Radio not a big part of BP

Dwight Douglas of Media Monitors speculates that maybe the cost points of radio advertising are priced too reasonably – but for whatever reason, the amount of money British Petroleum has spent with radio since its catastrophic oil spill amounts to about 3% of its total spending since 4/20/10.

That adds up to just under $2.8M dollars spent with the medium, out of $93.4M in total spending as reported by BP to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

During two of the weeks between 4/20 and 8/16/10, BP placed over 10K ads, each time spending about $400K on the medium (once it was a little less than that, the other time a little more).

On the other end of the spectrum, during the second week of the study only 15 spots were bought at a cost of only $464, and later only 9 spots were purchased, albeit it for the slightly larger sum of $690.

On average, the company has bought 3.2K radio spots for just over $147K per week. Up until the week ending 6/14/10, it spent over $100K only once, during the first week of the study. Since then, it has never spent less.

Media Monitors notes that while radio’s share of BP’s own spending has been limited, the medium received benefit from the $85M BP gave to tourism boards to spend.