Whether it be CPTs in linear radio or CPMs in digital audio, many buyers are fixated on them as a key buying metric. More often than not though it’s a false comparison because, when buying an open demo over a wide geo the CPT/CPM is lower to compensate for the inevitable wastage inherent in the campaign.
For anyone new to buying media that are reading this and unfamiliar with the terminology, here are a couple of helpful definitions:
CPT – Cost Per Thousand. Is the cost for every thousand impacts [times a commercial is predicted to be heard] over the linear radio campaign period.
CPM – Cost Per Mille. Is exactly the same in Digital Media, with “mille” being the Latin for a thousand. It is the cost for every thousand impressions [times a commercial is predicted to be heard] over the digital audio campaign period.
Most large-scale national and international ad campaigns want as many impressions as possible over as wide an area as possible, it’s all about scale. However, for local and regional advertising it’s more often about speaking with a clearly defined audience in a specific region/locality.
Because it’s more work and requires more specific inventory, publishers steer local advertisers towards more generic advertising packages. BUT be aware the lower the CPT/CPM’s the more it factors in that your campaign will inevitably be heard by more people who won’t and never will buy from you.
The value judgement, therefore, needs to be; does the lower CPT compensate you enough for the impacts/impressions that are falling on deaf ears?
Example
You’re a business based in Leeds targeting homeowners of properties in excess of £1m within the LS [Leeds] postcodes.
Your linear broadcast radio options either don’t cover the whole territory, or cover a wider area than you need and you can only segment your audience to ABC1’s. But you can buy the advertising at a £5 cpt. for those ABC1’s.
Alternatively, you have the option of a digital audio campaign that serves your ads directly to the target audience only and purely in the specific territory e.g. West Yorkshire post codes. However the cpm is £25.
On the face of it the linear price is 80% less.
BUT [for illustrative purposes only] the data tells us that the target audience makes up less than 10% of the audience in the radio broadcast area. This means that at best, 90% of the impacts/impressions on the broadcast campaign will be effective.
Therefore you’re effective broadcast CPT is actually £50.
Remember the old adage of comparing Apples and Pears? So what price wastage? Well in this case at least half of your campaign budget!
Fill in the online form to get in touch and kick off your waste saving, we can run a ‘free’ full audit and review for you, it’ll identify where you could be saving or redirecting your budget to drive better ROI. Nice.
audioadpro – data-driven, precision-targeted and super-efficient, geographical digital audio advertising
