iHeart and Audacy streaming radio, bought against a holdout

A streaming radio buy across iHeartMedia and Audacy starts producing a readable result at roughly 25,000 euros of monthly working media. Below that, a geo holdout cannot separate the audio effect from ordinary week-to-week variance in your own demand, and you are paying for a number you will have to take on faith. That threshold, not a reach projection, is the first thing we discuss. What we buy: iHeartRadio streaming inventory, meaning the app, the web player, the Alexa and Google skills and in-dash listening through CarPlay and Android Auto, alongside Audacy's owned station streams. Lines are placed by station and by format rather than run-of-network, because format is the only audience signal in this inventory that has held up in our post-campaign reads. News-talk and sports carry a different completion profile from AC and hip-hop, and the gap is wide enough to change which script goes to which stream. Pod position is negotiated, not accepted. First in a two-spot break is a different product from third position in a full stopset, and broadcasters will hold position when it is written into the insertion order rather than agreed on a call. What we will not buy: Terrestrial simulcast weight sold in as digital inventory. Overnight bonus weight offered as the make-good for a daytime shortfall. Any package where a companion display banner is bundled into the CPM and its clicks then appear in the audio report. Those taps are overwhelmingly mis-touches on a phone lock screen, and treating them as audio response is how an audio budget gets cut the following quarter by a finance director who was right to be suspicious. How this is measured: A matched-market test. We pair DMAs on baseline demand, trailing volatility and existing media pressure, hold half of them out, and read four to six weeks after the first spot airs. The endpoints are branded search volume, direct and organic session starts, and for ecommerce and app clients the count of incremental first-time purchasers or installs against a modelled cost per incremental action. Server-side ad insertion means there is no click and no viewability event anywhere in this channel. Anyone reporting one is reporting something else. Frequency: iHeart and Audacy count impressions independently of each other. A listener who uses both receives roughly double what either plan shows, and in uncapped flights we keep finding a small minority of listeners absorbing a disproportionate share of delivery. We reconcile at listener level from the publisher log files and reset weights weekly, rather than trusting two platform caps to talk to one another when they have no mechanism for doing so. What you receive: A negotiated insertion order with position and daypart written into it, weekly delivery reconciliation against plan, creative rotation instructions by format, and a read at the end of the flight stating whether the money moved anything and by how much, including the flights where the answer is no. Who this is not for: Brands spending under 25,000 euros a month on audio, who are better served putting it into one channel where the effect can be seen. Anyone who needs a result attributable inside a seven-day click window. Advertisers whose campaign rests on a spelled-out vanity URL, since nobody writes down a URL while driving, and we will argue about that call to action before we argue about the plan. We also decline flights where nobody has checked what happens when a listener searches the brand name afterwards. Audio sends people to a search box, and if a competitor is outbidding you there, this media is paying for their conversion.