Users engaging with digital properties hit 22 million per month
In the first of its announcements, Clear Channel Radio revealed that its active, unique monthly audience across all of its digital properties now numbers 22 million, according to data from Omniture, Inc. The company also disclosed usage patterns for the full 12 months of 2008 and initial months of 2009.
In addition to industry-leading raw numbers, the company is showing strong gains in year-over-year audience growth.
The company also announced it’s using Ando Media to measure size and behavior for its rapidly growing streaming audience. For some stations, online and mobile phone listening now amounts to an additional 15% in total listeners beyond the AM/FM broadcast.
Both Omniture and Ando are server-based measurements, meaning data is based on actual user activity instead of relying on panel-based methods. With real-time, validated measurement and behavioral data, Clear Channel Radio now offers unprecedented insight to both programmers and advertisers.
Separately, Clear Channel Radio and Ando Media announced today that results of a comprehensive audience survey – which saw an incredible 70% opt-in rate – will be available to advertisers immediately.
iheartradio mobile app thriving
Some of the company’s strongest gains are coming from its mobile platform. To date, more than two million unique users have downloaded the iheartradio application. Just recently, iheartradio spent 10 days as the #1 BlackBerry app and has remained in the top 20 since launch. For the iPhone and iPod Touch, the application consistently ranks in the top five among free music apps.
iheartradio’s user engagement is especially strong. According to data from Pinch Media (in a February 2009 study of more than 30 million downloads of free iPhone apps), engagement with the typical mobile application drops off precipitously within 30 days. Less than 5% of users who originally downloaded the app return to use it.
Clear Channel Radio is seeing exactly the opposite behavior with iheartradio. Some 80% of users have downloaded subsequent updates of the app from the iTunes App Store and a full 20% of those who have downloaded the app come back weekly.
In addition, iheartradio users are showing dramatically longer time spent with the app than the average user of mobile applications. A January 2009 study from Magid Associates pegged average time spent with all mobile apps at 39 minutes per week. iheartradio users listen an average of 99 minutes per week.
