Emotional bond to radio ads strong
among African-Americans, Hispanics
A look into the multicultural findings of Personal Relevance Two: Radio's Receptive Ad Environment reveals that African-Americans and Hispanics have exceptionally high receptivity to ads on the radio compared to other media. It's the fourth study from the Radio Ad Effectiveness Lab (RAEL) and the first to examine emotional connections, ad relevance, and ad acceptance of media across race and ethnicity.
The study confirms: (1) Radio's receptive ad environment is especially strong among African-Americans and Hispanics (especially Spanish-dominant Hispanics); and (2) African-American and Hispanic populations show some additional, unique emotional connections with their radio stations, indicating strong lifestyle bonds with formats targeting those populations.
Personal Relevance Two identifies ad receptivity by closely examining emotional connections, ad relevance, and ad acceptance across four media: radio, the Internet, TV, and Newspapers. While the basic finding that radio listeners appear to be especially receptive to the advertising they hear on the medium was generally true across all ages, genders, race/ethnic groups, and radio formats, that conclusion was especially true for African-Americans and Hispanics.
Among the findings, for example, African-Americans were even more likely than other groups to say that radio is the medium most likely to "make you relax" and "comfort you." African-Americans and Hispanics strongly associated radio with the statement "helps me overcome hardships," a characteristic that was less associated with radio for the general population.
The new study also showed that African-Americans and Spanish-dominant Hispanics hear particular "relevance" in the commercials on their radio stations. Among Spanish-dominant Hispanics, 40% said that radio advertisers "care about reaching you personally," and 33% of Blacks said the same thing -- both numbers were significantly higher than for other listeners. Both groups were also more likely to say that radio ads "reach the intended people," one of RAEL's key indicators that listeners expect ads to be relevant to them.
African-Americans and Spanish-dominant Hispanics were also more likely to associate Radio ads with "honesty" and "fun." Thee study took a close look at how well advertising is accepted across a variety of media, and radio ads were generally much better accepted than those on TV or the Internet. This pattern also held for African-Americans, where both TV and Internet ads were seen as being much more likely to "be repeated too often" and to "appear at inconvenient moments" compared to radio.
For Hispanics, TV and Internet ads were both much more likely to be seen as "getting in the way of enjoying" the media and as "appearing at inconvenient moments" compared to radio.
Over half of African-Americans perceived TV ads as being repeated too often, while 25% fewer said that about radio. And for Hispanics, 48% said TV ads "get in the way of enjoying" television and 21% fewer said that about radio.
RAEL also observed that the Urban radio format audience exhibited some exceptional advertising perceptions. Significantly more Urban listeners said that Radio ads were "interesting and engaging" compared to other formats, and more Urban listeners also said that radio ads are likely to "get you to seek more information." Urban listeners were also less likely to say that radio ads "get in the way of" enjoying radio. These were distinctive advertising strengths for the Urban format.
