Traditionally radio has been sold as either a spot or package buy leaving the advertiser free to choose whether to target a specific day, days of the week, day part, audience, station, personality, direct response, housekeepers, a specific locality or region, demographic, a particular status group or key audience etc.

These packages were generally sold as Primetime (PT) running offered across seven days from either 7am-7pm or Total Audience Packages (TAP) running across seven days 06.00-24.00. 

These packages allowed brands and advertisers to tailor their radio buy to various differing needs and wants, getting on air within 24 hours and reaching your customers at the right time, right place, and right station whether it’s a targeted message, a reminder, an offer, an urgent appeal, a product launch or a branded advertisement.

So, why change it and what are we offering on RTÉ that's new?       

Since 2017, RTÉ Media Sales have offered advertisers the ability to buy on a Cost Per Thousand basis (similar to TV or Online) in addition to the traditional methods of buying spots or spot packages.

With CPT’s the focus has shifted to a targeted sell based on where audiences are delivered for specific demographics across all RTÉ stations. The emphasis is now on transparent delivery of value based on guaranteed ratings or GRP’s rather than spots.

 We currently trade CPT’s across five demographics: ADS (Adults 15+), ADS 15-34, ADS 25-44, ABC1, HKW. The key principle behind CPT deals is to encourage and reward long term commitment on behalf of advertisers by delivering an optimally targeted schedule across our stations.

Unlike spot packages, CPT campaigns run across all day-parts, delivering campaigns based on programme listenership for the targeted audience.  We use programme Average Quarter Hours (AQH’s) to target the best spot times for a specific audience or campaign.  If, for example, an advertiser books an ABC1 CPT campaign - RTÉ will deliver 94% of GRP’s on RTÉ Radio 1 and 6% of GRP’s on Lyric FM, in top rating programme AQH’s for that audience, for example:  Morning Ireland, Today with Sean O’Rourke, News at One, Marian Finucane on Radio 1 and Classic Drive, Marty in the Morning on Lyric FM etc.

By optimising our airtime in this way, we can deliver great campaigns for the demographic bought, in most cases delivering a greater number of spots than the traditional package.  Optimising airtime delivers greater weekly reach with total ratings being higher as campaigns are targeted to deliver based on a targeted demographic rather than spots.

From 2017 we have seen exponential growth in CPT campaigns as advertisers see the benefits of buying CPT campaigns. We have had great feedback from brands who are now consistently buying CPT’s either as stand-alone or enhancing package media plans and we expect that the percentage of advertisers using CPT will increase again in 2019.

RTÉ is the only media partner in the market currently offering CPT buying and are leading the radio market in providing choice and ease of buying to our advertisers. We hope that over time it will become the norm for the whole of the Irish Radio market, as it has been in the UK since the early 2000’s. 

We think that an expansion of a similar CPT offering across the market will lead to increased efficiencies in campaign buying and delivery. However, more importantly, value can be easily assessed in a much more transparent manner.