Audio Emerges as a Standout Channel in a Beverage Brand’s Media Mix

A leading beverage brand set out to get more from every media dollar and to concentrate investment where it would protect both brand health and sales performance.

The brand took a cross-channel approach to audio, leveraging the medium’s unique ability to build intimacy and frequency at scale. Investment spanned podcast and streaming, bought through a mix of direct and programmatic approaches, with each playing a distinct role in the funnel – from building credibility and trust to delivering precision targeting.

This strategy supported two priorities: strengthening the brand’s long-term relevance and consistency with core audiences, and driving trial and awareness among a key growth audience. Within the mix, the brand leaned further into high-credibility podcast partnerships suited to those audiences and occasions, while continuing to invest meaningfully in produced audio through streaming and programmatic buys.

Audio emerged as a standout performer, delivering a notable year-over-year improvement in both ROI and effectiveness. The gain came from stronger performance, not lower media costs. 

The shift toward high-credibility podcast partnerships was the clearest driver of this result. One campaign supporting a key growth priority proved audio represented a modest share of the campaign’s overall budget and was one of the campaign’s top-performing channels on return. It also contributed meaningful brand familiarity lift – a strong outcome for a channel typically viewed as a performance play rather than a brand-building one – while delivering efficient reach and frequency.

Key Takeaways

• Audio delivered year-over-year gains in both ROI and effectiveness.
• A shift toward deeper, more credible podcast partnerships was the primary driver of audio’s gains.
• Audio proved effective at both ends of the funnel, ranking among the top channels on return while driving measurable brand lift in the same campaign.
• Audio’s gains reflected genuine performance improvement, not simply cheaper media costs.