Todd Thomas

When it comes to digital and radio, the future is now. As Todd Thomas would add, Futuri Media is also “now.” What was once just a novel listener engagement platform has grown into a suite of product to serve radio’ listeners and offer new engagement data to its client stations. Futuri has continued to innovate its product lines with the launching of #engage and Alexa Skills. Here, he offers new details on the cutting edge of their technologies.

After spending over two decades in radio, what prompted you to try something else – especially digital?

It was chance to be in a company that was 100% devoted to help its customers drive ratings, digital engagement and revenue growth. We have nearly 100 people in our company. The team is comprised of roughly 50% broadcast professionals and 50% tech experts. I’m proud to bring my knowledge to such a team, so it was pretty easy for me to accept Daniel Anstandig’s offer.

In your mind, what’s the biggest difference between the original LDR and Futuri?

LDR is one product, and Futuri is what we’ve evolved into – a suite of products and solutions that all drive ratings and revenue. Our company started out with a product called LDR – also known as Listener Driven Radio – in 2009, and since then we’ve added multiple products under the banner of Futuri. Now we’ve transformed the original LDR system into a new platform called #engage. The company has evolved in so many ways, where we offer even more products for radio and TV, and things like Alexa Skills for radio stations. Innovating new systems such as TopicPulse, Futuri Mobile, POST for audio on demand, and TopLine … to have everything under the LDR umbrella would not be the best way to brand everything, so Daniel and our leadership team made a decision to rebrand the company as it spread its wings.

What are the main challenges facing radio and its relationship with digital?

The biggest challenge for radio is to get out of old radio habits and embrace the opportunities and technology that help stations fit into the lives of their audience, rather than making the audience fit into what radio does. To be totally honest, sometimes radio gets in its own way. What I mean by that is instead of just pushing their brands all the time, they have to become more a part of what their audience is already doing. It’s no longer about emphasizing what the station is talking about; it’s what the audience is talking about. If it’s inconvenient to listen to a morning show one day, they’re not going to change their schedule just to hear their favorite bits. But if you have that content available after the show on demand, you’ll get that engagement with them that you would have lost for good.

And the best way to keep on top of that?

It goes back to where I want take the radio experience into the future. I truly believe you win if what you’re doing is helping radio stay ahead of the current. I can list something in all of our products where there’s an example of that. For example, POST, the Futuri product that allows you to instantly distribute broadcast and original content on-demand with one click. Netflix, of course, allows people to binge-watch shows on their time. Radio hasn’t done that yet; we’re not caught up to that, but there’s so much content in the morning show and other dayparts – great stuff that is basically used just once. Sure, they may replay that content during vacation “best-ofs” or for Saturday programming, but that’s not really taking advantage of the technology that’s available. And we don’t just offer stations products; we come to the table with strategies for using those products to drive ratings and revenue.

How does #engage better help radio?

#Engage takes the best of LDR and Takeover, audience engagement products that have been very successful, and adds innovative new features that take it to next level. For example, with #engage, you have more physical research, where radio can see what songs people are excited about, and a real-time social engagement discussion feature. One of biggest things #engage offers is Song Alerts, where we notify the listener via social media or texts when their favorite song is about to be played. It goes beyond alerting people who listen live. This notifies those who aren’t listening to the radio that their favorite song will soon be aired. Now they can sign up through #engage, be notified when their chosen song is about to play, fitting the station into their lives by sending them a text that says their favorite Bruno Mars song about to be played. By fitting into their lives, we drive a multi-platform engagement with the listener. It’s a strategy that works – ask Nielsen. They did a study that confirms Futuri’s Song Alerts are a significant ratings driver.

Does Futuri compile demo info on the consumers who use things like #engage?

Yes; we passively track their information using Quantcast. Also, when listeners start using  #engage, we have a two to three question pop-up window that asks about things like the users’ gender, and we provide that data to stations.

Can you separate P1s from P2s, or do these platforms essentially only appeal to P1s?

We’ve got a mix of both. Attracting more P1s all comes down to how the radio station talks about it on-air, and makes these capabilities a part of their strategy, rather than just throwing out in pre-recorded promos. Naturally, P1s want to be part of this, but P2s are very important as well. Anybody, whether you’re a P1 or P2, would want to have an influence on their favorite radio station, both in what music it plays and what the jocks are talking about on-air.

Has LDR and now #engage changed the way MDs do their job? Does it lessen their importance?

Our partners tell us that LDR and #engage have changed the way MDs and PDs do their jobs, but if anything, it makes their roles more important and gives them tools to be more successful. Look, you have to start someplace. You can’t just throw a hodgepodge of music on the air or into LDR or #engage. It’s always important for the MD to have his or her hands in it, and the PD as well. On top of the front-end tools for listeners, #engage gives MDs and PDs research on the back-end – that’s more ammo, more data, in a very useful day way rather than relying on old music callout. Really? Who has phones in their house anymore? Again, it all comes back to fitting into the audience’s lives.

How does streaming impact Futuri and all of its products?

If a radio station isn’t streaming by now, they’re not only way behind the times, they need really to move on it. No one is sitting in the house listening to stereos anymore! People go about their lives while listening on devices such as Amazon Echo and mobile, so streaming has to be big part of every radio station’s platform.

Futuri offers streaming for radio stations, using cutting-edge technology (HLS - HTTP live streaming) that’s designed to deliver a top-quality listener experience and get through office firewalls. We also just launched custom Alexa Skills for radio stations to make it easy for stations to be accessed on those smart-speakers. It’s estimated that by 2020, Amazon could sell 60 million Alexa-enabled devices globally every year. If your station isn’t easily available on a person’s Amazon Echo via Alexa Skills, who’s to say they won’t move onto a listening option that is easily available?

How does Spotify impact Futuri? Do you consider it to be a competitor to you and radio in general?

I definitely think Spotify is a competitor to radio. However, I also think Spotify fails to offer a lot of things that radio can and should be providing its audience. It’s not just about getting the music right. Radio really needs to be right about what’s between the music, with its local content, which Futuri can help with. Spotify lives in a whole other arena.

How has the increasing social media options – texting, Snapchat, Instagram, etc. -- impact the development of #engage?

It’s very important as far as #engage goes. As we like to say at Futuri, “What if radio was invented after the Internet?” And what do we mean by that?” We’re able what talk about Facebook, Instagram, Twitter ... everything out there that’s a vehicle for the audience, radio should be trying to get its arms around it, to learn how to use it, such as the way #engage uses Facebook Live. With #engage, we are working with Facebook Live to integrate promotions and features such as live playlists and video streams. That’s one example of our social media work.

With branding being the buzzword of the times, how does Futuri and engage impact it?/h5>

Branding starts with offering something to the audience that is unique. Whether it’s #engage with TopicPulse or TopLine, if you’re not part of the audience’s life, then your brand doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if it’s radio or anything else, it has to be something that easily gets into someone’s life, and be a priority for them. And you can be a priority for them if you are smart and strategic enough to integrate into the things they participate in every day, be it Facebook, Twitter or even through Bluetooth in the car. To integrate, you’re not making them come to you, you’re going to them. That has to be done even as it continues to evolve. We never take it for granted that people will come to us just because the apps we build are cool.

Daniel Anstandig will speak on branding at WWRS 2017. Without giving away all his data points here, what should attendees expect to hear when he speaks?

The idea that while we can’t be everywhere at all times, we need to be strategic and dedicate our resources for maximum impact. So many times, radio does things and to measure its success, wait until the ratings come back. There needs to be other ways to monitor ROI. For a long time, radio just threw a ton of stuff on the wall and see what stuck. With so much data available today, that doesn’t work anymore.

Daniel is going to lay out some tried-and-true strategies we’ve created as a tech company that work exclusively with radio and TV. Why not look to us to help strategize, when we can show the trials and errors of others and what works with our products? That’s what he’ll talk about, as well as how the branding of radio stations goes hand in hand with technology.

Finally, what are the biggest future challenges facing radio and Futuri?

Some of the biggest challenges that radio has to overcome are revenue-related. We have to be thinking differently as far as revenue streams; it can’t just always be about the 60-second spot. We have to look at future tech along those lines as well; we’re into finding different sales assets within our technology that generate additional, nontraditional ways for radio to offer unique opportunities for their clients.