Radio or streaming audio? A guide for local businesses
How broadcast radio and streaming audio ads compare for local businesses: reach, targeting, cost and measurement — and why many advertisers use both.
If you run a local business and you’re thinking about audio advertising, you’ve probably wondered whether to buy time on a radio station or run ads on streaming platforms like Spotify, Pandora or iHeartRadio. The honest answer is that they do different jobs, and the best plan often uses a bit of both.
Broadcast radio: wide reach, strong habit
AM/FM radio still reaches a very large share of American adults, and it’s especially strong in the car. People have favorite stations and favorite hosts, and they listen at predictable times — the morning commute, the drive home.
- Good for: building awareness across a whole area, reaching commuters, and borrowing the trust listeners have in a station.
- Watch out for: you pay for everyone in the signal area, including people far outside your service area. Measurement is less precise.
- Typical buy: a schedule of spots per week over several weeks, priced by daypart. Rates vary a lot between stations and markets.
Streaming audio: precise, flexible, smaller
Streaming audio ads play between songs or podcast segments on phones, smart speakers and connected cars. Because the platforms know roughly where listeners are and some details about them, you can target by ZIP code, age range, time of day and device.
- Good for: reaching a specific area or audience, testing with a small budget, and pairing audio with a clickable companion banner.
- Watch out for: audiences per platform can be small in rural ZIP codes, and some listeners pay to skip ads.
- Typical buy: a budget and a number of impressions over a date range, often with low minimums.
Same spot, both places. A well-produced :30 can run on broadcast radio and on streaming platforms with only minor technical changes. Produce once, place twice.
So which should you choose?
A few questions usually make the answer clear:
- How big is your service area? If customers come from all over metro Atlanta, a radio station’s footprint can be efficient. If they come from three ZIP codes, streaming targeting wastes less.
- Who are your customers? Spanish-language radio in Atlanta reaches loyal audiences that can be harder to find on streaming platforms alone.
- What’s your budget? Streaming lets you start smaller. Radio usually needs enough weekly frequency to be heard, which takes a bigger commitment.
- How will you know it worked? Use a dedicated phone number, a simple web address or a “mention the radio” offer so you can track response from either channel.
What we usually recommend
For many local clients we start with a focused streaming campaign in their core ZIP codes, add a station or two that fits their audience, and run the same spot on both. After four to six weeks, the results tell us where to put more money.
Want a rough number to start with? Try our airtime budget planner, or read about our media planning and buying service.
Written by the Pura Candela Media studio team in Loganville, Georgia. Questions about this article? Email [email protected].
