To Reach Men, Advertisers Dial In to Sports Radio
To Reach Men, Advertisers Dial In to Sports Radio
Jason Notte
NYTimes
Sports programming isn’t the most popular stop on the radio dial in Portland, Ore.
The top sports radio station in June, KFXX-AM, ranked 21st out of the market’s 35 stations, according to Nielsen. Its biggest competitor, KXTG-AM, ranked 22nd. A third, KPOJ-AM, was 25th, just ahead of a jazz station.
Yet the Goldberg Jones law firm in Seattle advertises on all three sports stations.
Rick Jones co-founded the firm in 1996 and helped it establish a niche by providing divorce services for men. At first “the big game was yellow pages” when it came to marketing, he said. Soon, though, the firm turned to radio, which was appealing for both its price and its reach.
“When deciding at that point which stations to target, sports radio stations were a no-brainer because of the demographic,” Mr. Jones said. “The cost per relevant person was manageable and within our budget.”
More than 20 years later, sports radio’s audience remains largely the same. Entercom, the parent company of KFXX, says that the roughly 40 sports radio stations it owns average 11 million listeners per week. Of that audience, 71 percent is male. Ads for Jones’ law firm on KFXX are often bookended by commercials for a chain of testosterone-therapy clinics and for a shaving supply company called Harry’s.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/19/business/media/sports-radio-advertising.html