A new IPA and Bauer Media study finds that campaigns combining audio, outdoor and publishing report 33% more brand effects than campaigns using none of the three. The figure is worth knowing, but the more practical point for anyone booking media this quarter is that one sales house now sells all three channels, and that changes how you should negotiate.
What’s happened
On 3 November the IPA and Bauer Media published Winning The Great Brand Race, an analysis of 569 campaigns in the IPA Effectiveness Databank from 2010 to 2024. It compared campaigns that used audio, out-of-home and publishing alongside other media with campaigns that used none of the three. According to the report, the all-three group recorded 33% more brand effects and 8% more business effects, was 69% more likely to report very large gains in brand trust, and 45% of those campaigns reported large or very large activation effects against 15% of the others. Bauer is careful to say the findings show association rather than cause and effect, and the research is badged “The Bauer Effect” for a reason: since buying Clear Channel’s Europe-North business, Bauer sells radio, roadside and street-furniture posters and magazines through one commercial team.
Why it matters to media buyers at auction houses, promoters and specialist firms
We would treat research funded by the seller as an argument rather than a plan, but the underlying pattern rings true. Radio, posters and print are the channels most of our clients already use to put a sale date, a fight night or a claims deadline in front of the right people, and they do complement each other. The Media Leader’s reading of the same data is the useful nuance: most of the uplift came from adding any one of the three channels, and going from one to all three added comparatively little on top. The lesson is not “buy everything from Bauer”. It is “don’t be single-channel”.
The bigger change is commercial. One sales house across three channels means bundled proposals, and we expect plenty of them between now and the January sale period. Bundles can be good value, but a package discount can hide a weak rate in one of the lines, and it can nudge you into a magazine or a poster format you would not have chosen on merit. This is where we earn our keep: we unpick the bundle, price each channel against what the late-space market is actually charging that week, and only accept the package if every line stands up on its own. If it doesn’t, we take the two channels that do and buy the third elsewhere. If London posters are on your list for Christmas or the January sales, it is worth reading what Oxford Street’s pedestrianisation means for OOH buyers before you sign a package.
For a regional auction house that might mean Greatest Hits Radio or Hits Radio local hours in the fortnight before a sale, six-sheets on the arterial roads into the saleroom town, and a page in the specialist title your consignors actually read. For a promoter, it is KISS or Absolute airtime, roadside posters within a few miles of the arena, and the local paper the week tickets go on general sale. The study says the combination works; our job is to get the combination at the right price.
What we’d do
First, ask for channel-by-channel rates before you entertain any bundle. We do this with Bauer, Global, JCDecaux and the publishers as a matter of routine, and we benchmark each line against the late-space deals we have closed in the previous month, not against the rate card.
Second, hold a share of the budget back for the final two weeks. Radio airtime unsold the week before transmission, poster panels unsold in the fortnight before posting and print pages the day before press are where the real discounts sit, and they sit there in all three channels at once. We watch that inventory daily for clients and move quickly when the price is right.
Third, keep the creative consistent across the three. The report links emotional creative in all-three campaigns to 23% more business effects than rational creative, which is a sample-size caveat away from proof, but the practical version holds: same line, same offer, same date on the radio spot, the poster and the page, so each channel reminds people of the others.
How VCM can help
We buy radio, outdoor and print for specialist businesses every week, and we negotiate late space across all three so that you get the combination the research recommends at a price the research never mentions. Start with our radio advertising service, then get in touch on 0333 577 1848 or at James@vcmweb.co.uk. Send us the sales house’s proposal and we’ll tell you what it should cost right now, no obligation.
