Radio Has Been Rebooted: Entercom's Foss

You bet. I think most people know Entercom as a traditional radio broadcaster. We are in 44 markets with more than 230 stations across the country. But three years ago when we merged with CBS Radio, we inherited radio.com which was one of the first radio streaming platforms of its kind. We have doubled down and done a lot of investment in that, including we have now acquired two podcasting companies in terms of production. Recently, we announced the acquisition of a sports betting company. So Andy, we really talk about ourselves now as an audio company for consumers to really engage with spoken word, music, streaming services. And now even games and services like sports betting.

I think you're right. Most people were shocked when I moved from digital video over to audio. But for me, audio is not only an incredibly robust experience that you can have and take with you everywhere and engage with it in so many different ways. Versus just video where I do have to be watching the whole time. But I think one of the things that we've seen through COVID is audio is hot. People are rediscovering radio, audio. They're finding content in new ways that they can engage with through smart speakers in the home. Even though we're not commuting in our cars, we're still driving to get takeout food. We're driving to go pick up things up at the local grocery store. So it's pervasive. How we can engage with really compelling audio content is everywhere, and consumers really have shown that. Because radio right now is the number one reach medium in the country. So I got excited to come to Entercom because we have all of the components with the stations, with radio.com, with podcasting, with new consumer-based services. Which means we can create a very compelling set of content for our consumers. Turn that into targeted audiences for our advertisers, and do so in a way that's very holistic and follows the consumer wherever she is.

Yeah, I think that's a great question because you're right. Addressability is something that we, especially in the traditional companies and broadcasting have been talking about how are we going to get there. And I think what a lot of folks forget about radio and audio overall are the number of different ways that we interact with our consumers. Pre-COVID, we have concerts, during COVID, we actually had more than 24 different live events. So we're still doing concerts online. We still are offering really interesting interviews. And so what consumers are doing, is still coming and engaging with us across all of the different platforms we have. Whether that's how they call in to a station for talk radio or how they sign up with email to participate in that live concert event via Zoom. So Entercom, we've actually built a data platform that allows us to finally look at our audience not just with the comScore data. But all that first party information we're getting from our listeners across all of the different platforms that we have. So our visibility of the audiences we can deliver to advertisers is very robust. And we're starting to work with advertisers and agencies so that we can actually marry our first party data with the data that they're collecting. So that we can truly connect the dots for holistic campaigns and actually show outcomes for when did the listener drive into the home goods store. When did the listener actually from a smart speaker, then add something to a shopping list. Those are the types of things that you can do now that we have our own first party data and we're working very closely with advertisers with theirs.

Of course, we do. We totally believe in the fact that the listener is going to wherever she wants to actually consume the audio content. Which for us is pretty pervasive when you consider the fact that you can listen to it on a mobile device, in a car. You can actually get to anything because of the streaming services we have, working from home, listening from a computer. And so what we do from a converged perspective, is really understand, what is that experience for those audiences? Because we're the largest provider of talk and sports, talk formats. We also see that our listeners are engaging around those type of content opportunities. And so selling for the big interviews that are gonna come up on talk radio, selling across markets for the fans. Such as if I left Philadelphia, but I wanted to listen to Eagles talk radio or listen to the game. I can do that now through the platforms and find WIP regardless of where I am. So we've given opportunities for advertisers to find not only individual tribe, or people that have content predisposition. But also wherever they're doing so because it's so pervasive to get to them from smart speaker in the home, in the car, on the dogwalk, using the mobile device. It's really given a lot of unique use cases that allow us to target the content and then the consumer.

I think, the rediscovery of radio and audio that we've seen, especially in 2020, has shifted, thinking back to, it is a very robust platform to reach consumers. And more importantly, because we're spending so much time listening to podcasts, to talk format, to music. What we're doing is seeing advertisers actually shift budget back because we have the first party data to enable them to find the consumers, attribute that to actual success within the campaign. And be able to connect the brand to the content that the consumer is looking for, and then a successful campaign outcome. So we're actually really excited that consumers are spending more and more time with the type of content you find on the stations or radio.com. So advertisers and agencies are saying that's where we wanna be and they're working with us on these data strategies. So we can help them use their proprietary datasets with the information we have about our listeners across all of our platforms. It's really exciting because we're seeing sellouts on radio.com. We're seeing massive interest with people that are trying to target the local markets or the national audience overall. And so we have some very exciting platform growth from the listeners, as well as from our advertisers in our agencies.