In-Ear Ads Are Sanctuary For Maxed-Out Eyes: iHeartMedia’s Brokaw

If video killed the radio star, try telling that to Carter Brokaw.

As president of digital revenue strategy at US radio group iHeartMedia, Brokaw is charged with diversifying and capitalizing upon what, these days, is a spectrum of audio listening and ad opportunities far broader than "radio" itself.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Brokaw explains how new technology is helping him help advertisers to find the perfect audience across a plethora of platforms. Heightened emotion "I think there are a lot of people that are leaning into audio because they're realizing the intimacy of the messaging," Brokaw says.

"The personalization of a lot of that messaging (has) the ability to really connect with people through their ears and not their eyes, which seem to be very maxed out these days.

"Mindshare did a Neurolab study where they looked at brand stories and then a sort of an audio basis versus a visual basis.

The ones that are told audibly elicit three times more positive brand associations than the one that do it visually." https://twitter.com/radioconnects/status/1148580927624351745 The new audio footprint iHeartMedia has what Brokaw calls a "flywheel" of audio touchpoints: 850 broadcast radio stations that reach nine out of 10 Americans more than 220 million social followers almost 30 million unique listeners in podcasting What was Clear Channel became iHeartMedia in 2014, capitalizing on the iHeartRadio digital platform that launched in 2011.

IHeartRadio now boasts live radio streams, podcasts, music playlists, and "artist-radio" station.

Across iHeart's scale, the stats are impressive: 144 million registered users 250+ platforms and 2,000+ devices 2,500+ live stations 2.2 billion downloads Podcasts in focus Brokaw says emerging digital audio formats offer advertisers heightened consumer attention.

"What's unique about podcasting is that people are really not consuming other mediums or other media while they're listening to audio," he says.

"You have this really fertile environment for brands to trade on the currency between an audience and a host.

"In our particular case, we do 100% host-read ads.

So taking advantage of that sort of cachet has really brought to life a lot of the great storytelling that exists in audio.

"Across the board, audio seems to me to really tap the theatre of the mind in what has to be considered the most sophisticated production studio on earth, which is the mind." You are watching “Advertisers: Turn Up the Volume on Streaming Audio,” a Beet.TV leadership video series presented by Tru Optik.

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