Mark Gray started as an AE at Katz Media, mentored at the company by the late Stu Olds for 15 years. He would advance at the company, taking on many management roles, including president of the Katz Radio division, before being promoted to president of Katz Radio Group in 2006. In March of last year, with the departure of Mark Rosenthal, Gray was promoted to CEO of Katz Media Group. Gray is on the May 8 cover of Radio Ink magazine discussing radio’s national revenue picture, among many other topics. Here’s an excerpt from that interview.
Radio Ink: How is the growth for national looking in 2017?
Gray: It’s not as strong as we anticipated at the beginning of the year. Frankly, I think that has a little bit to do with the economy. I don’t think it’s growing as much as some anticipated, but we have confidence it will pick up in the back half of the year. One of the good signs is that if you look at our 25 top advertisers for the first four months of the year, 15 of those are spending more than they did a year ago, and we see that as a positive sign.
Radio Ink: Which categories are looking strong?
Gray: Retail is a good category for us now. We’re seeing decent growth for the first six months of the year. We have business coming in from Mattress Firm, we’re seeing growth in grocery stores like Whole Foods, which is really good. We have some interesting growth online from Indeed.com and Amazon. The one category we would like to see pick up is telecom, which has historically been our largest category the past few years. It’s very reactionary among all the players and we’re seeing a little less spin, but we’re working directly with them to move that forward.
Radio Ink: What can radio stations do to help national?
Gray: The clients that help drive national business treat national and local business the same. They run schedules as ordered — with minimal bumps. Our best partners also develop local contacts for national accounts and share local insights with our sales team about the marketplace. Sharing success stories and insights is key in helping us be more creative with finding solutions.
Radio Ink: Do you get the feeling advertisers and agencies understand that radio works for them?
Gray: I do. Advertisers love radio’s reach and the immediacy and the ability to change topics quickly. There are additional things they’re looking for, like more data and insights into our audiences. We’re working on some programmatic solutions to help do that.
Radio Ink: What are the biggest challenges you hear from the national
clients?
Gray: The attribution issue, which is for all traditional media, not just radio. We all know what a great reach we have and how effective radio can be and how important it is to the media mix, but we have to continue to find ways to prove and showcase that we truly do deliver.
Radio Ink: How can we do that better?
Gray: We are spending time with big research companies, and the RAB is involved as well, so there are some projects we have spec’ed out right now to take a piece of business that is using several different mediums, from beginning to end, and quantify what radio delivers in that media mix, and that’s really important.
Radio Ink: Over the past several years, we’ve seen several ROI studies that show the strengths of radio. Do advertisers believe them?
Gray: I think they do. There was the 6:1 study that we started with in the packaged-goods area. There is a tremendous number of ROI studies for radio, all of them very positive. The thing that comes out is radio delivers. I don’t think they are caught up in that ratio, but the data we have that supports the ROI, and that 
supports it across more than a few categories, is important to telling our story.
Mark Gray is also the co-chair of Radio Ink’s Forecast Conference being held in New York City, Novembr 15.
To read the entire Mark Gray interview subscribe to Radio Ink magazine HERE
