Insights into Action: 5 Next Steps for Radio from the 2026 RAB–Borrell Digital Benchmarking Report

If you’re a local business owner or marketing manager in Calgary, you’ve probably felt the shift: digital ads are easy to launch, but harder than ever to trust, measure cleanly, and keep efficient—especially as platforms mature, costs climb, and attention fragments.

At the same time, radio has quietly entered a new era.

The 2026 RAB–Borrell Digital Benchmarking Report (U.S. commercial radio) confirms that digital is no longer an “add-on” in the industry—it’s a major growth driver stabilizing overall revenue. Digital advertising revenue hit $2.3B in 2025, representing about one-quarter of total radio industry ad revenue (24.4%), with 9.5% digital growth forecast for 2026 (to roughly $2.5B).

For Calgary and Alberta advertisers, here’s why that matters:

At a macro level, a lot of radio groups now operate as “radio + digital” organizations, which tells you something simple but important:

When radio and digital work together around a single outcome, results are usually stronger than running either in isolation.

You don’t have to buy everything from one place to benefit from that. You might buy radio from one partner and handle digital with your own team, agency, or another specialist. The key is how you combine them.

Below are five next steps you can use right now to turn the benchmark insights into an actionable 2026 plan—written specifically through a local business lens.

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What the 2026 RAB–Borrell benchmark is really telling the market

A few stats from the latest RAB announcement are worth sitting with:

• Digital hit $2.3B in 2025 and now accounts for about 25% of radio industry revenue.

• Forecast: digital +9.5% in 2026, reaching about $2.5B.

• Since 2022: digital revenue CAGR +8.3% while core radio declined around –2.2%.

• The top 5% of radio clusters generated 3–4× more digital revenue than average clusters in similar markets—mostly because of better execution, not bigger markets.

• Local advertisers have leveled up: there are now far more in-house marketing decision-makers at local businesses than in the past.

The message: demand exists. The edge is execution—campaigns that are:

• planned around one outcome,

• delivered consistently,

• measured in ways that match real behaviour, and

• optimized without chaos.

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Why radio is still a serious channel in Canada (and why Calgary should care)

Even if the RAB–Borrell benchmark is U.S.-based, your audience behaviour in Canada supports the same core idea: audio is still a dominant, scalable way to reach real humans, especially in daily routines.

A few Canadian audio facts that matter for local advertisers:

• Live radio reaches over half of Canadians each day in PPM markets (including Calgary and Edmonton), totaling millions of listeners daily across major markets.

• In ad-supported audio, 7 out of every 10 minutes are spent with live radio (A18+).

• In-car audio remains a radio stronghold; a majority of in-car audio tuning still goes to AM/FM radio.

• Radio has a “quiet advantage” in attention: one Canadian dataset shows radio has the lowest ad avoidance among major media—around 30% vs 57% for internet browsing and 55% for social media (A25–54 who say they “frequently avoid advertising”).

So yes—digital matters. But if your goal is local growth, you want:

• Reach + trust + attention (radio), paired with

• Capture + measurement (digital, from whoever you choose to work with).

That’s the real radio + digital opportunity.

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5 Next Steps for Calgary Businesses Using Radio + Digital in 2026

1) Stop buying “ads.” Start buying an outcomes.

The benchmark’s biggest implication for advertisers is simple:

The campaigns that perform best are built around a clear outcome, not disconnected line items.

Instead of thinking, “We’ll buy some radio and some digital,” think:

• “We want X more calls, Y more bookings, or Z more store visits,” and

• “How can radio and digital together support that?”

What to do next (Calgary advertiser checklist):

Build (or ask your partners to help build) an integrated plan with one main goal, for example:

• Calls

• Bookings

• Store traffic

• Quote requests

Make sure:

• Radio is doing what it does best:

  • broad local reach

  • consistent frequency

  • mental availability (“I’ve heard of them”)

  • trust transfer from the station and hosts

• Digital (from your agency, in-house, or another partner) is doing what it does best:

  • capturing interest when people search what they heard

  • retargeting past visitors

  • making it easy to book, call, or request a quote

  • giving you measurable signals (leads, bookings, sales)

A simple, scalable structure:

• On-air schedule for reach + frequency

• Clear, memorable audio name (e.g., “The Girl on Shine”) and simple search phrase (“Just search ‘The Girl on Shine’”)

• Digital retargeting to keep you “present” after people visit your site

• A focused landing page or main service page that makes it easy to take the next step

When your media conversations lead with outcomes, campaigns get easier to understand—and easier to approve.

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2) Upgrade your measurement story (without pretending attribution is perfect)

The RAB release highlights a familiar tension: advertisers value radio’s branding and ROI, but often see it as “harder to measure,” which nudges budget toward channels that feel more accountable on paper.

The problem is that most of those “accountable” models are built for clickable media, not audio.

Radio doesn’t work like a banner ad. People usually hear you while:

• driving,

• running errands,

• cooking, or

• working.

They’re not clicking anything in that moment.

What they actually do is:

1. Hear your ad.

2. Remember your name or audio hook and roughly what you do.

3. Later—when they’re ready—they search that name or phrase and choose a result that looks like you.

That means the real response from radio often shows up as:

• Branded search lift

• Direct traffic lift

• More calls, form fills, and store visits over days/weeks—not minutes

So measurement needs to focus on lift and patterns, not perfect one-to-one tracking.

What to do next (measurement that fits real life):

Use at least a couple of these in combination:

• Branded search + direct traffic

  • Watch for increases in searches for your business or audio name during the campaign.

  • Track changes in direct and organic traffic to your site.

• Inquiry volume

  • Calls, forms, bookings, and quote requests by week while the campaign is live.

• “How did you hear about us?”

  • Train your team to ask and consistently log “radio” (and station) when people mention it.

Where tracking tools help:

• Named offers

  • “Ask for the Winter Shine Tune-Up” or “Mention the Back-to-School Braces Plan.”

  • Easy for customers to remember; easy for staff to log.

• Simple call tracking or URLs (optional, not primary)

  • One easy-to-remember number used as your main public number during the campaign (not a bunch of rotating numbers).

  • A focused landing page that your digital campaigns drive to—radio’s job is to create the demand; digital’s job is to catch it.

You’re not looking for perfect certainty. You’re looking for repeatable signals that show your radio + digital system is moving demand in the right direction.

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3) Treat optimization like a weekly discipline, not a “set it and forget it” buy

The RAB report is blunt: strong performance comes from operational discipline—training, clear expectations, and reliable execution at scale.

On the advertiser side, that translates to one simple habit:

Treat the first 4–6 weeks of a new campaign like a managed test, not an auto-pilot buy.

What to do next:

Set a short, recurring review rhythm—especially early on:

• A weekly 15-minute check-in (with your internal team, your digital partner, and/or your radio rep) to answer:

  • What’s delivering?

  • What’s underperforming?

  • What’s being changed this week?

Demand reporting you don’t need a PhD to interpret:

• Spend

• Reach / impressions (where relevant)

• Visits / calls / inquiries

• Key learnings + next actions

A steady weekly rhythm beats the “big quarterly recap” every time.

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4) Improve conversion before you chase more leads

This is the hidden money.

The industry data hints at a gap: many advertisers are still adding media before fixing conversion, which just means they’re paying to send more people into a leaky funnel.

For a Calgary business, here’s the plain-language version:

If you add demand but your funnel leaks, you just bought expensive disappointment.

Before you scale spend:

Tighten your conversion path:

• Landing page clarity

  • One main message. One obvious next step.

• Speed to lead

  • How quickly does someone hear from you after they call or submit a form?

• Booking friction

  • How many steps does it take to book or request a quote?

• Offer clarity

  • Does your offer match what people heard on-air?

Use radio to create familiarity, and digital to capture the moment:

• Retarget people who visit your site

• Retarget video viewers (where applicable)

• Use a short, consistent offer window (e.g., 30–60 days) to give people a reason to act

Also: don’t sleep on the creative environment.

Audio can drive strong brand outcomes when it’s delivered credibly. Research from various audio studies points to:

• Higher recall and consideration for branded content delivered by trusted voices

• Host-read ads generating stronger attentiveness and higher likelihood to purchase or recommend

• A majority of listeners feeling a personal connection with their favorite radio hosts

Conversion isn’t only a landing page problem. It’s a credibility and trust problem—and radio can help solve that if the creative sounds human and believable.

If you want a practical framework specifically for story-based creative on Shine FM, this post pairs well with what you’re reading:

• Stop Listing Features—Start Building Trust: Story-Based Radio Ads on Shine FM

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5) Use AI as an advantage, but protect what makes radio work: trust

The benchmark doesn’t treat AI like a gimmick. It’s part of the workflow now.

RAB notes:

• Rapid AI adoption in sales and marketing teams (prospecting, communication, sales support)

• Growing concern that AI-based media recommendations may not automatically favor radio unless radio’s role in the mix is clearly understood and measured

For a local advertiser, the play is straightforward:

• Use AI for speed: drafting ideas, testing angles, creating variations.

• Keep humans in charge of truth and tone.

• Don’t hand your credibility to generic, “sounds-like-everyone” creative.

In 2026, trust is a competitive moat. Radio has it. The goal is to let radio do what it does best—build familiarity and comfort—while you use AI and digital tools to tighten the rest of the system.

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A simple “radio + digital” blueprint for local growth in Calgary

If you want a clean starting point, here’s a workable structure that doesn’t depend on who sells what—it just assumes you have some mix of radio + digital in your toolkit:

Phase 1 (Weeks 1–4): Build familiarity + capture demand

• Consistent on-air schedule (frequency > flash)

• One clear offer or promise

• One memorable audio name and simple search phrase

• One main conversion path (call / booking / lead form)

• Digital retargeting to reinforce after people visit your site

Phase 2 (Weeks 5–8): Expand what’s working

• Keep the on-air schedule stable (don’t reset the learning)

• Shift budget toward best-performing audiences/placements on the digital side

• Refresh creative if needed—but keep your name, audio hook and promise consistent

Phase 3 (Month 3+): Scale with discipline

• Add seasonal or topical angles without changing your core story

• Add video/streaming or other formats if they clearly support the goal

• Track lift trends (branded search, direct traffic, leads, sales) and adjust based on outcomes—not just impressions

Stability is a strategy.

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FAQs (for SEO + real-world decision-making)

Does radio advertising still work in 2026?

Yes—especially for local businesses—because it delivers reach and attention in real-life moments, while digital handles capture and measurable response. Canadian audio data continues to show radio’s scale and dominance in ad-supported listening.

What should I ask when planning radio advertising in Calgary?

Good questions to ask (yourself and your partners):

• What outcome are we optimizing for (calls, bookings, sales)?

• How will radio work with the digital marketing I’m already running?

• What simple metrics will we track (search lift, traffic lift, inquiries)?

• How often will we review performance and adjust?

How do I measure radio if people don’t click?

Use tracking and lift, not just clicks:

• Branded search and direct traffic

• Inquiry volume (calls, leads, bookings) during the campaign window

• “How did you hear about us?” in your intake process

• Optional: named offers, simple call tracking, and focused landing pages

And remember: radio’s effect is often delayed. It shows up when people search or act later, not necessarily in the first few minutes after an ad.

Closing: the 2026 advantage is integration + execution

The 2026 RAB–Borrell benchmark isn’t really saying “radio is digital now.”

It’s saying something more useful:

Radio’s future belongs to advertisers who can make radio and digital work together—reliably, measurably, and with enough stability to learn what actually moves the needle.

If you’re planning radio advertising in Calgary, don’t think “radio vs. digital.”

Think:

• Radio builds trust and memory.

• Digital captures and proves performance.

And the winners in 2026 are the ones who design their plans—and their measurement—around both.