Audio Advertising Budgets: Determining the Right Investment Level

Audio is one of advertising's best-kept secrets. While consumers spend 21% of their media time immersed in music and podcasts, many brands are still playing catch-up to this fact. 1 Currently, only 67% of marketers include audio in their media budgets at all, and for those who do, it’s often a tiny slice of the pie. 2

In fact, 46% of marketers allocate only 1-10% of their total ad spend to digital audio. 2 This discrepancy creates a unique opportunity for your brand. It’s a chance to reach enthusiastic, receptive audiences throughout their daily lives, including in screen-free moments. By prioritizing audio, you can establish your voice before your competitors even realize the potential they’re missing.

Building that presence starts with a smart strategy. Below, we’ll explore how to determine the right audio advertising budget for your goals and evaluate audio’s ROI alongside other media channels. 

How brands calculate audio advertising budget allocation

Define campaign goals 

Your budget should be a direct reflection of your goals. Digital audio is a full-funnel channel that can support objectives from awareness, to consideration, to conversion. For upper-funnel goals, audio offers massive scale and brand lift capabilities. For mid- and lower-funnel objectives, you can benefit from its conversion power. Clarifying these goals upfront ensures you allocate the proper budget to what matters most.

Assess your target audience reach 

To plan your spend effectively, know who your consumers are and where they spend their time. Are they devoted true crime fans eagerly awaiting a new podcast episode? Or are they always on the move, with the SiriusXM Streaming Network as their trusted co-pilot? 

Audio's strength lies in its ability to reach consumers during moments that other media often can't. By identifying listener habits and preferences, brands can allocate budget toward the platforms, content, and formats most likely to drive results. The more precisely you define your audience, the more efficiently you can invest your media dollars.

When you know who you want to reach, we have the leading platforms (and audiences) to connect you with them. 

Analyze your historical performance 

Your past campaigns are the best guiding star to improve future spend and optimize budget allocation. Review how your media mix performed both with and without audio to see where the real impact happened. Look beyond last-click metrics and evaluate audio's role throughout the customer journey. Metrics such as brand lift, ad recall, completion rates, website visitation, and conversion activity can help uncover the true impact of your audio investment. 

Consider geographical markets 

Your target location plays a major role in budget allocation. Are you looking to make yourself heard throughout the entire country or engage consumers in specific markets? Audio offers flexibility across both approaches. National campaigns can leverage broad-reaching content and premium programming, while local and regional campaigns can use geographic targeting to reach listeners in specific states, cities, or designated market areas (DMAs). This level of precision helps brands align spend with market priorities and business objectives.

Factor in creative production costs 

Quality creative is a non-negotiable variable in your budget equation. In the modern audio landscape, your production can be as streamlined or as elaborate as your vision requires. You might outsource top talent or you may turn to synthetic voices for flexible, quick-turn campaigns.

The key is developing creative that captures attention, resonates with listeners, and aligns with campaign objectives. Investing in strong creative from the start can improve performance and maximize the value of every media dollar spent.

And whether you have a finished script or aren’t sure where to begin, our in-house audio creative agency, Studio Resonate, can help. From professional scripting, to diverse casting, to final production, our team brings award-winning creative expertise to make your message stand out.

Allocate budget for testing 

Don’t assume the work ends once your ad is out in the wild. Set aside a portion of your budget for ongoing experimentation. A/B testing is a crucial part of the creative process, allowing you to get your messaging closer to perfection, whether you’re testing CTAs, messaging, voices, or more. Switching up your creative assets also prevents ad fatigue, ensuring your brand stays in listeners’ ears without overwhelming them. By treating optimization as an ongoing process rather than a one-time activity, marketers can continuously improve ROI over time.

When to increase digital audio advertising investment

When launching a new product or entering a new market 

Introducing something new requires both repetition and high visibility. Scaling up your ad frequency is a smart strategy for a new brand or product. Unlike other media that relies on screens, digital audio follows listeners throughout their entire day, from slow breakfasts to busy workdays and family dinners, allowing your message to reach them across moments and environments.

When target audiences are consuming more audio 

One of the clearest signals to increase investment is when your audience is actively consuming more audio content. Media consumption habits are shifting, and consumers are increasingly listening to digital audio. Today, 81% of Americans 12+ listen to digital audio monthly. 3 When audiences devote significant time to a channel that remains relatively underinvested, brands have an opportunity to gain efficient reach and stand out in a less crowded advertising environment.

When high-impact seasons approach 

Busy periods, like the holidays, are when everyone is on the move, and it becomes harder to capture attention. During these periods, audio successfully cuts through visual clutter. Audio can be particularly valuable during seasonal campaigns, promotional events, and retail media initiatives because it allows brands to maintain a consistent presence throughout the consumer journey. Plus, dynamic audio insertion (DAI) lets you stay agile, swapping creatives in real time to reflect new inventory or seasonal promos.

When competitors are increasingly investing in audio 

Market trends can also provide important budget signals. Staying competitive can mean strategically matching or exceeding your competitors’ presence in key channels. So, if your competitors are dialing up their spend, it’s time to maintain your share of voice.

Comparing audio advertising ROI against other media channels

Measurable across the funnel 

No need to take guesses when evaluating your audio investment. With our full suite of measurement solutions, you can track impact from the very first listen to the final purchase. Depending on your campaign objectives, brands can measure outcomes like ad recall, brand favorability, store traffic, and much more. 

Delivers value across campaign objectives

Audio can pique audience attention, make your product memorable, and increase brand loyalty. While many marketers use digital audio for upper-funnel goals like brand awareness and reaching new audiences, don’t forget about its impressive full-funnel power.

Audio can support consumers throughout the entire marketing funnel by driving consideration, reinforcing purchase intent, and encouraging action. Because listeners often engage with audio during everyday activities—including commuting and shopping—brands have opportunities to reach consumers at multiple decision-making moments throughout the day.

Highly effective compared to other media 

In a time of visual overstimulation and information overload, audio finds a direct path to the hearts and minds of your audience. Audio ads drive 50% more attention than benchmarks across TV, social, and display. 4What’s more, digital audio generates a stronger impact on lasting memory: 49% higher than AM/FM ads and 36% higher than traditional TV ads. 5For marketers comparing channels, attention and memorability are critical ROI factors because ads that are remembered are more likely to influence future consumer behavior.

Offers a wide variety of advanced targeting 

Modern audio advertising comes with advanced targeting capabilities. We combine first-party data and privacy-first solutions to deliver your ads directly into the right ears based on much more than demo and geo, including specific audience segments and real-time moods and activities. This combination of scale, relevance, and privacy-conscious targeting helps marketers maximize efficiency while reaching audiences most likely to engage.

Boost your audio investment with SiriusXM Media

The largest ad-supported audio advertising ecosystem in the US? Check. An iconic portfolio from the SiriusXM Podcast Network to the SiriusXM Streaming Network? Check. The most celebrated names and beloved hosts in podcasting? Check. 

We are your one-stop shop for all things audio, reaching 255M listeners across our networks and platforms. 6 Whether your audience is in the car, at home, or on the go, we have the content and insights to help create a winning campaign. It’s time to close the audio investment gap and start reaching the ears that matter most. Let’s chat.

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