83% of French people listen to audio every day (Médiamétrie), and digital audio CPMs sit between 9 and 17 euros. Why digital audio advertising is missing from your plan.
On 19 October, the sales houses of the Alliance de la Radio, NRJ Global, RMC BFM Ads, M6 Unlimited, Lagardère Publicité News, Skyrock Public and Ketil Media, issued a joint statement reported by Radio Actu. They announced an overhaul of audience measurement with Médiamétrie and Radio France, and they raised a different worry: media planning tools that now include AI-generated recommendations rely, they say, on data sets in which "the radio-audio medium is structurally under-represented". A medium protesting against recommendation algorithms is something new. And on the diagnosis, they are right. In the scale-up media plans I audit, audio is almost never there. Not because it was tested and dropped. Because nobody thought of it. My view: digital audio is today the mass medium with the lowest entry ticket, buyable programmatically, with fewer advertisers than a year ago. That is exactly the kind of gap in the market a scale-up should occupy.
Digital audio advertising: the usage nobody looks at
On 6 October, Médiamétrie published L'Année Audio 2025-2026. 83% of French people aged 15 to 80 listen to audio content every day, 43 million people. Radio still takes 53% of audio listening time, music streaming 34%. And 27% of radio listening time now goes through a digital device, ten points more in five years. Podcasts reach 48% of French people every month, nine points more in three years. Two figures from the same study explain why audio sells well to advertisers who have tried it: 68% of podcast listeners do not skip passages, and 77% do not speed up playback.
On radio alone, Médiamétrie's EAR National wave for April-June 2026 counts 37.6 million daily listeners, 65.9% of people aged 13 and over, for 2h49 of listening a day. Compare that with the 11 million daily visitors TikTok has in France, which I discussed on Monday. The medium founders find old-fashioned reaches three times more people every day than the one they talk about in board meetings.
One limit, from the same study: paid offers account for 25% of audio listening time, four points more in three years. A quarter of listening is ad-free and will stay that way. The audience is massive; the inventory is not quite as massive.
A market growing with fewer advertisers
The Observatoire de l'e-pub by SRI, Udecam and Oliver Wyman puts digital audio at around 151 million euros net in 2025, up 23%, then 85 million in the first half of 2026, up 25%. Out of a total digital market of 12.4 billion euros, that is a little over 1%. Small, then, but one of the fastest-growing segments. The BUMP by IREP, France Pub and Kantar Media, presented on 10 September, gives the other side: traditional radio fell 3.5% in the first half, to 293 million euros net, while its digital share grew 10.8%, to 29 million. And of 5,759 audio advertisers, only 4% activate all three levers, radio, streaming and podcast.
The figure I keep comes from Kantar Media's Baromètre de l'Audio Digital, reported by Minted on 7 October: 2.226 billion ad impressions served in the first half of 2026, up 17%, but the number of advertisers fell 15%, to 784. 574 advertisers present a year earlier disappeared, 439 arrived, and the newcomers average 91% more impressions than the leavers. Retail accounts for 36% of impressions, automotive 20%. Carrefour, EDF and E.Leclerc top the ranking. An honest caveat: Spotify is not in the 2026 barometer, so the scope is not strictly constant. But the trend is clear. Digital audio is concentrating on big traditional advertisers, and the space left by those who leave is not being taken by digital brands. When a medium gains volume and loses advertisers, CPMs do not spike. That is the moment to get in, not to wait until everyone is there.
What digital audio advertising really costs
The rate sheets compiled by La Lettre Pro, updated on 16 October, give the orders of magnitude. Net CPMs for digital audio in France sit between 9 and 17 euros depending on the sales house: 9 to 14 euros at NRJ Global, 13 to 17 euros at Ketil Media, 14 to 17 euros at RMC BFM Ads, before targeting surcharges, 1 to 4 euros for geotargeting at NRJ Global for instance. For podcasts, the market average is 12 to 15 euros per 1,000 listens according to Adintime. Host-read formats are negotiated on quote, above those levels: Ketil Media lists a CPM of 80 euros for a read by Franck Ferrand.
Put that next to FM radio: a 30-second spot on a national station costs 5,776 euros gross on average according to the LLP Index for the third quarter of 2026, and up to 19,250 euros gross at 8am Wednesday to Friday on NRJ. The discounts are real, minus 45% for a new advertiser at Ketil Media, up to minus 50% on volume, but it remains a schedule buy, spot by spot, with a five-figure entry ticket just to exist. Digital audio is paid per impression, buyable from a few thousand euros, from 500 euros in self-service at RMC BFM Ads, and can be live in a few days, spot included. It is bought directly from sales houses, programmatically through your DSP connected to the audio SSPs, or self-service on Spotify Ads Manager and Acast's platform.
For context: I buy DOOH at 4 to 9 euros CPM, and TV well above that. An audio CPM at 12 euros, on a geographically targeted audience, with a 20-second format you cannot scroll past, is one of the cheapest contacts on the market for a brand that wants to exist outside social feeds.
My rule for digital audio
Bought on CPM, in digital radio and streaming, targeted on the area that matters, never national by default. A 20-second spot with the brand name spoken in the first five seconds and a single thing to remember. Host-read podcast sponsorship only if the show speaks to my target, not because it is big. And measurement outside the sales house: brand searches, direct traffic, a control area. If I cannot respect those four points, I put the money elsewhere.
How I buy audio for a scale-up
I start with geography. Digital audio can be targeted by region, by city, sometimes more finely, for one or two euros more on the CPM. It is the same logic as our geotargeting in out-of-home: for Comptoirs de la Bio, isochrone targeting around the stores halved the budget compared with leaflets, while being 100% tracked. A network of points of sale, a brand opening city by city, a local offer: digital audio is the cheapest reach medium to put pressure exactly where you sell, and nowhere else.
I separate digital radio from podcasts. They are two different buys. Radio streaming and music are CPM reach, like out-of-home with sound. Podcasts are recommendation: a host whose listeners do not speed him up, saying your name. I detailed that mechanism in digital audio and podcasts, why audio influence converts. The first is judged in contacts, the second in leads and lead quality. Mixing them on the same line means not understanding what you bought.
I produce for the ear. No audio version of a video. A 20-second spot, one voice, one promise, the brand name said twice, and a reason to go looking. An audio spot is produced in a few days, for a fraction of the cost of a film. That is also why audio is the right first mass medium for a scale-up that does not yet have a TV commercial.
I measure outside the sales house. The Alliance de la Radio's sales houses claim that every euro invested in radio generates 7.7 euros of revenue, and that radio improves search efficiency by 12%. I am not saying it is false. I am saying it is their number. As with TV and out-of-home, I record brand search volume and direct traffic before the campaign, keep an unexposed area, and watch what moves. When the budget justifies it, marketing mix modeling isolates audio's share within the rest of the plan. And on whether digital audio is "radio" or "digital": it does not matter. It is a contact, at a price. Compare it with the other contacts.
What I tell founders
Radio sales houses are right to worry about AI planning tools, and wrong to think the problem lies in the data sets. The problem is that audio is in no scale-up dashboard, hence in no training data, hence in no recommendation. That is fixed with a test. Three months, one area, a 20-second spot, a 12-euro CPM, and an indicator that does not depend on the sales house. If you want to know what digital audio would do in your plan, and at what cost per contact compared with what you already pay Meta, we can look at it together during a free audit. And to place audio in your mix, the media mix simulator gives a first split in two minutes.
