Clear Channel Radio announced its iheartradio mobile application is thriving, showing consistent growth in engagement. CC Radio revealed that its active, unique monthly audience across all of its digital properties now numbers 22 million, according to data from Omniture (see related story). The company also disclosed usage patterns for the full 12 months of 2008 and initial months of 2009.
In addition to industry-leading raw numbers, the company is showing strong gains in year-over-year audience growth.
Some of the company’s strongest gains are coming from its mobile platform. To date, more than two million unique users have downloaded the iheartradio application. Just recently, iheartradio spent 10 days as the #1 BlackBerry app and has remained in the top 20 since launch. For the iPhone and iPod Touch, the application consistently ranks in the top five among free music apps.
iheartradio’s user engagement is especially strong. According to data from Pinch Media (in a February 2009 study of more than 30 million downloads of free iPhone apps), engagement with the typical mobile application drops off precipitously within 30 days. Less than 5% of users who originally downloaded the app return to use it.
Clear Channel Radio is seeing exactly the opposite behavior with iheartradio. Some 80% of users have downloaded subsequent updates of the app from the iTunes App Store and a full 20% of those who have downloaded the app come back weekly.
In addition, iheartradio users are showing dramatically longer time spent with the app than the average user of mobile applications. A January 2009 study from Magid Associates pegged average time spent with all mobile apps at 39 minutes per week. iheartradio users listen an average of 99 minutes per week.
CC Radio saw the number of advertisers choosing its digital platforms grow by 23% in 2008, to some 100,000 advertisers. Through April 2009, the company is on track to grow that number by some 39% year over year.
The company also today officially launched a digital channel focused exclusively on the Obama White House. In just five minutes, listeners are now fully briefed on the latest developments from the Obama Administration.
Continually produced throughout the day, White House Brief broadcasts five-minute packages of exclusive interviews, schedule information, and other news about the President’s activities. The channel, available now at iheartradio.com and on mobile phones, is directed by former NBC News producer Berkley Wilson.
