Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) has redesigned its Hit and Triple M apps to take advantage of surging mobile listeners, boosted by the bushfire crisis and coronavirus pandemic.
In-app listening has increased by 48% year-on-year, with 3.88 million mobile listening hours reported. The Hit Network app saw a 40% increase in unique users while Triple M saw an 18% rise year-on-year from June 2019.
SCA says the growing figures are largely driven by a demand for news during the summer bushfire crisis and floods, and now the pandemic, with a 203% increase of in-app news consumption reported in the past six months.
To better serve these changing consumer behaviours the redesign includes a new feature with a dedicated section for news on demand, providing users with greater access to local headlines. Users can also set their preferences to receive regular notifications of breaking news.
“We’ve redesigned the listening experience on the new apps to support how audience behaviour is evolving,” says SCA head of digital product and innovation Chris Johnson.
“Users now have a choice of live radio streams from our FM and DAB+ stations, catch-up podcasts of our best shows and up-to-the-minute on-demand local news and we’ve made it simple to switch between all of them.”
Other new features include a ‘win’ section to allow listeners to enter competitions directly from the app.
“Our goal is to give listeners total control over their experience, and once signed in they can build a personal library of shows and get timely notifications of show availability,” Johnson says.
“Our growing signed-in listener base also benefits advertisers using our instream advertising platform and delivering increased addressable inventory for greater campaign targeting.”
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.