Agovino

Introducing a five-part series today on his company's website, Triton Digital COO Mike Agovino has set out to "debunk" the advantages broadcasters hope to gain by simulcasting online.

In this application, online simulcasting means streaming exactly the same content online, at the same time, that's broadcast on the air. Most importantly, it means the same ads run online that are on the AM/FM signal, and not replaced with (potentially-) targeted, online only commercials.

"Up until now, (broadcasters' online ad inventory) has been very difficult to sell locally, and national/aggregation plays have failed to deliver real value back to the broadcaster," Agovino (pictured) concedes.

But instead of innovating and trying to remedy the challenges of selling digital locally, "broadcasters are in retreat," he says.

Triton Digital is a leading vendor of ad-insertion technologies to the radio and webcasting inudstries. You can read Part 1 of Agovino's "Simulcasting Debunked" here.

Agovino will make his case on "The Ad Insertion Panel" discussion at RAIN Summit Orlando on September 17. RAIN publisher Kurt Hanson will moderate the panel, which will also feature Saga Communications EVP Steve Goldstein, Greater Media Interactive's Tom Bender, Adswizz CEO Alexis van der Wyer, and OMD's Natalie Swed Stone (read more about "The Ad Insertion Panel" here). Full details and registration for RAIN Summit Orlando is available here.

Triton Media COO Mike Agovino "took to the blog" this week to point out that with October's Webcast Metrics, the total measured online listening audience has now passed 1.6 million "Average Active Sessions (AAS)" for the "workday" daypart (M-F 6A-8P). [AAS is Total Listening Hours (TLH) divided by hours in the reported time period. Similarly to Arbitron's "Average Quarter Hour," you can think of it as "the number of listeners at an average moment within the time period." ]

The online radio audience measured by Triton Webcast Metrics, Agovino says, is growing by about 100,000 AAS every 3 months (see the chart on the right). Should the industry be able to maintain that growth, Internet radio will have a 3 million AAS by 2015 -- 10% of radio's total audience.

Agovino took the occasion to explain how  radio's current audience is worth $650-$900 million in revenue to the industry (between pre-roll audio/video ads, instream audio ads, and display ads with typical CPMs).

But he makes another point here too. You may know Arbitron is planning to roll out an "integrated audience" measurement system (see today's top story) -- to tally listening to radio whether its online or over-the-air. Arbitron wants to allow radio to present the online audience using the same traditional broadcast metrics, thereby enabling ad buyers to more easily extend their buys across both platforms. But instead of combining listening, Agovino wants radio to create a new revenue channel. He's suggesting broadcasters should be able to dip into both marketers' broadcast and interactive budgets alike.

"The dimensions of online audio expand the offering way beyond sound to include the interactive, targeting and visual benefits of online ads," he wrote. "Digital, mobile and social budgets are prime targets for this base of impressions... Selling the online audience with the on-air audience relegates publishers to fishing in the same revenue streams as they have always fished. These are not the budgets that are growing, but rather the ones that are shrinking."

Read more from Triton Media COO Mike Agovino here.

The 826 million hours of online radio listening Triton Digital Media tallied in September is 20% more than January's total. And while listening to broadcast radio simulcast online is indeed growing, it's the huge gains made by Pandora (and, to a much lesser extent, other "pureplay" Internet radio outlets) that's powering that growth.

As a matter of fact, two years ago, 70% of online listening Triton measured was credited to simulcast streams of broadcast radio. As of September's numbers, it's online-only radio that accounts for 70%. During those two years, Pandora saw its AQH (note: we're switching here to the AQH number) more than quintuple from 147,673 in September, 2009  (Mo-Su 6a-12M)  to 752,816 in September, 2011.

[Take a look at the chart on the right. The "outlier" is Pandora. A larger and easier-to-read-sized graph is here. Also, see RAIN's coverage of the September 2011 Triton Digital Webcast Metrics ratings here.]

Triton Digital COO Mike Agovino thinks pureplay outlets that allow the listener to influence the music they hear have a clear advantage over basic online simulcasts here. "The broadcast simulcast model does not translate online, where you have so much choice, so much less clutter and the opportunity to customize the experience," Agovino explained, as reported by Inside Radio today. "Broadcasters need to look at how to take the best of their brand experience over the air... and combine it with more choice, less clutter and the ability to customize the content."