How to increase the revenues of your online station
Running an internet radio station can be a serious business with all the challenges and opportunities that entails. Making money in this business is like making money in any other business – it requires making more revenues than costs. Unfortunately, the reality is much more difficult than it sounds, especially in the competitive and dynamic world of online radio. To be successful means carefully understanding and managing both the revenue and cost drivers of your station.
From the revenue side there are two main drivers:
1 - Listeners
Listeners are the ‘raison d’etre’ of any station. They are also critical to the business side with the bigger the audience, the more loyal and more engaged, the easier and more likely to successfully monetize your listeners. Internet radio stations have many of the same considerations are terrestrial radio stations, so here are the top three questions you need to answer:
- What is your target listener segment?
- How will you grow your listener base?
- How are you engaging and interacting with your listeners?
However, internet radio also brings a number of new issues and considerations:
- Are your listeners happy with the quality and reliability of your station?
- Are you successfully using social media to broaden your reach?
- Are your listeners listening to you on their mobile devices as well as on desktops?
- Do you have a strategy for in-car listening?
Being clear on your target audience, your offering and being up to date on the trends in the industry is critical for advertisers, who are the second big driver of your revenue.
2 - Advertisers
Translating your audience into revenue is far from trivial. Although there are options for brokered programming and subscription services, the main driver for internet radio as for terrestrial radio is advertising. Again, internet stations face many of the traditional issues of radio advertising:
- How do I maximize the revenue from my advertizing slots while maintaining my listener experience?
- What advertisers and approach reflect my brand and station values?
As well as a set of newer issues -
- What data do I share / make available to my advertizers?
- Are you able to monetize listeners outside of your core geographic area?
- Does new technology allow other advertising options such as display ads, pre-roll audio ads or coordinated ads for my station?
- How do I best advertize to listeners on mobile devices?
- How do I test and understand the impact of my advertising on my listeners?
Overall, there are a number of issues and questions that each station must address. At Radiojar we are working hard to help clients understand and address these issues and are always happy to discuss how we can serve stations to become successful in creating exciting and entertaining new internet radio experiences.
Arnaud Henin
