TORONTO – National radio ad sales rose 6.3% in this broadcast year compared with the year before, according to Canadian Broadcast Sales, but adding too many licences in markets could hurt sales as it has in the United States, the group says.
The fourth quarter of 2006 saw a “robust” revenue growth of 19% among Canadian stations, CBS said.
“The four year horizon for radio looks promising,” said Patrick Grierson, president of CBS. “As conventional television declines as a reach medium and the digital and specialty channels further carve up the audience, radio continues to deliver the ability to reach broad or specific demographic audiences.”
CBS is a national sales firm representing approximately 60% of all private Canadian radio stations, with clients including Corus, Rogers, Newcap, Astral, Cogeco, Rawlco, Golden West, Vista, OK Radio, Pattison, and other smaller market operators.
In the top 13 Canadian TRAM measured markets, national sales rose 10.4% from January to July 2006, and local increased by 3.4%, for a total growth of 5.3%. In the U.S., numbers from the Radio Advertising Bureau show that in the top 150 markets, national sales rose just 1% and local fell 1%, for a 1% net loss.
“The U.S. market has been heavily licensed for many years and appears to be facing the consequences,” said Grierson. The same fate could befall Canada if the CRTC continues to open up the spectrum to new stations, he said. “However, the recent granting of five new licences in the Calgary market is a potentially troubling step toward fragmentation. Canadians are well served by the current number of stations and it serves no purpose to further dilute audiences unless format offerings are missing in a specific market.”
Categories of advertisers that saw the biggest jump on CBS-represented stations were computers and software (up 188.2% in fiscal 2006), print/publisher (up 171.5%), audio/video equipment (up 143.6%), medicines (up 77.2%), and unions (up 72.3%).
Retailers continue to dominate the categories of national advertising spenders, accounting for 17.3% of national sales in fiscal 2006 (for a total of $24.6 million), followed by automotive/auto aftermarket (15%, or $21.4 million), telecommunications (8.9% or $12.7 million), government/federal/provincial (6.7% or $9.5 million), and financial (6.3% or $9.0 million). The government category spending rose 55% due largely to the federal election and the Statistics Canada census.
The target demo of adults 25 to 54 garnered nearly half (47.6%) of ad revenues, up 4 percentage points from the year before. Adults 18 to 49 dropped 4 percentage points to 10.7%, while women 25 to 54 accounted for 9.4% of buys.
