Have You Heard? It’s Time to Invest in Audio

Big brands are making major investments in audio.

This may be surprising, since a lot of media attention goes to the evolution of the video landscape, but the audio landscape is also going through a major transformation, quietly becoming a pharma marketer’s secret weapon in building targeted, impactful, surround-sound brand experiences for healthcare professionals (HCPs) and patients alike.

Not convinced audio is the right place for your brand?  Let’s run through some numbers that may convince you.

Audio provides scale, reach, and impact.

• Audio is a powerful branding tool: IPSOS found that, although audio is 3.4x more effective in garnering brand attention, it is an underused vehicle, with only 8% of brands leveraging distinctive audio brand assets. Furthermore, IPSOS found ads with sonic brand cues to be 8.5x more effective at increasing branded attention than ads that didn’t have them.
• Audio has been revolutionized by digital and mobile: According to eMarketer, in 2022, nearly 66% of the US population, or 222 million users, listen to digital audio. This is projected to increase to nearly 234MM by 2026. 78% of digital audio listeners do so on their mobile device. 
• Streaming radio. About 82 million people in the U.S. use a streaming music service. Spotify has about a third of the U.S. market, with Apple (15%), Amazon (13%) and Pandora (15%) comprising the bulk of the remaining audience. The majority of these listeners hear ads: for example, of Spotify’s 400 million users, about 226 million have a free (ad-supported) subscription and about 180 million have a premium subscription, according to Musically.com. Most importantly, partners like Pandora, Spotify, and iHeart Radio all allow for granular targeting for pharmaceutical marketers, ensuring brands reach only the audiences that matter to them.
• Podcasts. 120 million Americans listen to podcasts regularly, and this is expected to grow to 140 million in 2022. Podcast listenership has climbed faster in the last five years than ever before.  Health and wellness podcast content has proliferated, giving pharma marketers endless opportunities to place their brand content in an uncluttered, trusted environment. Podcasts are also a good way for pharma brands to reach HCPs. In fact, according to HCPLive, physicians often recommend podcasts of interest to one another. 
• Terrestrial radio. While digital radio is experiencing growth, terrestrial radio still provides significant reach and scale. According to Pew Research Center, 83% of Americans 12 or older listen to the radio in a given week (which is, roughly speaking, more than 200 million people). Additionally, according to Kantar Ad Insights, pharmaceutical category spending across local, national spot and network radio increased 155% from 2019 to 2021.

I hope some of these statistics have caught your eye and helped convince you of what you probably intuitively already know. Like me, you can probably rattle off slogans, jingles, taglines, and phone numbers from audio ads you heard half a lifetime ago.

Audio is a is a way to reach HCP and patient audiences throughout their day in a differentiated, memorable way – from taking a walk, running an errand, cooking dinner, or at work as background music.

Are you ready to use audio to get your brand heard?