatzakis says everyone was very sceptical when the station first started but over time, it has managed to bring about a paradigm shift to create a new perception and affinity for radio.

“If you look at the trajectory of BFM, when it started eight years ago, advertisers were all sceptical, but today, it is a popular choice with clients. Of course, a campaign also depends on the target audience and the message the client wants to put out,” he says.

Meanwhile,  IPG Mediabrands CEO for Malaysia Bala Pomaleh observes that media consumption trends over the last 10 years have changed for some media and remained constant for others.

 “TV viewing, for example, has dropped from 80% to about 70% now on a daily basis. Print, according to Nielsen, remains constant at just below 60% on a daily readership basis. These, however, are aggregated consumption numbers of all stations and titles within these media. Radio remains the highest consumed media at over 90%, though individual channel penetration is much lower. Online penetration, according to Nielsen, is just over 20%, far lower than the MCMC (Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission) report, which is closer to 80%,” he notes.

Radio, Pomaleh says, has maintained its unique strength of being a media that is highly cost efficient.

“The entry level to do a radio campaign is far lower than for most other media.  Radio station operations like Astro Radio and Media Prima Radio Network have created strong ecosystems around the media to offer various complementary services such as ad recording, activation and promotion to entice advertisers. When market conditions are tough, radio does extremely well. The limitation of radio as a media is the creativity of the messaging,” he adds.

The media platform of choice very much depends on the advertisers and their objectives, explains Pomaleh.

“Every platform has its strengths and weaknesses. What is important is not to use any platform in a boring or traditional way. Generally, advertisers choose platforms that enable them to engage with their target audience in the most cost-effective and efficient manner,” he says.

Fast and furious shift to digital adspend

Pomaleh says IPG Mediabrands is forecasting digital spend in Malaysia this year to be 14.5%.

“Globally, digital already accounts for 36%, almost on a par with TV. In fact, we expect digital to overtake TV next year to become the leading media option for advertisers. Even in Malaysia, the level of digital advertising spend varies by categories, with telcos, travel, automotive, e-commerce retailers and the banking sector taking the lead. Even the traditional FMCG advertisers are fast catching up,” he says.

Radio players acknowledge this inevitable and fast approaching ad spending shift.

This is why they are adding digital elements to their pitches to clients today, says Media Prima Bhd Radio CEO Seelan Paul.

“This gives us an opportunity to tap into the client’s digital budget, which is growing. For Media Prima radio, what we are telling the client is, use your digital budget with us, mainly because we believe we have a very strong digital community, and radio has that strong emotional engagement with listeners where they want to follow a certain radio station.

“For example, if you look our brand Hot FM, it has three million Facebook people (users) on it, almost a million on Instagram and 1.5 million on Twitter. So, we have this ready digital community there,” he says.

BFM CEO Malek Ali says true digital monetising opportunities are already in place with streaming and podcast ad serving technology. “It is possible today to choose programmes to narrowcast your ad, in both audio and visual forms, to reach specific BFM podcast listeners,” he notes.

“We went straight into the digital space when we started eight years ago, podcasting our first interview on the same day as our first live broadcast in September 2008." 

Seelan says Media Prima’s radio business started to evolve and market themselves differently to capture the digital advertising wave more aggressively three years ago.  

“A few years ago, all we did was upload pictures or say don’t forget to listen to us and such. But now, we develop a lot of videos for our content and for clients. We also use our radio DJs as market influencers in the digital space,” he says. Media Prima Radio Network also has an exclusive partnership with Spotify where it is able to access data from the global music streaming provider.

Moving forward, Seelan says they (the radio operations) want to leverage digital as much as possible. “Next year, we are looking at a few more pillars, including the rebirth of podcast, maximising our IP and leveraging e-commerce.” 

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