Boom: Tens of Millions of Quarter Hours on Echo Every Month

Last week we showed the latest Smart Speaker numbers from our thirteenth NuVoodoo Ratings Prospects Study. We showed the large number of people listening to FM on their Smart Speaker. And we revealed that nearly half report having had trouble trying to get a favorite FM station to play on their Smart Speaker. That’s a scary statistic, representing missed listening occasions that could have equated to significant ratings lift.

Right on cue, Amazon’s VP of Music, Steve Boom, was on a panel at last week’s CRS, and said, “Tens of millions of hours of terrestrial radio is being listened to on Echo every month. We just brought radio into the home.” If you needed verification of how huge this opportunity is for radio, there’s a powerful quote from an Amazon exec. It’s up to us to get radio to the goal line.

Meanwhile, in our current webinar, Smart Speakers and Smart Marketing, we’re showing that landline penetration in homes is flat at 42% among our sample of 3,084 14-54’s across all PPM markets. To make matters worse, only a third of that 42% will even consider answering your call. We think that’s bad news for residential telemarketing. It means you’re playing for 14% among 14-54’s – about one in seven, who might answer your call if they’re at home.

This chart shows the percentage that might answer your telemarketing call holding steady at 14%, but we predict that number will resume its decline in the months ahead. The wider business of telemarketing is adapting to declining contacts by changing what it displays on caller ID. Less scrupulous telemarketers are displaying numbers mimicking local exchanges (hoping the person receiving the call will wonder if it’s a neighbor calling) or showing a caller ID name suggesting the call is from a hospital or doctor’s office or local government. As more consumers are burned by these calls, the percentage who’ll answer a residential call from an unfamiliar number will drop again.

NuVoodoo marketing campaigns never include residential telemarketing. There are many reasons we only call businesses. Chief among those reasons is that businesses answer their phones. And we’ve seen through our research and validated with field experience that people at work like hearing about opportunities to win cash from an area radio station.

We have lots of great information to show you in the remaining sessions of our current webinar: Smart Speakers and Smart Marketing. In addition to Smart Speakers, this first webinar episode will give you the latest information on:

• The advertising channels that likely ratings respondents pay attention to.
• Marketing messages and tactics that have prompted likely ratings respondents to listen more.
• How digital ads, phone calls or mail from a station might impact the listening of likely ratings respondents.
• The Social Media platforms that are used most by panelists and diary keepers.
• Whether increasing data privacy concerns are enough to cause likely ratings respondents to seek alternatives to Facebook.

You’ll get all the pertinent information in just 30 minutes – and we’ll stick around to answer questions if you have time to stay “after school.” Register at nuvoodoo.com/webinars.