As marketers track the trends impacting their cross-channel media strategies, The Record offers a distinct perspective of the time spent with ad-supported audio channels.

Between April and June of 2024, listeners gave 67% of their daily time with ad-supported audio to radio, 19% to podcasts, 11% to streaming audio services and 3% to satellite radio. Among 18-to-34 year-olds, radio’s share of time increased from 45% in the first quarter to 48% in Q2 while podcasts decreased slightly from 37% to 35%.

A quarterly snapshot: Edison Research Share of Ear®

This chart shows how Americans spent their time with ad-supported audio in Q2 2024.

Explore even more audio insights with the additional data tables here. 

Radio, the original ad-supported audio platform, consistently reaches all corners of the population. Among younger consumers, nearly half of all daily ad-supported audio time is spent with radio, while older listeners give almost three-quarters of their time to radio.

These additional tables detail how the share of audience varies by format, age, demographic and platform for the top 15 largest-reaching AM/FM radio formats. These differentiate between the share of all radio listening and the share of streaming listening specifically, which are those listening to the digital streams of radio stations.

Tracking radio listening by format

This chart reveals which radio formats have the highest share of listening and how that differs between total radio (over-the-air and streaming combined) and the radio streaming universe.

Explore even more audio insights with the additional data tables here.

The share of streaming listening by format is generally higher for News and Sports programming and certain rock-based formats including Alternative and Classic Rock. When sorting by race in the additional data tables, the ‘spoken word’ trends generally hold up across groups, while there are other unique differences for some Spanish-Language formats among Hispanic listeners.

Explore even more audio insights with the additional data tables here. 

As the data demonstrates, audio remains a fixture in American’s daily media habits and stands out as an opportunity for enhancing your cross-media campaigns.

The Record provides a quarterly analysis of audio listening behaviors across the total radio universe. The charts represent average daily usage and share of listening for U.S. audiences. 

For even more audio data and insights, connect with our team of experts. 

Source

 ¹Edison Research, “Share of Ear®” Q2 2024

The post The Record: Q2 U.S. audio listening trends appeared first on Nielsen.

Case study

Creator platforms drive emotional connections and brand outcomes

Nielsen + Raptive: The power of creator spaces in the digital era

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Case study

Creator Platforms Drive Emotional Connections and Brand Outcomes

Nielsen + Raptive: The Power of Creator Spaces in the Digital Era

Contact us

Introduction

Brand effectiveness in the creator ecosystem

Raptive, a media company that specializes in helping over 5,000 creators monetize their websites, sought to measure their impact on key brand metrics for a variety of beauty, home and CPG brands. With Nielsen Brand Impact, they conducted research to evaluate the effectiveness of their creator websites compared to social media and traditional websites.

Objective

Comparing creator spaces to traditional websites

The study aimed to understand the impact of creator spaces on advertising effectiveness by comparing creator website environments with traditional website and social environments.

Challenge

Quantifying emotion and perception

Raptive faced the challenge of identifying the emotional connection creators uniquely establish with their audiences, which is vital to driving lasting connections, but is difficult to quantify.

Solution

Nielsen captures brand effectiveness 

By commissioning a Nielsen Brand Impact study, Raptive leveraged their expertise to quantify brand lift and perception. Nielsen’s tailored solution allowed for the evaluation of creator-focused content in a new way, providing unparalleled insight into brand KPIs and content elements.

Key findings

70%

Websites matter

The commissioned study revealed that when the brand was advertised on websites such as creator blog posts or sponsored content (vs. social media), ad recall was a whopping 70% higher. And when advertised on websites, the brand saw higher purchase intent and affinity.

66%

Creator websites are relatable spaces

Creator websites were found to offer uniquely positive ad placement opportunities, scoring a 66% brand fit with lifestyle, a strong indicator of purchase intent.

40%

Creator fans are powerhouses that drive outcomes

Creator fans were influential, with 40% higher purchase intent and 45% higher brand recommendation likelihood when exposed to brands on creator websites compared to the general public.

77%

Creator fans foster deep brand connections

Creator fans trust and enjoy creator product recommendations, with over 86% of creator’s fans reporting trusting creator product recommendations and 88% saying they enjoy learning about new products or services through creators. In fact, 77% of creator fans felt connected to brands featured in creator content. 

How it works

Nielsen conducted an online study exposing panelists to simulated digital environments, which allow for natural immersion and interaction with realistic social feeds and sites. Then, Nielsen surveyed and analyzed responses from panelists who saw the ad on different digital environments versus those who had not, to uncover the true impact of the ads and their environments on key brand metrics.

Conclusion

Creator spaces are special and offer unique opportunities

Nielsen’s Brand Impact solution demonstrated that Raptive’s creator platform and ad placements effectively connected beauty, home and CPG brands with its audience, driving significant brand lift and emotional connections compared to social media and traditional websites, highlighting the key role that creator websites can provide. 

Working with Nielsen’s Brand Impact solution has provided significant insight for Raptive,” says Marla Newman, “Their expertise revealed the value of our creator platforms, showing significant brand lift and stronger emotional connections when compared to traditional websites. Thanks to Nielsen, we now can quantify the unique opportunities that creator spaces offer in advertising.

Marla Newman, EVP – Sales, Raptive

Want to talk with our team of experts?

Contact us

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Retail media networks are all about seizing the moment, so let’s jump right in.

What are retail media networks?

According to eMarketer, a retail media network is “an asset owned and operated by a retailer that publishes advertisements, or a third-party publisher with ads that leverage a retailer’s first-party shopper data.”

Retailers collect data about your shopping behavior and use it to personalize your experience, including the ads you see. They can use your shopping profile—and anything else they learn about you from your interactions with them—to influence the ads you see (or hear) on social media, CTV and digital radio. And on top of that, retail media networks are able to seamlessly tie impressions to sales on a platform, something that was not widely available before. 

How did retail media start?

For most industry observers, the birth of retail media was the release of Amazon’s programmatic advertising solution, Amazon Ads Platform (AAP), in 2012.

Learning from people’s shopping behavior, presenting them with relevant offers and reaching them at the point of purchase wasn’t exactly a new idea. Direct to consumer (DTC) brands, and brands with loyalty programs before them, had long used first-party shopper data to target consumers. And grocery chains and big box retailers have always featured in-store displays and promotions. But the scale and automation offered by Amazon were unprecedented.

From about $600 million that first year to $45 billion in 2023, the rise of Amazon’s ad business has been meteoric—and that was before the launch of its ad-supported Prime Video tier in early 2024. Over time, its success has drawn hundreds of other retailers into the media business. Walmart, Target, Kroger, Instacart, The Home Depot and others are fueling a sector that’s growing at twice the pace of social media (16.3% vs. 8.7% in 2023, according to the IAB) and is expected to overtake linear TV over the next couple of years.

Why is there so much enthusiasm?

Retail media networks are a win-win-win for retailers, brands and consumers.

For large retailers, scale and specialized audiences can represent a whole new revenue stream—with much stronger margins than their core retail business to boot. BCG estimates retail media margins in the 70% to 90% range for onsite ads and 20% to 40% for offsite ads, at a time when inflation, supply-chain issues and other macroeconomic conditions are putting intense pressure on retailers’ standard lines of business.

For brands, retail media networks offer a chance to create audiences based on recent shopping behavior and reach those audiences with finely tuned messages at a time when they’re likely to be more receptive to those messages. Relevant ads to the right people and in the right context is a great combination, especially now that third-party cookies and other legacy identifiers are (slowly) being deprecated. And retail media networks aren’t limited to lower-funnel campaigns either. No wonder 70% of global marketers say retail media networks are more important to their 2024 media plan than the previous year.

Consumers win too because they don’t see ads for snow jackets or cruises to Alaska when they’re shopping for board shorts and snorkeling lessons in Hawaii.

Important media mix considerations

While retail media is undoubtedly an exciting new channel for advertisers, you should only invest in it for the right reasons. Is the audience worth the higher cost? Can you reach not just existing customers but also attractive new prospects? How does it fit with the rest of your media mix? Do you have consistent reporting to compare performance across other retail networks?

Too many marketers add retail media to their mix out of fear of missing out or out of concern that retailers might retaliate with inferior ‘shelf’ placement if they don’t buy advertising on the platform—something Forrester described as a form of hidden tax. Some advertisers are also under the impression that retail media networks solve the attribution puzzle with their closed-loop measurement because they’re so close to the moment of purchase. But last touch attribution isn’t any more reliable just because it’s on retail media.

Treating retail media like just another channel

With hundreds of options on the market, over two-thirds of ad buyers (69%) are overwhelmed by the complexity of the current retail media buying process. While there are calls for standardization, it’s still largely siloed from other media transactions—to say nothing of the process of reconciling retail media buying with the rest of the media ecosystem. Four in ten ad buyers have only enough bandwidth to work with at most three retail media networks at a time.

In a sign that retail media is maturing, the IAB just proposed new standards in Europe to tear down silos between players and harmonize their offerings. At Nielsen, we think that’s a good first step. Brands need consistent, transparent and outcomes-minded measurement across all of their media partners to get a full picture and build confidence in their overall media spend.

That confidence factor is essential to unlocking real spend. While advertisers are fine to shift some budget because of the measurable sales lift, there’s still uncertainty around the incremental value retail media can provide.  The best thing that can happen to retail media is to be treated as just any other channel. And moving real budgets at scale will require comparability across all measurement metrics. 

This is the right time for standards. Online and offline retail media are merging thanks to the rise of digital “smart” shelves, in-store mobile experiences and loyalty programs that connect in-store and online data to build holistic consumer profiles.  And retail media is already growing beyond lower-funnel activities and even retail, for that matter, with market leaders like Lyft, Marriott and Chase showing the way. It’s also crossing over into the CTV space, with trailblazing partnerships between Instacart and Roku, Walmart and Peacock, and of course Amazon and Prime Video. 

The post Need to Know: What are retail media networks, and why is everybody talking about them? appeared first on Nielsen.

According to APIA Vote, 83% of Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islanders (AANHPIs) have concerns about misinformation in the U.S. election, among Democrats and Republicans alike. At the same time, 78% of Asian Americans consume news at least once a day and are also 34% more likely to trust in the accuracy of news than the general U.S. population, creating opportunities for news media and brands to connect with the fast-growing segment of the U.S. population with $1.3 trillion in buying power¹. Doing so effectively requires a deeper understanding of the relationship between Asian Americans and the news.

Where do Asian Americans get their news?

Asian Americans are more likely than the general population to report turning to social media (Instagram, LinkedIn and Threads) and news aggregator sites as their top source for news. They are also 69% more likely to rely on friends and family, going to the people in their tightly-knit community who can break down headlines with the right context and relevant information.

When it comes to newspaper content, Nielsen’s research found that Asian audiences are most likely to turn to free newspaper websites. For marketers hoping to engage AANHPI audiences this year, tapping into reliable content on non-subscription news sites and social media platforms to help educate the AANHPI voter could be a valuable connection point.

Building trust through representation

With the always-on connectivity of smartphone apps and sites that Asians prefer, how can brands tap into them to create lasting engagement? Platforms with authentic, representative content is key, as 41% of AANHPI audiences are more likely to buy from brands that advertise with news outlets they trust². 

And here’s where the influence of journalists who are representative of the community comes in. For example, ABC’s World News Tonight with co-anchor Juju Chang and MSNBC’s Morning Joe with frequent reporter Richard Lui are in the top most-watched broadcast news programs for AANHPI viewers.³ And in the 2023 Asian American Journalist Association awards, an Axios project led by three Asian journalists was a winner. Their piece Everything You Need to Know to Vote in the 2022 Midterm Election drove tremendous audience engagement in two of the top sources of news for Asian Americans, Instagram Reels (30% more than previous) and news aggregator site Flipboard (double URL open rates). Stories told about the Asian American community by members of the community create connections with audiences while providing necessary and critical information to drive change and action.

The value of in-language media

TV news programming plays a much less significant role in AANHPI news engagement compared to other audience populations, but Asian Americans are 57% more likely to get news from international television. Asians make up the fastest-growing ethnic group in the U.S. today, coming from more than 20 countries around the world and speaking more than 50 different languages. 

Connecting with the diverse AANHPI community requires more than a one-size fits all approach. In a 2023 report, Nielsen explored the attitudes and media consumption preferences of Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese language speakers—representing about 40% of the Asian American population and three of the Asian languages most spoken at home.

More than 40% of total respondents ‘strongly agreed/agreed’ that Asian media offers programs and perspectives they trust. Furthermore, the study shows that more than 50% of Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese respondents prefer to buy brands that advertise on programs reflecting their culture. Opportunities exist for brands that invest part of their advertising spend in in-language media platforms.

Adjusting media plans in an election year

As ad prices rise with political campaigns buying up valuable ad inventory, advertisers can benefit from rethinking their media plans during this election year and connect with Asian audiences through the social media, aggregator sites and ad-supported newspaper sites they gravitate toward. One benefit of these channels is that they present a more addressable option—giving marketers improved measurement of ROI. 

Learn more about reaching Asian American consumers in Nielsen’s latest Diverse Intelligence Series report.

Notes

¹U.S. Census Projections 2023 and Selig Center for Economic Growth 2022

²2024 Nielsen Survey on Trust in Media

³Nielsen National TV Panel, 2023

The post The power of news media: An important platform to reach Asian Americans in an election year appeared first on Nielsen.

The media buying playing field

It’s simple enough on paper: a network, TV station, streaming platform or other TV distributor has advertising inventory for sale alongside its programming; a brand (or an agency on its behalf) wants to use some of that inventory to reach customers and prospects;  if the seller’s audience is a good fit for the buyer’s intended target—and the price is right—then the deal goes through and everyone’s happy.

But in practice, media buying can get very complicated very quickly. What exactly are media buyers buying? How much inventory is there? What’s a good rate? Do all ad types perform the same? Who defines target audiences? Are there any guarantees?

Before any of those questions can be answered, the first step in the media buying journey is to understand what TV is. It’s not a disingenuous question. The TV landscape has changed a lot in recent years. From broadcast to cable, satellite, FAST TV and AVOD, viewers today have dozens of options to watch TV on their own terms. That’s great for viewers, and it gives media buyers more options, too. But every new platform comes with its own idiosyncrasies and adds another layer of complexity to the media buying equation.

Upfront and scatter

The first TV programs were sponsored by single advertisers. Campbell’s Soup sponsored Lassie; Johnson & Johnson: The Adventures of Robin Hood; Beech-Nut Gum: The Dick Clark Show; Philip Morris: I Love Lucy. It wasn’t long before the commercial pod emerged, greatly expanding the ad inventory on TV and setting the stage for media buying as we know it today.

In the U.S., TV media buyers buy advertising at the Upfronts—a weeklong event in the spring each year where networks and other distributors introduce upcoming shows—and in the scatter (or remnant) market. Doing business at the Upfronts 6 to 12 months before new shows are aired allows sellers to secure funding well ahead of a new TV season, and buyers to lock-in guaranteed placements on coveted time slots and at a fair price.

These days, around USD$20 billion worth of advertising money changes hands at the Upfronts for primetime broadcast and cable, and about the same amount for other dayparts and CTV. Another USD$20-30 billion goes to the scatter market throughout the year, giving buyers the flexibility to bid for ad placements much closer to air time.

But what does ‘air time’ mean in a world where broadcast and cable represent just half of total TV viewing, as we noted in our recent report The Next Frontier: Your guide to the 2024-25 upfronts/newfronts planning season? The convergence of linear and streaming is quickly redefining media buying.

Where is the audience?

Nielsen’s Head of Global Marketing Alison Gensheimer pointed out that “TV isn’t going anywhere, it’s going everywhere. Definitions change depending on who you talk to, and I’m starting to wonder if it even matters. For advertisers, the important question—now and forever—is where the audience is.”

Media buying negotiations have long been tied to specific network, daypart, day-of-the-week combinations because that was the only way to reach audiences loyal to specific programs. Everyone in the mid-90s wanted to buy primetime on Thursdays nights on NBC because that was when Friends and Seinfeld would air, and those shows attracted the most young adults. 

But if the ultimate objective is to reach a particular audience—whether it’s young adults, foodies, outdoor enthusiasts or new parents—a TV lineup isn’t a requirement anymore. Thanks to CTV and other data and infrastructure breakthroughs like measurement-grade identity graphs, there are ways today to reach advanced audiences on TV that don’t involve using a niche program as a surrogate.

Media buying on TV is starting to look a lot like media buying on digital platforms, doesn’t it?

How is measurement evolving at Nielsen?

At Nielsen, we’ve been reporting C3 (live + 3 days) and C7 (live + 7 days) average commercial minutes for over 15 years, and those panel-based metrics have provided and continue to provide a very robust currency for media buyers and sellers. There’s tremendous value in having a consistent metric year after year, but the level of fragmentation in the industry has reached a tipping point. 

We’re now transitioning to a big data + panel measurement methodology where the scale of big data is brought to bear to measure a wider variety of programs and get a more comprehensive view of audience behavior, and where panel data is used for validation and calibration. We’re also deploying technology capable of reporting commercials at the subminute level, making it possible for advertisers to understand the performance of a much wider selection of ad formats.

What does it mean for media buying on television?

At the moment, TV media buying is a complicated mix of tradition and modernity. Media buyers are being asked to combine the scale of linear TV with the addressability of CTV to meet brand and performance objectives. It’s no small ask, especially when media budgets are under pressure. But new measurement solutions on the horizon will bring more structure, consistency and granular insights to the negotiating table—and unlock more opportunities for both buyers and sellers.

The post Need to Know: The basic of TV media buying appeared first on Nielsen.

Marketers need to stay on top of these trends when developing cross-channel media strategies. That’s why we created The Record—a quarterly look at how U.S. audiences spend their time with audio. An important tool for advertisers, artists, broadcasters and podcasters alike, The Record offers a unique view of time spent with ad-supported content.

The total use of audio is significant—Americans spend more than four hours with audio every day¹—and it’s important to view it from multiple lenses. Consumers give nearly 70% of their daily ad-supported audio time to radio, 20% to podcasts and the rest to streaming audio (music services) or satellite radio (select channels).

The Record tracks the share of daily time spent with ad-supported audio, which represents the most important part of the audio landscape to advertisers.

A quarterly snapshot: Edison Research Share of Ear®

This chart shows how Americans spent their time with ad-supported audio in Q1 2024. 

Explore even more audio insights with the additional data tables here.

While Americans use radio throughout their day in many different settings, most listening happens outside of the home during daylight hours. And in the car, more than 80% of ad-supported audio time goes to radio. With radio offerings that spread news, culture, music, comedy, sports talk and companionship—there are meaningful ways to reach every corner of the population.  

The following tables detail how the share of audience changes by format, age, demographic and platform for the top 15 largest-reaching AM/FM radio formats. These differentiate between the share of all radio listening and the share of streaming listening specifically (those listening to the digital streams of the stations).

Tracking radio listening by format

This chart tracks which radio formats have the highest share of listening and how that differs between total radio (over-the-air and streaming combined) and the radio streaming universe.

Explore even more audio insights with the additional data tables here. 

The share of streaming listening to each format is also dynamic when sorted by age. The formats which have a higher share of audience for streaming are spoken word, which are inclusive of News and Sports, and rock-based formats, which include Alternative and Classic Rock. Conversely, Country and Spanish-Language music formats have significantly lower streaming shares compared to total listening.

Among younger listeners (18-34), there is much more balance between total share and streaming share which makes sense as these are the most avid audio streamers.

Explore even more audio insights with the additional data tables here.

Even with new channels emerging every year, audio remains a cornerstone of the American media diet. This is particularly true in 2024 with marquee sports and news events like the summer Olympics and presidential election.  As marketers look at where to best engage with audiences, The Record sheds light on audio’s reach and impact. 

The Record provides a quarterly analysis of audio listening behaviors across the total radio universe. The charts represent average daily usage and share of listening for U.S. audiences.

Source

¹ Source: Edison Research, “Share of Ear®” Q1 2024

For even more audio data and insights, connect with our team of experts.

Contact us

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When times are tight and the future is uncertain, especially amid lingering fears about recession and a sluggish ad market, it’s tempting for marketers to focus on quick wins to get some points on the board and live to fight another day. Those quick wins, however, aren’t what sustain businesses. While helpful for the next quarterly read-out, short-term sales can easily distract teams from thinking about what really drives success: long-term growth.

Those distractions can be costly. While targeted and direct marketing makes sense when consumers are feeling the pinch or a business needs to meet a sales target, these approaches aren’t as lucrative as you might think. For example, we’ve found that promotions deliver only about half of the long-term returns that media spending does. That’s because incentives typically offset natural purchase cycles. And when consumers buy earlier at a lower price or buy more at a lower price, they’re removed from the market for that product later on, which is unfavorable to the promoter. Incentives can also train consumers to buy on incentives or to look for depth of incentive, which lowers long-term profitability.

The importance of balanced marketing strategies can’t be over-emphasized, especially when you consider that brand-building efforts are a lever that drive sales: Nielsen research has found that ongoing marketing efforts account for 10%-35% of a brand’s equity. What’s more, Nielsen Compass data shows that a brand loses 2% in future revenue for every quarter it doesn’t advertise. And over the long term, lost revenue takes a long time to gain back. Our research has found that it takes up to three to five years of solid and consistent brand building effort to recover from extended periods of not advertising.

And when you remove long-term brand building, brand awareness and consideration fall, which typically reduces the effectiveness of conversion marketing efforts. If you let your brand decay, future sales tend to decline at a 1:1 ratio. Lastly, pulling back on long-term marketing increases your cost of acquisition. So the reality of a short-term marketing strategy is share contraction because you’re forgoing future sales while increasing cost to drive near-term sales.

Historical research has also found that an outsized share of voice can increase a brand’s share of market. Several years ago, Nielsen analyzed more than 120 brands across 30 categories of typical advertising to test this thinking. The study results showed that, all things being equal, a 10-point difference between share of voice and share of market ultimately led to 0.5 percentage points of extra share growth. Practically, that means that a brand with a market share of 20.5% and an excessive share of voice of 10 points would grow its share of market to 21% in a single year.

But understanding the importance of brand building is the first step. To take your brand to the next level, it’s critical to understand which tactical investments produce the best returns in the long run. As with many industry terms and phrases, “long-term” can mean different things to different brands. The same can be true about evaluating long-term impact. Some may choose to lean on downstream purchases that result from conversions or previous brand exposures. Others may opt to analyze the impact that their marketing has on driving brand equity metrics, like consideration and purchase intent.

Each of these approaches help define the foundational building blocks of a brand’s base business, but they’re very different from one another. They also work much better when they complement each other instead of as independent approaches. Said differently, long-term measurement requires a holistic effort that incorporates both of these approaches: One that looks at the impact of downstream purchases as well as how consumer perceptions are affected by marketing exposures and how they’re sustained over time. 

Consider this: The impact of a single marketing exposure is a point in time. Once the exposure passes, its effect will fade over time. Comparatively, brand perceptions aren’t confined to a single point in time. Brand perceptions also aren’t static. They can shift, which is why marketers need to reinforce their messages over time to ensure they’re frequently engaging with their target consumers. Reinforcing those messages through media investments carries significant weight. According to the ROI norms data in Nielsen Compass, the long-term impact of media can double the impact of media spend, particularly for upper-funnel channels like TV and digital video.

Aside from aggregated proof points, analytics at a brand level can show how a shift from short-term decision making to a more well-rounded marketing approach can help marketers understand how to allocate their budgets while still working to build their brands for long-term success.

For example, a national insurance company recently set out to understand the strength of its marketing efforts across channels, campaigns and KPIs. With an eye on an unpredictable economy on the horizon, the company knew that if it wanted to safeguard its marketing investments, it would need to validate them both in the present and the future. 

To get a read on how to approach its marketing in the short term, the company enlisted Nielsen to use its most recent spending data to model quotes and items for new and existing customers, as well as renewals. The models also factored in the costs associated with new customer acquisition and customer retention.

With a clear view of how to use its marketing budget efficiently, the company took its planning a step further to understand the short-term and long-term impact of marketing on sales. With the use of Nielsen’s Long-Term Effects analyses, the company was able to prove that its marketing efforts generated more than 31% increased incremental sales over the long term, thereby justifying its investments despite the economic uncertainty. The company also discovered which business lines benefitted the most from the marketing investments, as well as which marketing vehicles drove the biggest impact. 

Yes, short-term sales are appealing and can deliver results now, but longevity and long-term business vitality need effective, balanced marketing. And perhaps more importantly, marketers need the insight into their long-term efforts to keep their investments safe and their businesses growing.

This article originally appeared on MediaPost.

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Check out the on-demand session below to learn more about these key topics:

• Understanding the difference between measurement and currency
• The future of Big Data + Panels as a currency 
• Operationalizing clean room data

Learn more about Nielsen’s commitment to measurement integrity.

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In modern culture, hip-hop stands alone in this regard, and as it celebrates its 50^th birthday this month, we can see just how beloved and influential it has become.

While it would be nearly impossible to pinpoint the exact birth of hip-hop, most music historians cite a 1973 block party in the Bronx as the event that brought the critical elements together at a large, public event. At that party, DJ Kool Herc debuted the “merry-go-round,” a style of DJing that extended the break beat of a specific song by playing two copies of the same record and switching between them at the right moments. This, however, was a full six years before the Sugarhill Gang introduced hip-hop to a wide audience with the success of its hit song “Rapper’s Delight.” The Gracenote Global Music Data content team catalogs the most highly consumed artists from around the world, including just seven artists in this 1970s era of the genre. 

Today, the sound that defines the culture has grown well beyond its Bronx roots. In fact, more than 96,000 of the most-listened to artists globally are rap and hip-hop artists, and 149 countries are home to at least one hip-hop artist. And these artists have created more than 100 sub-genres of hip-hop music.

Interest in hip-hop music has become so global, in fact, that only one-third of today’s most-listened-to hip-hop artists are from the U.S. Hip-hop is also multilingual, as hip-hop spans English and 98 other languages, dialects, creoles and regional variations¹.

Men continue to dominate rap and hip-hop, but the genre maintains a powerful base of women who hold their own on the hip-hop charts. In fact, hip-hop boasts a notable amount of gender diversity from women, mixed duos, groups and non-binary artists, especially in collaborations.

The connection to hip-hop among the Black community is undeniable, especially in the U.S., where Black audiences are 6x more likely than the general population to say it’s their favorite genre. From a listener perspective, that appeal is most evident on the radio, as hip-hop stations attract 14% of all radio listening among Black audiences. Among Black audiences 18-34, the urban contemporary/hip-hop genre accounts for 30.7% of all listening on broadcast radio and 20% of streaming audio³. And hip-hop fandom is highest in the south and among Millennials.

Hip-hop’s persistent audience engagement across media platforms represents a big opportunity for advertisers to connect with Black consumers in culturally relevant ways. And the combination of this dominant genre and trusted outlets is leading to more business with Black-owned media. According to Nielsen Ad Intel, ad spend with top Black-owned radio stations in top markets increased 92% in 2022 compared with the prior year. But the opportunity exists in video content as well. 

The hip-hop programming genre on TV is not only one of the most representative for Black talent on screen at 89%, it delivers one of the most diverse audiences as well, with about two out of three Black viewers and nearly another quarter from White audiences. 

After half a century of hit making and culture shifting, it will be interesting to watch how hip-hop innovates for the next 50 years across the media landscape. 

Sources

 ¹ Gracenote Global Music Data
²  Nielsen Scarborough USA+, Release 2 2022
³ Nielsen Radio Database, fall 2022
⁴ Nielsen RADAR, fall 2022

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Check out the on-demand session below to learn more about these key topics:

• Ensuring accurate audience representation for all people  
• How best to leverage measurement solutions to reach diverse audiences in a fragmented ecosystem

Learn how Nielsen is meeting the moment with Nielsen ONE. 

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