TORONTO – According to recent neuroscience research conducted in Australia, when it comes to listener engagement, not much beats traffic reporting.
Capitalizing on that listener engagement to drive advertising sales and branding was the focus of Canadian Traffic Network presentations held recently for its clients in downtown Toronto and Vancouver.
CTN’s sister organization, the Australian Traffic Network (ATN), commissioned the neuro radio research study last year from Neuro-Insight, a Melbourne-based neuro-marketing company that uses its patented Steady-State Topography (SST) brain-scan technology to apply neuroscience methodologies to market research studies.
Participants in the radio research study wore a special helmet equipped with sensors that monitored their brain activity as they listened to 45 minutes of radio content. This particular study was a world first because the radio content was live, not pre-recorded, explained Kelly McIlwraith, ATN’s marketing and strategy director, who presented the study results in Toronto.
“The traffic is high interest content because we make a difference to people’s days. We’re assisting you to get to work, assisting you to get to a business meeting, assisting you to get the kids to school on time,” she said.
According to Neuro-Insight’s research, traffic reports achieve 28% greater engagement among radio listeners than the entire average listening experience, McIlwraith said. After traffic, news was number two in terms of engaging radio listeners’ interest, followed by sports and weather. McIlwraith declined to reveal deeper statistical information regarding listener engagement.
McIlwraith acknowledged during her presentation that ATN commissioned the neuro radio study to support its business model but regardless of that, the study is still a neat glimpse into how listeners’ brains work while they consume radio. CTN in Canada has a network of traffic reporters across the country who provide live traffic updates to local radio stations in major urban centres and in most instances, those same reporters deliver a live-read radio ad immediately following the traffic update.
In terms of the study’s methodology, the 58 participants (aged 18-55) were evenly split between male and female. They listened to 45 minutes of radio content from a variety of stations, both FM and AM, crossing all formats, McIlwraith said. The participants were not told by Neuro-Insight what the specific purpose of the study was, but one requirement to participate was the study subjects needed to have a driver’s licence, and they were asked to drive to the study location, McIlwraith said.
Although the number of participants (58) doesn’t sound like a very high number for a research study, that sample size provided more than enough data to analyze, McIlwraith said. “You actually only need 50 (participants) in neuro, the reason being that you get 12 million data points from every 30 seconds of audio listened to. Our consumers were there for 45 minutes of listening… it’s an awful lot of data, over a billions’ worth of data points,” she said.
Although the radio content was live, the participants’ listening experience was somewhat artificial, in the sense that the study was conducted while they were sitting in a room and not driving a car. “No one has actually developed a helmet that can do 12 million data points wirelessly yet,” McIlwraith said, adding the contextual relevance of being in a car while listening to the radio content could have altered the results, with interest in traffic reports potentially higher.
In an interview with Cartt.ca after the presentation, McIlwraith said even the use of a driving simulator during the study would have the potential to skew the results. On the one hand, participants could be swayed to think about traffic while listening to the radio content. Alternatively, the effect of distraction on the participants would add another element to the study, McIlwraith said. In the end, having the study conducted in a room provided a neutral ground without the contextual relevance being too high, thereby reducing bias in the results, she said.
McIlwraith’s main message to her clients was advertisers can use the data to optimize the level of radio listeners’ engagement immediately following traffic reports to help drive their brand messages and generate sales.
She recommended advertisers capitalize on the listener engagement momentum following a traffic update by mentioning a brand right away or asking a question to keep the listener engaged on a personal level. ATN’s and CTN’s 10-second live-read ads keep listeners engaged, by not breaking the momentum with a longer pre-recorded ad format, McIlwraith explained.
During her presentation, she also spent some time talking about other Neuro-Insight research into long-term memory encoding. Long-term memories are made during the peak moments of listening engagement, McIlwraith explained. The more engaging the content, the more it resonates with the listener, she said.
“It’s not easy to get through the doorway to memory. It’s not easy at all.”
