Especially for radio broadcasters and audio content publishers it’s so incredibly important to know: How am I being received JUST NOW, in this precise second? Who’s listening to me at the moment? Which promotional message can I play right now? How much money am I currently making with it? And who am I making the money with?

How does it work in your neck of the woods?

Presumably like this: You have an audio offering, usually your simulcast FM program, combined with DAB+ and the same signal is streaming over the website or the app. In addition, there’s a good dozen genre streams. That’s just how it’s done. We still have to talk about it. But let’s postpone that for a bit.

So far so good, for the time being. You’re not alone in that!

Semi-annually or rather quarterly the “much-loved” and annotated certificates arrive – the ma or just the numbers of ma IP Audio. They’ve been looking good for about 14 months as well.

Furthermore, those who have surrendered their inventory to a marketer will eventually get an invoice for delivered campaigns and credit for their business. Periodically the marketer will invite you over and there’ll be colorful charts, visions and sandwiches.

But if we’re being honest: “quarterly” and “eventually” won’t enable you to control success and make decisions.

Imagine you’re driving a car and you don’t know how many are riding along with you, you have no clue as to what’s going on on your account and you wait for the bank to mail you account statements once a month.

That can’t possibly be the business model you stand for.

But let’s assume that’s still the way it is right now: How are you handling your team, your partners and your insights? What derivatives can be made from that and turned into success or rather Euros?

To answer these questions, you have ma IP audio, marketing income with the corresponding TKPs and maybe one more tool that allegedly delivers real-time data.

Really? For every user device, in any bandwidth and with every delay correction in real time?

Fine – there are already lots of sources with different data und numbers and they only have to be read, weighted and interpreted correctly.

Does that work objectively and is the data truly in REAL TIME? Does it fit the ma statement and, most importantly, does it fit into the time and expectations for advertising?

That’s where I come in! I know few, if not even next to no stations where management, the sales director and the programming directors have the same understanding and interpretation of these numbers.

Everybody tinkers around with the numbers from the perspective of their position and it’s kind of always been like that.

I say: Stop reacting – now it’s time to act! Everybody interprets data differently, they give themselves a pat on the shoulder for their interpretation, sometimes they “hide” behind it or find some enchanting words to make it look nice.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to be academically educated again, you don’t have to fear complex tables or wait for prophets from some far-away place. You need everything to be simple, visible and super comprehensible at one quick glance.

Important: all online audio numbers and datasets that are presented to you today, even from external service providers, consultants, software solutions, analytic tools – whatever – you’ll already have. You own and generate them yourself!

Now it’s about viewing them comprehensibly processed. And not when it’s already too late, or tomorrow, or next week, next quarter, with some random partial parameters – but right now, at the moment it’s happening.

Let me give you a simple example:

You have 750.000 active, marketable sessions that are longer than 60 seconds in the MA IP Audio. Marketers and the sales team quote this weeks later, saying: “we have made 180.000 ad deliveries.

Oh yeah?

With which campaigns and motives? On which channel? What about the unoccupied ad space? What was played out as pre-stream and what was played out additionally as in-stream?

In my opinion everybody should give that some thought and plate the “unoccupied space” in gold. Of course, only somebody that knows what space is occupied and what isn’t, can do that.

Where do your listeners come from anyway? From licensed FM or DAB+ transmission areas or from someplace else? I say: 10-25% are listening from beyond the classic transmission areas. And this creates some wonderful possibilities for marketing.

That’s why only live is also life!

You need a dashboard that delivers, in real time, all data relevant for management, sales directors and program producers. As nicely and neatly visualized as the cockpit of an airport tower, as comprehensible as the welcome screen of online banking platforms, as performant as a Porsche GT3.

When these real-time datasets then match the quarterly data disclosed at a later date, when you constantly see which listeners are taking part in which offerings, which access point, which aggregator, app, website or Voice Assistant is used to bring your audience to you – then you’re finally partaking live!

Get more acquainted with your inventory, learn how to understand it more easily and then how to control it yourself.

That won’t please everyone. You’ll just have to deal with that as well. But you’re in charge and you have to make sure that your offering is successful.

I’m telling you now: This is where fairytales of the branch about interfaces, DMPs and other “ghosts” start to cause uncertainty.

Owning and interpreting relevant and qualitative data, comprehensibly and transparently visualizing it for the station, this is what makes it great and fuels the challenge, internally and externally.

Your property. Your knowledge.

With this, controlling programming and products is even more fun and it also produces a harvest of reach and cash.

A sensible dashboard presents you with your performance, geolocalized and at a glance – and not just after the completion of a session. Your aggregator reach, your share of the earnings (if you have deposited your TKP’s) and, for program producers in particular: the real consecutive session time.

Trust me: All of this is – provided that there’s a stable streaming connection – a dream for monetization.

The duration of use quickly shows you which sweeps will have to be programmed and how many sponsored messages can be dosed with what logic.

Such a dashboard also presents you with your bouquet performance straight away. Since a lot of streams out there are simply a headline. No brand, no performance, no cash cow. They’re simply redundant or at least in strong need of renovation.

Content is king – we’ve all heard that at least once before…

With this knowledge you can make better use of the energy and produce success.

Transparency, simplicity and their resulting opportunities, visibility of what’s relevant for controlling and management anytime, anywhere and for each unit of your company, that’s what makes up a real dashboard – a performance, cash, and session-time board.

Welcome, real-time dashboard.

Good day!