TERRESTRIAL RADIO'S INTERNET AUDIENCE GREW 37% IN 2007 Jeffrey Yorke – Radio and Records Online listening to radio produced by radio broadcasters increased by 37% last year, while pure-play operators saw a 13% year-to-year decline in audience levels, according to a new report by J.P. Morgan media analysts John Blackledge and Aaron Chew.
“We believe this divergent growth path represents a share shift as total traffic has been mostly flat since mid-2006, while terrestrial’s share grew from 35% to 43% as the pure plays fell,” the report finds.
Blackledge and Chew found that traffic at the terrestrial operators’ sites was flat with November, when unique visitors were down 5% after jumping to record levels the month before. Nevertheless, with traffic still firmly above the 25 million-26 million range it had been stuck in most of the year. “We believe unique visitors to terrestrial radio’s Internet sites could continue to post sequential and year-to-year growth in 2008,” said the duo.
The study found that CBS Radio traffic "reached an all-time high of 4.1 million, contributing to growth seen from Cox Radio, Citadel and Maranatha. However, this was offset by declines at Last.fm, NPR, Clear Channel and Entercom. While Clear Channel was down 1% from last month (and 10% from record traffic in October), it still garners over 18% of total traffic to all of Internet radio.”
Unique visitors to Internet radio stayed flat at 62.5 million after dipping 2% in November following record traffic the prior month. Nevertheless, unique visitors to Internet radio remained ahead of the 60 million-62 million range in which they have stagnated over the prior year and a half.
Traffic at Pandora grew for sixth month in a row to 4 million, ahead of AOL Radio for the second straight month. Nevertheless, AOL Radio experienced 10% growth (on top of 23% growth last month) to 3.7 million, the highest levels achieved since December 2006. |