In these times of political and economic uncertainty, Radiocentre’s CEO Matt Payton writes about the power of industry collaboration in navigating the challenges.
So far 2025 has been almost as unpredictable as many of us predicted. The political world remains in a state of flux. The economic outlook is uncertain, even with the potential advantage of new trade deals designed to insulate the UK from Trump’s tariffs. For its part, media and advertising is also going through a period of intense and accelerating change, with budgets under pressure and the drive towards ever greater automation and integration of AI.
Against this backdrop it’s all the more important for a sector like radio and audio to work together and fight its corner. Fortunately, we are an industry that understands the power of collaboration and knows that it has a good story to tell. At Radiocentre we see that day in, day out on all sorts of initiatives, whether it is working together to support the growth in advertising revenues or co-ordinating lobbying campaigns to help the industry continue to thrive.
For example, earlier this year we were pleased to get confirmation from Ofcom that the BBC will be prevented from launching a new Radio 2 spin-off service, with more than a passing resemblance to existing commercial stations such as Boom Radio, due to concerns we raised over its impact on competition. Separately the BBC was also forced to withdraw plans to start running advertising on its podcasts on third-party platforms like Spotify and Apple.
We welcomed these decisions not because of some sort of anti-BBC agenda, but because they risked damaging the UK audio sector and diverting away as much as £50m a year in much needed investment. With the BBC Charter Review expected to kick off in earnest later this year, these debates may well be the shape of things to come. The BBC has a really important role to play in audio and its most distinctive content simply couldn’t be provided by the commercial sector in the same way. But as we demonstrated in our recent report A Force for Good, there is also significant public value generated by commercial radio that should be nurtured, supported and insulated from the damaging effects of BBC expansionism across audio.
Alongside all this we will continue to work together to push for the best possible environment for radio and audio to grow. This means supporting the government’s mission to tackle unnecessary regulation and burdens on business, including resisting detailed operational quotas on news production from Ofcom and simplifying terms & conditions in financial advertising.
Innovation and investment in audio has also continued at pace in 2025. Bauer’s digital audio advertising product AudioXi was launched in the UK earlier this year and is now fully operational, providing agencies and advertisers with an effective way of reaching connected audiences. Alongside this Global’s DAX also continues to develop its offering, enabling advertisers to target a range of audience groups across digital audio platforms, from live radio and podcasts to streaming and gaming.
At Tuning In North in Manchester in March, Radiocentre launched a new report Speed of Sound, with the consultancy MTM. This highlights the benefits for advertisers of using this kind of multi-platform audio and why broadcasters (representing 90% of ad-funded audio listening) remain the key to unlocking those benefits, whatever your campaign objectives.
We are kicking off the second half of 2025 with a new advertising campaign aimed at brands and advertising agencies to highlight the benefits of investing in radio and audio. We want to thank our member stations who have got behind the campaign, supporting it on air and calling on advertisers to ‘amplify’ their advertising with radio. Arguably, we have more publicly available effectiveness data than any other medium, and the campaign is a great way to dial up this evidence.
We’re now in the process of pulling together even more evidence of the benefits of using multi-platform audio, with new research examining return-on-investment and effectiveness. The plan is to unveil the findings, along with many more highlights at our annual Tuning In event on 23rd September at Kings Place in London. It will be hosted once more by Tyler West from KISS, who will be joined by special guests and speakers from across media and advertising. Registration is open now and free for brands, agencies and member stations to attend. I look forward to seeing you there.