Jim Goss : Can you talk about the profitability measures that those new services provide relative to the core service.
Bill Wilson : Yes. So the great news is the profitability for these services is roughly in line with our traditional services. So we’ve been operating Townsquare Interactive in the mid- to high 20% margins for the last, call it, 5 to 8 years. And that’s very similar to our digital advertising platform Ignite, where we’re operating that where I call it, mid-20s to high 20s on an annual basis. So that’s the way we’ve been fortunate. One of the things I think we’ve done quite well is that as we’ve built and transformed from a traditional legacy radio company in 2010 to a digital-first company today, A lot of other companies have a much less digital margin profile from a profit perspective because they don’t have the teams in-house, right?
That’s been a real core advantage. We talked on other earnings calls just about the personnel we have is a difference maker for us and the fact that we can build these solutions at scale in-house versus going to third parties provides many, many, many benefits. And one of those is the profit margin. So the business management platform in the SaaS part of CSI is same profit margin as we’ve traditionally held.
Jim Goss : Okay. And maybe one other around the radio side. You’ve talked about that business being a cash pile, so to speak. And I’m wondering if you have any concern that it might erode to be maybe even a little less than that as especially as a lot of the new cars where a lot of the listening takes place, have higher levels of technology that make it easier to get a lot of other competing content onto the cores and could erode your position. And also maybe talk in terms of appeal to demographic groups and whether you think some of the younger listeners are going to be fewer than the traditional older listeners.
Bill Wilson : No, great question, very to. Is the possibility to erode greater than it has over the last 5 years over the next 5 years, that’s definitely a possibility. I think it really puts a great spotlight on the fact that Townsquare is literally the only local media company focused on markets outside the top 50. So as you know, Jim, the radio broadcast traditionally, the great news is more people listen to AM/FM today than 10 years ago. That’s an astounding statistic and it actually ends up being to the #1 reach medium today where television used to be the #1 reach medium just 5 years ago. I think the challenge for the broadcast industry overall from a radio perspective is time spent listening. And thankfully, at Townsquare, because we’re filling this I call news deserts, not only online but on air, where we’re providing multiple information from trusted journalists, we’re entertaining people and newspapers for all intents and purposes have exited our size markets people, we have our time to send listening the same now as 5 years ago, which is very different than the industry at large.
Could that change? That definitely could change. I don’t expect it to change because I think newspapers, even television stations in our size markets have cut back local coverage. And we continue to hire local, local, local, local content. So I think that’s one of the reasons we’re taking share in broadcast. We’ve talked about it every quarter from a Miller Kaplan perspective. We are able to measure that we’re taking broadcast share from our competitors in the markets that we compete. So that is tremendously powerful. The demic yes, I mean, obviously, a lot of time spent listening in cars, but the flip side of that is almost over 15% of people are now listening to our broadcaster a stream, which is tremendous. And I think that increases the 20%, 25%, 30% over time.
that actually affords us a lot more opportunity from a digital perspective because you’re able to target and do other things that you can’t just do over a traditional AM/FM broadcast. We have so many people now listening through our app, but also in home devices, obviously, Google Home, Amazon Alexa connected TVs. These to me are opportunities for distribution and back into the home where there are obviously not as many radio players as there was a decade ago or even 2 decades. But now with all of these technology devices, radio is redistributed back into the home. So I think the opportunity actually, there is a possibility erosion. The flip side is with that distribution and particularly for us in our size markets, there’s an opportunity for growth, too.
And I think the fact that our audience has been stable and our time spent listening has been stable, even with all these spaces of TikTok, Netflix, whatever your choice of consumption is speaks to the power of local radio with a commitment to entertaining and informing local communities. And let’s just take your question one step further. If it does erode faster than we anticipate or others anticipate, we’ve got a digital platform, not only in Tosinteractive that we just spent a lot of time talking about. But as you know, Jim, our Ignite business has been the fastest-growing business in the company for the last 5 years. Our programmatic business was up in Q1, high single digits. It’s currently pacing up low double digits in Q2. Part of that is masked because of the national decline that we talked about.
And I think we’ve got a team in Jared and Jackie and Rob that they’ll solve for that. Just like we took a hit in Townsquare Interactive, I’m very confident the team is going to figure out a way to stabilize and then return to growth in our national advertising business on the digital side. But in the meantime, we’ve got strength in our local. We talked about on the call, our local audience to our local websites and mobile app is up 16% year-over-year in March. That’s really, really a significant increase in audience. Again, I think that speaks to the news deserts and us filling a void online as well as on air for our communities. That also affords us the ability for the first-party data to grow. We’ve detailed in great length the competitive advantage of being a large at-scale publisher of original local content.
So if radio were to decline faster than we anticipate, in some way, I don’t want to be flipping and say it doesn’t matter, but we’re prepared for anything because of our growth of our digital, the fact that we’ve got 50-plus percent of our revenue and 50% of our profit in digital, and we’ve returned to growth in Townsquare Interactive and Ignite has been the fastest-growing part of the company for the last 5 years, programmatic, 60% of Ignite and it’s growing in Q1, high single digits and in Q2, low double digits, we feel very well situated moving forward regardless of what happens in terms of consumption of broadcast radio.
Jim Goss : Very complete answer. Thank you very much.
Bill Wilson : Appreciate the questions. It’s always good to hear from you.
Operator: There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to Bill Wilson for closing remarks.
Bill Wilson : Thank you, operator. I want to thank everybody who dialed in this morning to get the update on Townsquare. Obviously, you can hear our confidence and enthusiasm moving forward, particularly as we go through the back half of the year in 2025, I think all of the things that we’ve been working on are becoming to be more in line. I do want to take the opportunity to thank the Townsquare team who puts in the effort with great passion to serve our local communities, the work we do with charities, the work we do for our local communities, not only informing them and educating them and being trustworthy, but what we do for the local communities on a daily basis, I couldn’t be more proud of the team. Again, I would encourage you to read the Boyar Research report.
I just think it’s incredibly well done. Obviously, they picked Townsquare is the opportunity to pick last month. If you’re so inclined, I would encourage you to listen to the podcast as well, The World According to Boyar. And probably most importantly, we look forward to reconnecting with you in a few months. And until then, if you have any questions about Townsquare, as always, you can reach me through my e-mail at billttownsquaremedia.com. And I wish you all a great day. Thank you, operator.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.
