Imagination: The Key to Attention and Recall

By Venessa Hunt, ARN Director of Commercial Strategy & Growth 

In a world overflowing with visuals—endless social feeds and screens in every room—audio advertising has a unique magic. It’s the whisper in your ear that conjures an image only you can see, your imagination sparking as it fills in the details. And research shows us that this really matters when it comes to advertising effectiveness.

Unlike its counterparts, audio advertising invites you to imagine. It’s an invitation to be part of the story, and in some instances even craft the story.

Put your ear pods in, press play and close your eyes.

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Audio advertising doesn’t just communicate – it lets the audience live the message.

It’s like a movie playing behind closed eyes, where every listener becomes the director. Whether it’s a sip of a cold drink, the engine of a roaring car, or the echo of laughter in a coffee shop, audio paints a personal picture that only your mind can create.

This doesn’t mean that visuals aren’t important, but it does mean that if we appreciate the power of imagination, primed with audio, only then can we truly get the best from our visual mediums, and make them work even harder for us.

This gives audio a truly unique superpower like nothing else. Research has shown that due to the brain’s natural confirmation bias – which is where we tend to notice, believe or remember information that agrees with what we already think and feel – priming the imagination with audio cues means that when shown a visual media it will not only have more attention, but also recall and impact.

In a recent study “Advertising Research Foundation; Australia Radio Network Neurolab Study “Intimacy Never Sounded So Good” - Adding Broadcast Radio to a TV-only campaign can improve ROI by 20% and social campaigns get an 83% boost when ads run in audio first.

It’s undeniable that we have been planning media in the wrong order. I encourage you to challenge the status quo, and let the logic speak for itself – Imagination is the underutilised key to “feeling and believing” and “feeling and believing” - before you see something is the key to impact! It’s not opinion, it’s science.