During the Cannes Lions Festival, marketing professor Mark Ritson has highlighted global research proving audio is a powerful “catalyst” which enhances the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
The session, titled ‘The Secret to Profit and Trust: Audio,’ drew on the Effie x System1 global Databank of 1,262 campaigns spanning 17 years to prove how commercial audio lifts campaign performance. It played to a room filled with marketers, agency leaders and audio networks.
The research found campaigns with audio outperform those without audio on profit (+75 per cent), trust (+81 per cent), price insensitivity (+81 per cent) and customer acquisition (+19 per cent). Audio’s profit contribution also scales with media spend. Across 14 measures, the average uplift for all campaigns with audio was +22 per cent, in comparison to campaigns without audio.
“The case for audio’s effectiveness is unequivocal; in every market we’ve studied globally: audio is the catalyst that makes your whole campaign work harder,” Ritson said.
“For a relatively modest investment, it’s an unfair advantage hiding in plain sight. It’s the kind of evidence you cannot unhear.”
The data also found audio nearly doubles the profit generated by emotionally driven campaigns, and its effect compounds when it is paired with distinctive brand assets and run consistently over time.
The original study was commissioned in Australia, where CRA analysed the Advertising Council of Australia’s (ACA) Effie data with independent marketing consultant Rob Brittain and Mark Ritson, who called it “beautiful data”.
That modelling has now been taken to the world stage, tested against a new global databank from the UK, US, Europe and Ireland, and presented to an international audience of advertisers, agencies and audio networks.
“In a competitive landscape where advertisers need their campaigns to work even harder, the evidence again points to the power of audio,” Lizzie Young, CEO at CRA said.
“For brands, the Effie and System1 data is clear: audio drives significantly stronger profit, deeper trust and the price resilience that protects margins. That a case first built on Australian Effie data now holds across the UK, US and Ireland only shows how universal audio’s advantage is as a catalyst in the media mix.”
