Indian audio advertising program purchase report

Indian consumers spend an average of 19.1 hours a week listening to music, more than 7 per cent above the global average, according to a new report from Xaxis India, but advertisers are still hesitant to allocate their budgets to programmed purchases of audio advertising.

The Audio Advertising Program Purchase Report found that despite the high penetration among consumers, only 71 percent of audio advertisers invest less than 10 percent of their total advertising investment in digital channels, while 50 percent of publishers and media owners currently do not have revenue from digital audio advertising.

According to publishers, the four most important metrics for programed purchases of audio advertising are brand awareness (71 percent), ad recall (71 percent), coverage and frequency (54 percent), and listening (54 percent).

The report also found that a clear understanding of the impact of audio ad procedural purchases was a major obstacle for more than half of advertisers to include audio ad procedural purchases (57 percent) in their planning budgets. Ad measurement is another key barrier (44 percent) to the implementation of procedural purchases of audio advertising. As a result, only 9% of advertisers and ad agencies are considering using digital audio advertising to improve their return on investment.

The report notes that the future of the digital audio industry looks promising. With 829 million smartphone users expected in India by 2022, the vast majority of advertisers (94 per cent) believe mobile devices are the most effective way to reach their audiences. This was followed by cars (72 per cent), home devices and assistants (42 per cent), tablets (31 per cent) and desktops or laptops (26 per cent). India's music industry is also expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 15.8% in the 2019-2024 fiscal year, and audio streaming is expected to be a key catalyst for this growth.