Keys to a Successful Streaming Strategy

Bill Freund

In 1990, I was a wet behind the ears account executive at the Katz Radio Group, and received a call from a media planner who was excited to inform me that his agency had just won the Prodigy account.  I had no Idea what Prodigy was, or what he meant when he said that it was an “online” account. 

He continued to explain that Prodigy was a joint venture between IBM and Sears and it was a service which offered its subscribers access to a broad range of features through a computer and a phone line. His idea was to use radio as the primary medium for a national launch by setting up stations with free Prodigy services in-studio enabling DJ’s to utilize and discuss it live.

Like any good rep at the time, I took the idea and ran with it. I called GMs, GSMs and NSMs at station after station and I was shocked and surprised that nearly all of them turned down the promotion. Little did I know what this experience would foretell about radio’s future willingness to adapt to new technology?  Fast-forward 17 years, I am now a partner at Triton Media Group responsible for affiliating our suite of digital convergence applications, and these conversations are still all too real.    

One of the platforms I am specifically responsible for is our Content Distribution Network (CDN) STREAM THE WORLD.  As I speak with GMs, PDs and Group Managers, I realize that many still view streaming their broadcast over the Internet as a threat, an expense or a breakeven proposition.  The reality is that streaming is a great opportunity and a necessity for radio!

Platform Superiority

Streaming enables a level of interactivity that cannot be delivered over the air. With the right streaming and ad serving solution you can now deliver video and display ads along with your audio messaging.  Your client’s in-stream message can be synchronized with leader boards, video pre-rolls and banner ads on your media player or webpage. These visual ads can have click through links that allow listeners to directly connect and respond to your advertiser’s message giving your station the measured credit for listener response.

 A variety of real time data can be delivered to the streaming player providing an experience that is far more engaging than simply listening over the air. Data like song title, artist, year recorded and original album artwork are all very standard. Several companies now allow the real time delivery of lyrics, artist pictures and bios and enable a variety of e-commerce opportunities right from the player. You can deliver an audio stream and add a video stream along with it. At a very reasonable cost you can enable a studio webcam with a three-way chat through the media player.

At the very minimum streaming gives radio stations a new prime daypart and revenue channel to go to market with. In-office and at-home streaming is and will be a growth driver for radio. As we move forward listening via streaming can only grow. Public Wi-Fi and IP availability in car is becoming a reality with Chrysler announcing on June 25th that it will make wireless Internet an option for all 2009 models. Soon radio’s sacred and exclusive in car listening audience will have access to the web. Stations must be able stream their content and ads to vehicles delivering audio, video, display and links your station and it advertisers. 

With Streaming Radio’s Audience Engagement Increases

For radio to be a growth medium again it has to deliver deeper engagement with the audience. Streaming from the home, office, mobile handsets, and soon the car will increase the frequency of engagement opportunities for radio. However, the quality of the experience is critical; thus, the media player itself needs to provide an engaging experience. Make sure you are offering a rich experience through the player. Media players are now being created that give your listeners the ability to not only listen to your station, but, see the host live on air through a video box on the player, email/chat with the host and/or other listeners on line, upload and share videos and pictures and create personal pages and friend groups. You may also integrate on demand content into the player, allowing the audience to access a wide variety of archived content as well as UGC features and promotions.  In addition these players can be adapted to become embeddable widgets that live on the listener’s Google, MSN, Facebook and MySpace homepage allowing your content to be distributed virally.

Streaming Delivers Real Time Measurement and Data

Terrestrial radio is currently struggling with PPM to create a better measurement platform. With streaming, real time impression data already exists.  When connected with the right CDN and measurement solution, you can measure every listener’s actual connection to your station’s internet broadcast.  By reading IP addresses, you can collect up to the minute data on Unique Visitors or (CUME), Total Listening Hours or (TSL), Average number of concurrent listeners or (AQH). But, most importantly the ad impressions are delivered one to one to each users IP address. These are not estimates, but actual real time impression data, the same type that Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo are using to conquer the world. By utilizing the data gathered by companies like Ando Media, you will have critically important information about your listener and ad inventory never before available from terrestrial broadcasting.

The advertising world is obsessed with accountability. Selling estimates is old school and not what these marketers are looking for. Real time data and measurement offer a huge advantage.

Keys To Success With Streaming

1) Create a rich yet simple to use engagement experience for the listener. 

2) Invest in a very high engagement media player with great functionality and inventory positions. These kinds of features will keep the player open longer and allow you to sell more inventory in and around the player. 

3) Promote your streaming experience on-air constantly on your own station. Additionally promote your station stream(s) on other sites such as iTunes, RadioTime.com, WindowsMedia.com, Shoutcast.com, RadioTower.com and other streaming outlets.  Take advantage of other content destinations that are willing to promote your stream and provide a link, just as CBS Radio is doing in its partnership with AOL Music.

4) Treat your stream(s) as a separate highly powered station offering. Never bonus and give them away as added value.  Once you do that you will never create value for it.  If you are just starting out, select your most adaptable forward thinking sales people to be “privileged” to sell streaming and digital assets.

5) Use all of your digital assets to wrap the advertiser into the listener’s engagement: In-Stream, Pre-Roll, Display, Click-Throughs, Loyalty Points, Media Player Sponsorship. Tie it back to the terrestrial sale with a common theme and strategy to surround and engage the consumer for your advertiser.  Impressions are important in digital sales, but, equally so is the engagement and creating the first click or call to action for the advertiser.

6) Set separate and specific digital budget goals, then compensate your sales people with higher incentives for selling streaming, pre-roll and all of your digital assets.

7) Senior management must be fully committed and bought in to the streaming and digital sales initiatives. Sales people can smell the “here’s something new to sell’” pitch coming a mile away. Senior management must take a leadership role in the initiative and communicate that this is an evolutionary commitment its leadership are making to insure the growth and relevance of the station.

8) Stay the course. Recognize it is a long process, and that radio operators should have started 10 years ago. Stay committed to you digital strategy; invest in technology and sales people even through a bad quarter or year.

By Bill Freund-EVP Triton Media  bfreund@tritonmktg.com  or give Bill a call 310-575-9700