Bauer has made the digital audio from Absolute Radio, KISS, Magic, Hits Radio and Greatest Hits Radio available to buy through Amazon Ads. It is a handy new route to people who listen over the internet, but it is not the same thing as a spot on FM or DAB, and the price still needs checking.
What’s happened
On 7 October Bauer Media announced that advertisers can now plan and run audio campaigns on its stations through Amazon Ads Agent, Amazon’s ad-buying platform. The ads reach people listening in apps, online and on smart speakers, including Alexa, and the deal is built on audioXi, Bauer’s own digital audio advertising platform. Bauer puts its total audience at 23.5 million weekly UK listeners across all formats, and Amazon said at its UK Upfront the same day that it now carries audio from Bauer, Global and News UK. Neither company has said anything about prices or minimum spends.
Why it matters to radio advertisers
Be clear about what is on sale. This is Bauer radio advertising in the stream: the ad a listener hears when Greatest Hits Radio is playing through a phone app, a website or a smart speaker. Nothing in the announcement says you can buy a spot on FM or DAB this way. The two are different products. A broadcast spot is bought by station and time of day and judged against Rajar’s listening figures. A streamed ad is typically bought by the thousand, can be aimed at a region or a type of listener, and is counted one play at a time.
Streamed listening is no longer a sideshow. Bauer’s announcement quotes Rajar figures from June 2026 showing that connected audio reaches 75% of the UK population each week. For an auction house, Greatest Hits Radio and Magic, whose listeners tend to be older, are an obvious fit; for a fight promoter, KISS and Absolute Radio are closer to the crowd. Being able to reach those listeners on a smart speaker in the kitchen, in the week before a sale or a fight night, is useful.
But easier to buy is not the same as cheaper to buy. A platform does not haggle. Bauer still sets the price of its streams, and a platform in the middle may add costs of its own. Late space on broadcast radio works the other way round. We speak to Bauer, Global and the other sales houses every week, we know which stations and times of day are still unsold, and we negotiate on that. For most of our clients, in our experience, that remains the cheapest way to reach a lot of listeners in a region quickly.
There is one more thing to watch. The streamed audience is the one that is changing fastest. As we wrote in our piece on Global Radio Plus, Global now lets listeners pay to remove the ad breaks from its music stations on Global Player. If you are paying for streamed audio, you want a report that shows how many ads were actually played, to how many people, and how often.
What we’d do
Keep broadcast as the base of the plan. Buy the FM and DAB airtime late, station by station, and let that do the heavy lifting on reach. That is the part we negotiate for you.
Add streamed audio as its own line. Keep it separate, cap it, and use it for the jobs it is good at: one region, one type of listener, or extra weight in the final week. Ask for plays, listeners reached and frequency in the report.
Get two prices before you choose a route. Ask what the same Bauer audience costs bought direct and bought through Amazon, with every fee included. We would get both quotes, set them beside the late broadcast rate, and tell you which mix gives you the most listeners for the money.
How VCM can help
We build radio plans that use broadcast and streamed audio for what each does best, and we negotiate the airtime late so you pay less for the same listeners. Take a look at how we buy radio advertising, then get in touch on 0333 577 1848 or at James@vcmweb.co.uk. Send us your current radio plan, or just your dates and region, and we will talk it through and tell you what it should cost right now, no obligation.
