Are European telcos harnessing digital audio’s full potential? | WARC | The Feed

Are European telcos harnessing digital audio’s full potential?

Digital audio channels are increasingly being adopted within the media mixes of European telecom brands and there are untapped opportunities for brands to drive greater marketing effectiveness: Getting your brand heard – new research co-authored by WARC and Spotify – explores how.

Why it matters

The development of digital applications has slowly but steadily changed perceptions of telco service providers. Savvy telcos need to look beyond technology and network capabilities to rethink their traditional approach to marketing and truly engage with customers. Post-COVID shifts in customer experience expectations, sophisticated use of data and attention are all part of their thinking. 

Digital audio – with its distinctive opportunities for engagement, insight and personalisation – has become an increasingly important consideration within their media planning too. Based on a survey of over 360 telco marketers and ten in-depth interviews with industry experts, this white paper explores how digital audio can support the telco industry’s march towards better engagement and the reframing of their relationships with customers.

Takeaways

• Telcos increasingly want to reposition as techcos, as value shifts to device manufacturers and content platforms.
• 90% of European telcos have evolved their comms strategy in recent years with new channels, first-party data and personalised experiences paramount.
• Spend has skewed towards shorter-term performance channels but while digital audio has over 17% share of total media consumption, the spend on digital audio as a percentage of telcos’ total spend in 2021 was below 0.75%.
• Digital audio platforms are increasingly synergistic with other media channels and can help amplify campaign returns.

The big idea

Telcos that have leaned into digital audio rank the channel highly in terms of effectiveness. However, there is an investment gap between consumption of digital audio and ad spend in the sector. Awareness and education are cited by telco marketers as areas where they need greater support to understand more fully how to integrate digital audio effectively into their media mix.