CRA ramps up RadioMATRIX offering

Commercial radio’s peak industry body has said the way that audio advertising is bought and sold is about to transform.

Commercial Radio Australia (CRA) is gearing up to launch the briefings module of RadioMATRIX – touted as the industry’s advanced ad buying platform.

The briefings module was developed in conjunction with radio networks and media agencies and will roll out in two weeks.

It “provides templates and tools that will drastically reduce the time it takes to create a brief,” CEO of CRA Joan Warner said in an email to stakeholders today. “What once took hours can now be done in minutes.”

RadioMATRIX was designed to help buyers better understand the opportunities across the radio and audio ecosystem, whether it be broadcast, streaming or podcasts.

“The bottom line is, innovations like RadioMATRIX will make it easier than ever for advertisers to consider radio across all its platforms for every campaign,” Warner added.

Recently, 19 media agencies participated in a RadioMATRIX trial of the platform’s virtual workplace, enabling networks and buyers to collaborate on campaigns in real-time, from any location.

In recent months a number of radio networks have been working on simplifying their own ad-buying processes and attribution tools.

Southern Cross Austereo’s (SCA) effort to prove the power of digital audio advertising saw it launch SCA Footsteps – which tracks consumers’ movements after they’ve been exposed to an audio advertising campaign via SCA’s live radio streaming or SoundCloud; and SCA SoundCheck – which will use ad tracking and retargeting technology to identify listeners who heard an ad. Those listeners will then be hit by a campaign study questionnaire.

Nine Radio has also been seeking to simplify the ad-buying process, by introducing its 9Galaxy platform to its radio assets from November. 9Galaxy is already used by marketers and media agencies as an automated buying platform across Nine’s television and broadcast video on demand (BVOD) offerings. Radio will be added to the mix from November 1.

Nine said the addition of radio means advertising buying will now be more efficient, with faster response times and clear post-analysis reporting.

In addition, 9Voyager – a self-serve automated buying platform for small business owners – will be opened up to radio from next year.

At a recent briefing with journalists ahead of Nine’s Upfronts presentation, chief sales officer Michael Stephenson said despite the company’s own innovations and products, it remained supportive of CRA’s efforts.

“We’re massively supportive of RadioMATRIX. The RadioMATRIX is predominately a briefing tool. It’s not a transactional tool,” he said.

“9Galaxy is a sales-side platform, if you like. So when advertising agencies are booking their campaigns with us, we will be giving them access to state-of-the-art technology for the purpose of booking, post-analysis reporting, really improving the efficiency of the transaction. And it will integrate completely into RadioMATRIX. So the briefs that a media agency will give us will be put into RadioMATRIX and that will API [application programming interface] straight into 9Galaxy.”