Addressable Advertising. It’s a desire of practically every marketer and advertiser, with media buyers and planners seeking out every form of communication to deliver what the client wants — personalized messaging.
That puts radio in an odd position. Yes, it has audio streaming opportunities. But, radio broadcasting’s broad reach — long its selling point and biggest positive for an advertiser — is now a detriment. What’s an owner of a FM radio station to do?
GeoBroadcast Solutions has an answer, and in autumn 2021 successfully tested technology that literally localizes an FM signal, offering advertisers more options by geo-targeting audiences. It had previously asked the FCC to amend its booster rules to allow for program origination — key to the voluntary use of “ZoneCasting” by FM station owners. The FCC obliged in November 2020 by adopting a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, now under consideration.
Obstacles could prevent “ZoneCasting” from proliferation across the U.S., however, some 14 months later. And, GeoBroadcast Solutions says in a letter submitted this week with the FCC, iHeartMedia is the biggest obstructer to making “ZoneCasting” happen.
In a six-page submission to the Commission, Gerald Waldron, Counsel to GeoBroadcast Solutions, expressed his client’s frustration over “vigorous but unsubstantiated opposition from some of the largest companies in the radio industry.”
A segment of the U.S. radio broadcasting community isn’t convinced “ZoneCasting” is a beneficial solution to attracting more advertising dollars. In fact, some believe it could have adverse effects on rates, resulting in lower revenue instead of growing ad dollars.
As GeoBroadcast Solutions sees it, the primary voice behind these allegations is iHeartMedia.
VOCAL FIGHT FOR HYPERLOCAL RADIO
While FM translators have provided a form of “revitalization” for many AM radio stations, while also offering a standard-band FM signal to HD digital multicast offerings, and low-power FM stations have provided in many communities hyperlocal noncommercial programming opportunities, the push for “ZoneCasting” clearly has a commercial radio component that’s integral to its rollout.
As GeoBroadcast Solutions explains, “ZoneCasting” can allow FM radio broadcasters to
voluntarily geo-target content to specific zones of their coverage area, for a small percentage of the broadcast hour. For example, a FM that breaks for commercials, traffic, weather or public service announcements can split its contour into mini-broadcast zones. This was successfully tested at KSJO-FM 92.3, a Bollywood-focused radio station in San Jose that has a booster in the East Bay originally designed as a contour fill-in solution.
Now, it’s key to offering addressable advertising, and a rule change allowing the voluntary use of “ZoneCasting” on a FM booster could propel GeoBroadcast Solutions’ business, which also includes “MaxxCasting” technology. That’s different, as “MaxxCasting” is designed to bring a rim-shot signal better coverage in principal metropolitan zones where buildings may otherwise obstruct a broadcast signal.
GeoBroadcast Solutions believes the “non-mandatory rule change” would place FM radio broadcasters “on par with every other media platform (including TV broadcasters).” TV? It points to research unveiled in mid-January by the NextGen Video Information Systems Alliance (NVISA), sponsored by Sinclair Broadcast Group subsidiary ONE Media 3.0. The report focused on a geo-targeting alert opportunity that comes with a new advanced emergency information app tied to ATSC 3.0 broadcast TV technology.
Whether or not the FCC will view “ZoneCasting” in the same manner as the new digital broadcast TV standard is something industry observers and radio broadcasters will likely keep an eye on.
POKING A GIANT
As the leading audio content creation and distribution company in the U.S., iHeartMedia holds upward of 860 radio licenses. And, in the view of GeoBroadcast Solutions, it today offers a service “available to only iHeart’s stations that enables advertisers to do exactly the same thing” as what “ZoneCasting” is designed to do — “namely, offer advertisers the ability to geotarget,” including in larger markets.
How so? The company points to an advertising service called the iHeart AdBuilder. It lets
ad buyers purchase ads on iHeart stations with one key pitch: Use the Power of Radio to Boost Your Small Business. The service is described by iHeartMedia as a “self-serve audio advertising platform that helps small businesses quickly and easily get on-air at any time from any device.” The biggest takeaway for GeoBroadcast Solutions is that it prompts new and existing advertisers to select communities, on a map, where they would like to target their ads as one of the first steps in the ad-creation process.
The letter to the FCC goes into great detail about the iHeart AdBuilder platform. And, it offers some questionable conclusions GeoBroadcasting Solutions presents to the Commission. First, it believes that, as iHeartMedia owns multiple stations in many of its markets, “iHeart can provide a solution in which an advertiser may target specific stations at the sub-radio market level.” But, is a cluster of radio stations the same as taking a single signal and carving it up, something many in the industry believe will destroy the current ad-rate model?
“What is remarkable is that iHeart, which owns more than 860 radio stations across the country (and multiple stations in more than 150 audio markets) and can offer this geo-targeted service given its huge warehouse of radio stations, actively opposes a technical rule change which would allow smaller FM broadcasters to offer targeting opportunities in iHeart’s markets similar to those that iHeart can offer by sheer size and scope,” Waldron, the GeoBroadcasting Solutions counsel argues.
Waldron continues, “In light of this current offering, the Commission should view skeptically claims from iHeart and its allies that geo-targeting content could create negative economic consequences for broadcasters. The disconnect between the iHeart AdBuilder website and the rhetoric from iHeart and its allies simply reveals the thinly veiled goal of the largest radio group owners reinforcing and seeking to maintain their dominant position in the market by denying smaller broadcasters an opportunity to use technology to level the playing field.”
While Waldron offers an opportunity for counterpoint with this argument, he does explain to the FCC that the geo-targeting technology offered by the iHeart AdBuilder
platform differs from the use of geo-targeting at the zone level achieved using FM boosters.
So, what is the heart of Waldron’s plea to the Commission? “iHeart’s solution offers different content within a radio market defined by an iHeart station’s footprint whereas FM booster targeting offers different content within a radio market as defined by where the booster is installed,” Waldron notes. “Both solutions imply more targeted ad spend by allowing advertisers to address their targeted audience while increasing overall revenue to the broadcaster. Both large stations and smaller broadcasters accomplishing this by use of boosters will benefit by running different ads in the same avail.”
Waldron continues, “While iHeart uses a crude form of geo-targeting, smaller broadcasters do not own multiple stations in a market and across the country and thus cannot offer similar advertising opportunities given the current FCC rules. Furthermore, because iHeart owns so many stations and dominates so many markets (150 out of 253), the same economic benefits that iHeart may gain by geo-targeting content apply just the same to a smaller broadcaster’s targeting of content to a zone within their market. Both circumstances demonstrate the way that advertisers respond to options for geo-targeting their content and the ways that broadcasters can strategically address differences in demand for spots across zones. For these reasons, iHeart’s development of iHeart
AdBuilder actually supports the argument that GeoBroadcast and others have made in the
docket: geo-targeted content could create positive economic outcomes for broadcasters.
However, the opposition to this technological rule change suggests that iHeart, as the dominant player in more than 60% of the country wishes to keep those economic benefits to itself.”
How iHeartMedia and the NAB respond to GeoBroadcast Systems could prove to be integral to how the FCC proceeds with the GeoTargeting FM Booster NPRM.
The first round of Comments were due by February 10, 2021; Reply Comments were due by March 12, 2021. But, that didn’t stop the comments and notices, and the NPRM is in a state of inertia, if you will, with no timetable on when a vote is to be had. They are listed in the FCC’s ECFS as “MB 20-401” and “MB 17-105.”
As first reported by Streamline Publishing’s Radio Ink early Friday, the NAB has opposed the rule change plan for nearly one year. It believes that “the vast majority of broadcasters” are in agreement that if the FCC approves this rule change it will almost certainly drive both advertising rates and revenue down as advertisers push to purchase geo-targeted ads. The NAB filed comments opposing “ZoneCasting” in February 2021. A GeoBroadcasting Solutions representative notes that “all of their points have been disputed by Roberson and Associates” in two two reports filed with the Commission. Dennis Roberson is Chair of the FCC Technical Advisory Council.
Connoisseur Media and Neuhoff Communications are also opposed to this plan, as are
Urban One, Davis Broadcasting, Ohana Media Group and Carolyn Becker-owned Riverfront Broadcasting.
Advocacy groups that don’t want “ZoneCasting” also exist. The Small Radio Broadcaster Coalition is opposed.
In contrast, the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters (NABOB) has voiced its support to “ZoneCasting.” And, HD Radio parent Xperi has shared with the Commission that it “fully supports the Commission’s exploration of new opportunities for broadcasters and data services and the rollout of smart, user-friendly broadcast technology.” However, Xperi said in the February 10, 2021, filing that it continues to believe more testing is required to understand how ZoneCasting will affect the user experience, “particularly given the increasing penetration of digital radio products and the growing listenership to digital services.”
Given the timeframe, it will be months before the FCC’s Media Bureau decides when to put the NPRM up for a vote at a monthly Open Meeting. Until then, the volume of comments and reply comments could be vocal, making this proposed rulemaking one of the most contentious in years for the Commission and for the radio broadcasting industry.
