Irish Radio Grew Branded Content Revenue by 4.5% While Spot Ads Fell. The Packaging Lesson Works Anywhere.

The split between spot revenue and content revenue is widening. The stations winning know which side to build on.

March 07, 2026

Radiocentre Ireland's 2025 full-year figures tell a story that every sales director in radio should read carefully. Spot advertising revenue, the traditional thirty-second commercial, totalled €126.4 million for the year. That number fell by 0.6%. Branded content revenue, covering sponsorships, partnerships, and content solutions, came in at €31 million. That number rose by 4.5%. The gap between those two trajectories is not a coincidence or a one-year blip. In 2023, branded content was already up 9%. In 2022, spot revenue grew but branded content grew faster. The direction of travel has been consistent for three years.

The reason is not complicated. Advertisers are looking for environments where their brand sits inside content rather than interrupting it. A thirty-second spot asks a listener to tolerate a pause in their experience. A well-constructed sponsorship or branded segment makes the brand part of the experience. Marketron's 2025 radio revenue outlook projects spot ad spend declining by 0.4% across the US market for 2025, while native sponsorships and branded segments are the fastest-growing subsegment of radio advertising, projected to grow at 5.9% annually through 2033. Ireland's numbers are not an outlier. They are an early signal of a structural shift.

The practical question for sales teams is how to package this differently. The stations growing branded content revenue are not just renaming sponsorships. They are building content formats around advertiser categories: a weekly property segment for a mortgage brand, a travel feature for a tourism partner, a weekly wellness slot for a health brand. These are programming decisions as much as sales decisions. They require a conversation between the sales team and the programme director that most stations are still not having systematically.

The ceiling on spot revenue is visible and has been for several years. The ceiling on branded content is not. Ireland's digital audio revenue, which sits alongside branded content in the Radiocentre figures, grew significantly in 2025 as well. The stations building content-integrated packages that work across broadcast and digital simultaneously are the ones best positioned to capture advertiser budgets that are genuinely growing. The ones still selling predominantly by spot load are competing for a share of a market that is quietly shrinking.

Sources:

• Irish Radio Revenue Grows Modestly in 2025 as Digital Audio Surges, https://www.adworld.ie/2026/01/23/irish-radio-revenue-grows-modestly-in-2025-as-digital-audio-surges/

• Traditional Radio Advertising Market Size, Share & Growth Report, Reed Intelligence, https://reedintelligence.com/market-analysis/traditional-radio-advertising-market