Industry News

Audacy Hosting Infinite Dial Webinar

Audacy is hosting a webinar tomorrow (4/3) to look at data from Edison Research’s latest edition of its Infinite Dial study. The company says, “The Infinite Dial has become a critical resource for understandingim consumer behavior and technology adoption across smart platforms. Marketers and media buyers turn to these insights for important media trends in key channels such as radio, streaming audio, podcasts, social media, and more. Audacy will host a webinar on April 3 with head of research & insights Idil Cakim and Edison Research president Larry Rosin, who will share key trends from The Infinite Dial 2024, including: Media consumption and device adoption, in-car listening habits, podcast trends among key demographic groups, and observations and advertiser insights. Find registration information here.

Industry News

Report: Smart Speaker Ownership Stabilizes

This week’s blog post from Cumulus Media | Westwood One Audio Active Group focuses on podcast consumer and smart speaker trends and is based on data from Edison Research’s “Share of Ear” Report from Q4 2022. Among the report’s eight key findings are: 1) Smart speaker ownership has stalled with the last growth spurt occurring Christmas 2020. From 2017 to 2019, smart speaker ownership soared from 7% to 33%. The pandemic froze purchases until Christmas 2020 when ownership jumped to 40% in Q1 2021. Since then, ownership has stalled with no post-Christmas “pop” in 2021 or 2022; 2) Smart speaker ownership rates are in the mid-40s for 13-54s but only 26% for those over the age of 55; 3) As smart speaker ownership flattens, the share of AM/FM radio streaming on smart speakers also stabilizes.The proportion of total U.S. AM/FM radio streaming occurring via the smart speaker has stabilized as device ownership growth has stalled. According to Triton Digital, since 2021, AM/FM radio streaming via smart speaker has stabilized, growing slightly from 23% to 26%; 4) Smart speakers are vital to U.S. AM/FM radio as they are now more likely to be the only “radio device” in the home. Edison’s 2022 Infinite Dial study revealed that 40% of smart speaker owners do not have a radio in their home, up from 28% in 2018; and 5) Aggressive promotion pays off as AM/FM radio is number one for smart speaker ad-supported audio shares. AM/FM radio stations are consistently number one in ad-supported audio shares on smart speaker devices. No wonder, as streaming now represents 20% of all time spent to AM/FM radio. See the complete blog post here.