3-4-2012
In the March 26th issue of Radio Ink magazine, we interviewed the Director of Media and Digital Marketing for La Quinta Inn, Amy Bartle (pictured). Bartle has been having tremendous success advertising on ESPN radio and in our interview she details why. She also gave us her general thoughts about the radio industry. One of the biggest challenges, she says, is understanding the importance of allowing the advertiser message to stand out. With stopsets that are way too long, on most stations, that is nearly impossible.
Here is an excerpt from our interview with Bartle. "The most difficult thing about radio is in general is that the ad pods have gotten so long and so cluttered that break through and message retention is darn near impossible. That is one of the key reasons that we are with ESPN because we can stay within specific personalities and programs and structure ourselves for that. I think with the broader radio landscape, it's really the ability for an advertiser to feel comfortable that their message is heard and retained. Being in the middle of a ten-spot ad pod isn't it."
On the topic of radio's inability to provide real listening numbers on the digital side, Bartle says when she hears from stations about digital, a lot of it is added value pitches. "As an advertiser it is not a problem right now because I know I'm getting some value added. It's more a problem for the radio stations because it's darn hard for them to charge me for it. But the reason I think it is not a problem yet is your (online) audiences are still smaller. In order to do fairly consistent comparisons, I actually translate all of my points to impressions, so I can look at all of my media on an impression basis. The radio audiences are still....while I can do 10 million impressions a day online easily, it doesn't mean I am hitting a highly qualified targeted 10 million audience. The better I want to target, the more cleanly I need to be aligned with programming and particular media properties."
Our entire interview with Amy Bartle will appear in the March 26th issue of Radio Ink
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