The bosses of commercial radio in the UK last week addressed the advertising industry to tell them what the sector had planned for the future. Following lots of changes of ownership in British radio in the last year, there was quite a few new faces at the table - or at least new company names on their badges.
Dee Ford of Bauer Radio, Donnach O'Driscoll of Absolute Radio, Scott Taunton of UTV, Stuart Taylor of GMG Radio and Ashley Tabor and Richard Park of the now rather large Global Radio joined the boss of commercial radio trade body RadioCentre, Andrew Harrison, and Simon Redican of the Radio Advertising Bureau, to tell 150 advertisers just how exciting a time it is for commercial radio in the UK. They also revealed a £3 million 'advertiser partnership fund' which will help advertisers get more out of their radio advertising.
Andrew Harrison told delegates: "We now have a once in a lifetime opportunity as an industry to reinvigorate Commercial Radio. This is a new era for our industry - in the last year £1bn of private money has been invested into radio groups and this ownership change provides an ideal opportunity for re-evaluation and revitalising the medium for advertisers. Radio has been fantastically resilient during the growth of digital - it is still the second most consumed medium after TV and reaches younger audiences more cost effectively than any other medium. Now our industry is moving forward to make it more valuable to advertisers and collectively we wanted to spell out to our major customers what radio is able to offer their brands".
Simon Redican added: "Strategically, we need to make sure that our customers get the most from the medium and we can only do that together - the advertiser partnership fund is aimed at making sure we do just that. We're currently seeing transformatory investment in brands and content together with collective will from the groups to collaborate more which will without doubt benefit advertisers".