Radio advertising revenue experienced an average increase of 32 per cent across the Asia-Pacific region in 2007, the RadioAsia conference in Singapore was told today.

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Radio advertising revenue experienced an average increase of 32 per
cent across the Asia-Pacific region in 2007, the RadioAsia conference
in Singapore was told today.



This strong growth was well ahead of the 13 per cent increase achieved
by the other traditional media of TV, newspaper and magazines, Mark
Neely, Regional Radio Director for Nielsen Media Research said.



The figures were from the ten markets surveyed by Nielsen which
comprise China, India, Indonesia, Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan,
Thailand, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand.



He also presented figures that showed that although total time
listening to radio had dropped slightly from last year, it was still
well ahead of the decline in TV viewing, and radio was maintaining its
overall reach.



Mr Neely said that Nielsen was experimenting in Australia with 'phone
meters' which involved installing software on mobile phones that would
record the radio stations to which persons carrying the phones were
listening, and then producing survey results matching the sound
patterns against a database to identify the radio stations being
listened to.



He explained although that such research could not demonstrate that
persons were actually listening - it was more measurement of the
"opportunity to listen" - the results would be more precise than those
from the traditional diary surveys.



Neil Curry, Head of Business Development for the BBC World Service,
told the conference that in the UK, 31.4 per cent of radio was now
listened to radio digitally - i.e. through either DAB, DTV or the
Internet - and 11.6 per cent was through mobile phones.


He added that there were also three million people listening to radio
podcasts on mp3 players.