Ultimate Media is neither a radio sales house nor a traditional media agency. We are audio‑focused brand solution partners to media agencies, specialists in maximising the effectiveness of radio by combining audience intelligence, engagement formats and measurable outcomes.
This evolution has been shaped by listening closely to what media agencies and their clients have been asking more from radio: better targeting, clearer measurement and greater accountability.
What began as a business focused largely on non-traditional radio led campaigns has evolved into a far more sophisticated way of unlocking radio’s value, moving beyond inventory‑led planning toward audience‑led, performance‑guaranteed solutions.
Reach remains the essential foundation of radio, as it continues to deliver scale efficiently. However, agencies increasingly require radio to behave more like other addressable channels where audiences are planned, bought and optimised in a more programmatic way.
Buying approaches
In response, we developed aggregated audience buying approaches that apply digital‑style thinking to radio, allowing brands to access the right audiences at the right cost, rather than simply buying spots on individual stations.
This has made radio more competitive with channels that have historically offered superior targeting and accountability.
Crucially, this evolution does not replace the role of media agencies but enhances it. Agencies continue to lead strategy, while Ultimate Media focuses on designing radio‑led solutions that deliver against clearly defined objectives, supported by robust measurement frameworks.
Performance is guaranteed upfront, with projections built pre‑campaign and delivery assessed against those benchmarks post‑campaign.
Supporting the shift
To support this shift, radio campaigns have expanded into richer, multi‑layered executions. Engagement formats such as competitions, influencer live reads, gamified mechanics, and lead‑generation extensions are now integrated into aggregated audience packages.
These elements move audiences from passive listeners to active participants, while retaining radio’s unique strengths: trust, immediacy, and scale.
This approach has also opened the door to more innovative collaborations. Recently, Ultimate Media partnered with a virtual‑experience provider to deliver a gamified campaign where radio was the sole channel driving participation.
Listeners were prompted on air to collect digital tokens in order to unlock rewards and free engagement on the client’s website. The result was not only high levels of participation but lead quality that the client rated among the strongest they had seen from any campaign, demonstrating radio’s ability to drive meaningful, high‑intent action when paired with the right engagement mechanic.
The WhatsApp database
A critical enabler of this approach is our radio‑centric first‑party WhatsApp database of 70 000 verified radio listeners, all opted in. This owned platform allows us to connect live radio directly to immediate response.
Through WhatsApp, we can generate high‑quality leads, run real‑time polling and build meaningful audience profiles rooted in actual radio exposure.
By linking broadcast activity to instant social and WhatsApp interactions, we gain clear insight into which content resonates, which stations and time bands perform best, and where audiences are most responsive.
This enables in‑campaign optimisation and provides agencies with actionable learnings to inform future planning, addressing one of the key challenges historically associated with radio: attribution.
Furthermore our first party WhatsApp database also facilitates clients being able to engage listeners on an always-on basis, replicating all the engagement elements that radio delivers but at a fraction of the cost. It effectively allows us to add a long tail to our integrated campaigns.
Partnership evolution
The notion of a radio plan where you ‘go back to the well’ say, every quarter, on radio but still engage those listeners in the periods in between.
Partnerships have further accelerated this evolution. A standout collaboration with South Africa’s largest retailer network combines in‑store audio environments, commercial radio, and access to their rich first‑party loyalty database.
This creates a multi‑touchpoint ecosystem that allows brands to influence consumers from awareness through to point of purchase, within a fully measurable framework.
Looking ahead, there are more partnerships in the wings that will unlock aggregated audience reach across both commercial radio and additional controlled audio environments, offering unprecedented access to the middle market.
Scale, targeting and accountability
With the ability to geo‑segment campaigns down to town or suburb level – and to extend this precision into the WhatsApp engagement layer – brands gain a powerful combination of scale, targeting and accountability.
Ultimate Media’s journey reflects the broader evolution of radio itself. By responding to agency and client demands for better measurement, better targeting, and guaranteed performance, we have helped reposition radio as a channel that is not only still relevant, but increasingly competitive in a performance‑driven media landscape.
When radio is planned around audiences and supported by meaningful engagement and measurement, it proves to be not just effective, but indispensable.
Megan Walker is the head of media planning and insights at Ultimate Media, the leading independent radio advertising agency. Walker has been in the media industry for over 25 years, gathering vast experience and knowledge from working on both client and agency sides of the business.
