Bringing Together Tour, Radio, Fan-Targeted Advertising [CASE STUDY: Nathaniel Rateliff]

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via the American Association of Independent Music

How Concord utilized found.ee to build geo-specific remarketing audiences aligning tour and radio support, coupled with audio advertising (iHeartRadio, Spotify), to increase consumption

Authors

Jason Hobbs – CEO / found.ee
Advertising + Testing Strategy
Gulce Turek – Marketing / Fantasy Records
Data + Reporting Metrics
Jason Yang – Head of Advertising / Concord
Advertising + Advertising Strategy

Overview
The single “You Worry Me” off the most recent Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats album Tearing At The Seams, released through Fantasy Records, was earning commercial Alternative and Triple A radio play in key markets across the U.S. Fantasy Records, along with parent company Concord Music, wanted to support these markets with highly targeted advertising.

Both radio and tour dates act as drivers of online and offline consumption, particularly when those markets with radio play and a tour date intersect.

Challenge: Leverage radio play and tour awareness in each overlapping market, with the use of highly targeted digital advertising, to increase consumption performance.

Concord identified a group of markets where iHeart Media radio stations were rotating the single, “You Worry Me” and the tour routing would include those respective cities. The radio team further refined the initial set by identifying those markets with potential for continued radio play, and that were also large enough to drive noticeable consumption. The team at found.ee initiated media buying deals with iHeartMedia for those markets, so Concord could run audio advertising through the iHeartRadio App and online platform in each of those markets to provide very targeted support. Long before any of this, the team at Fantasy Records had to build remarketing audiences of engaged Nathaniel Rateliff fans with the use of the remarketing audience-building platform, found.ee.

Hypothesis
Using audience targeting available through found.ee (including targeting fans of specific iHeartRadio stations playing Nathaniel Rateliff, and the remarketing audiences gathered during the Nathaniel Rateliff campaign) to determine the audience intersection of fans interested in the live music experience that have likely heard the focus track on their local station, we can drive more music consumption than radio and tour alone.

Construct
Find X number of cities where the tour overlaps with radio spins. Find the baseline of total consumption for the band as well as the focus single. Divide the markets to create a control group and an experimental group. The experimental group of markets will receive the following advertising for two weeks:

• iHeartRadio audio inventory targeting listeners of radio stations in those markets
• Spotify Audio Advertising targeting fans of the band
• Remarketing advertising targeting fans of the band

After the advertising run concludes, measure the rate of acceleration in each market (to account for an imbalance in market sizes and volume discrepancies) beginning from advertising start date. Compare the results from both groups.

Goal

Concord/Fantasy Records set out to increase consumption of the new single “You Worry Me” in markets where tour and radio overlapped, with the byproduct of increasing total streams for the artist overall in each of those markets.

Solution: Remarketing audiences built through found.ee, iHeartRadio and Spotify Audio Advertising inventory available through the found.ee advertising platform, and remarketing advertising campaigns supported by found.ee-built remarketing audiences for highly targeted advertising campaigns.

found.ee was first used during the album release campaign for Nathaniel Rateliff’s “Live At Red Rocks” which helped build an initial set of remarketing audiences. This group was utilized and subsequently added onto for the 2018 release “Tearing at the Seams” which included the single, “You Worry Me.” found.ee links, and the found.ee pixel itself (installed on the official website) made it possible to understand who fans were, where they were, and what they were interested in as it relates to consuming the music the band releases.

With audiences being built and refreshed across multiple releases and tours, Concord was able to run digital advertising and target highly engaged fans of Nathaniel Rateliff, in the radio markets where the tour overlapped, and drive fans directly to stream and purchase.

Audio ads were run through Spotify and iHeartRadio, both set up through the found.ee advertising platform, each with a message from Nathaniel Rateliff, and targeted to both new and existing fans in those markets, allowing Concord to help fans that heard “You Worry Me” on radio and streaming platforms continue their journey to experience the new album “Tearing at the Seams”, and ultimately increase consumption in those markets.

Results: Increased consumption of the focus single, increase general streaming, and increased revenue.

Because each market has so many variables that factor into the net results, and generally speaking, most markets in the test saw streams continue to increase week over week, we compared the rate of acceleration within each market to itself to minimize extraneous variables.

The advertising strategy, along with the unique targeting capabilities of the advertising channels, resulted in a minimum increase in the rate of acceleration by 74% in each market, and increased the overall consumption in those markets. This was facilitated through the Concord Music and Fantasy Records teams’ ability to identify the proper markets, build remarketing audiences, and run intelligently targeted digital advertising campaigns.

While all markets in the test, (the control group – the markets with radio and tour overlap) those supported by the digital advertising, generally saw week over week growth in volume, the rate of acceleration for the control averaged far lower metrics than those markets supported by the digital advertising.

For additional support of the conclusion, and because of the difficulty in isolating all variables, and a desire to not draw false equivalences, we also specifically drew a comparison between Boston (no advertising support) and Philadelphia (had advertising support). Boston and Philadelphia’s have similarities:
Both are major markets with similar size DMA’s reported; both had radio play with tour overlapping; the tour dates were just two days apart from each other (both sold out in advance); both had similar stream volume in the month before the test (with Boston having slightly more stream volume in the previous month); the single focus “You Worry Me” showed week over week growth in both markets.

Spotify Audio, iHeart Audio, and Remarketing, all run through found.ee, contributed to a rapid acceleration for “You Worry Me” in Philadelphia, compared to that of Boston. Comparing the rate of acceleration between Philadelphia and Boston, the Philadelphia’s increase was 100% higher than Boston’s during the same time period.

In summary, the advertising strategy and execution in the experimental group of markets more than doubled the rate of stream acceleration versus the control group. Additionally, streaming of “You Worry Me” grew by 16% in the experimental group, contributed to an 8% overall increase in overall streaming of Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats.