A surge in pet adoptions and sales during the pandemic has increased the number of pet owners in the Tampa Bay area to 1,384,240, according to Nielsen.

As a result, the amount of money that will be spent in the Tampa Bay during 2021 on domestic dogs, cats, birds, ferrets, and other cuddly creatures will achieve a record-high $1.1 billion. These figures are based on recent forecasts from The American Pet Products Association (APPA),

“We have reached a critical milestone in 2020, generating $103.6 billion in sales [in the U.S.],” said Steve King, President, and CEO of APPA. “We are bullish for the coming year, projecting growth of 5.8% - well above the historical average of 3 to 4%."

Tampa Bay pet owners will be spending in four ways:

1. Food & Treats which includes everything from canned and bagged food to biscuits and chewies.
2. Veterinary Care and Product Sales which includes routine veterinary care, surgical procedures, and sales of pharmaceuticals and other products through veterinary clinics
3. Supplies, Live Animals, and Over-The-Counter Medications which, in addition to dogs and cats. includes fish, birds, small animals, and reptiles. This also includes cages, food and water bowls, as well as leashes and collars.  OTC includes medications for allergy relief, gastric distress, and oral hygiene.
4. Other includes services such as boarding, grooming, and pet sitting.

To capture a significant share of the local pet economy, local business owners who provide these four types of goods and services will need to advertise.  By almost any marketing metric, the best way to reach pet owners is by advertising on Tampa radio.

There are 637,624 millennials in the Tampa area.  The oldest of them turn 40 this year. According to The Pew Research Center, millennials comprise the generation of Americans born between 1981 and 1996.

As a consumer group, millennials account for an outsized percentage of retail spending. This generation represents 24.7% of the Tampa area population but almost one-third of metro-area sales. 

All in, Tampa Bay millennials are expected to ring up more than $20.5 billion in purchases during 2021.  You name it, millennials are planning to buy it.

According to Nielsen, over the next 12 months, Tampa Bay millennials will show up in huge numbers at auto dealerships, furniture stores, mattress stores, appliance stores, home improvement stores, and scores of other area retailers and service providers.

Every week, according to Nielsen, 89% of adult consumers tune in to a Tampa radio station. This is significantly more people than watch broadcast TV, local cable, or video streaming services. It's more than use social media sites like Facebook or Instagram.  And, it's more than read local newspapers.

Tampa radio is also the medium with the greatest reach among millennials, a generation that not only has embraced an abundance of online media options but also accounts for nearly a third of all local consumer spending.

This reach advantage is a crucial reason why local small business owners depend on Tampa radio to market their goods and services.

A study released this week by Edison Research and NPR discovered that their six distinct types of radio listeners. The study also examines how each group of listeners engages with both programming and advertising.  These distinctions are important for Tampa small business owners to understand.

The six listener categories as described in the study are:

Now is a crucial time for Tampa Bay small business owners to advertise.  

According to the Conference Board, consumer confidence has surged to 110, the highest it has been since the onset of the pandemic last March.  The index has bounced back from a low of 89.6 in February. 

Moving forward, Florida business owners can expect buyer optimism to remind high.

“The recovery in consumer confidence is set to continue in the coming months, buoyed by the combination of improving health conditions and wider vaccine distribution,” said Lydia Boussour, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “This should support hearty consumer spending and pave the way for a mini-boom in economic activity this spring and summer.”

As Tampa consumers gain confidence, they are expected to unleash the record $13.2-billion in personal savings amassed during the pandemic. This number is based on figures reported by Barron's in November. 

This combination of consumer confidence and the cache of cash-on-hand has led the National Retail Federation (NRF) to forecast a 7% increase in retail spending in 2021 versus last year.

To claim a significant share of the expected spending tsunami, Tampa Bay business owners plan to boost advertising investments this year.

According to Borrell Associates, a company that tracks advertising trends across the country, Tampa business owners are expected to spend $1.9 billion to advertise the goods and services they sell. This represents a 6.9% increase versus last year.

In 1922 when WDAE-AM became the first radio station in Tampa Bay, many considered the medium a fad.  Even in 1937, a hit song by George Gershwin, Our Love Is Here To Stay, considered radio to be a "passing fancy and in time may go".

Tampa radio, however, has survived the advent of talking-movies, television, eight tracks, and cassettes in stereo.  More recently, radio has withstood a tsunami of digital options including, YouTube, SiriusXM, Pandora, and Spotify.

As the Coronavirus pandemic rolls over into a second year, Tampa radio has hung tough and not ceded its ground despite listener's shifting lifestyles.  This is crucial news for local small business owners who depend on local stations to market their goods and services.

Each week, according to Nielsen, 68.4% of Tampa Bay consumers watch video programs that aren't delivered over-the-air by local TV stations.  They aren't coming from a local cable company or by satellite.  Instead, these programs are being streamed directly to viewers via an internet connection.

This type of streamed video content is called OTT (Over-The-Top-Television) or CTV (Connected-Television). These two terms are sometimes are often used interchangeably but do have a subtle difference.

OTT generally means the video is watched on a small device like a computer, tablet, or smartphone.  CTV, on the other hand, typically means the content is viewed on a smart-TV or a regular television using a streaming device like a Roku or Amazon stick.

In Tampa Bay, OTT/CTV has exceeded the weekly reach of local newspapers and streaming audio services such as Pandora and Spotify. The medium is rapidly approaching the reach of local cable and broadcast TV stations.

Tampa Bay residents will begin receiving economic stimulus checks  from the Internal Revenue Service as early as today.  In all, local consumers will receive more than $4.1 billion in payments.

This infusion of cash into the Tampa area economy was authorized by Congress last week in the American Rescue Plan legislation. 

The stimulus relief legislation calls for a one-time payment of $1,400 to single adults. Married couples who filed jointly will receive $2,800 total ($1,400 apiece). Families will get an additional $1,400 for each eligible dependent regardless of age. A family of four could get $5,600 in total payments. Like the second round of stimulus payments, the third round specifically prohibits payments to anyone who died before January 1, 2020.

Many of the stimulus dollars will end up in the wallets of 808 thousand Tampa Bay homeowners. Based on research from Modernize, a leader in the home improvement and home services industry, 57% of these consumers are planning to spend all or part of their checks on home improvement projects.

Since 1922, advertising on Tampa radio has helped small business owners survive and thrive during times of peril. This includes world wars, natural disasters, depressions, and recessions.

Even during a pandemic, by almost every key marketing metric, radio advertising remains the best way for a Tampa Bay business to market its goods and services.

To prove the point, here are five statistics that vividly demonstrate the value of advertising on Tampa radio.

There are 1,362,200 adult women in the Tampa Bay area. Based on research from the Harvard Business Review, as a consumer group, females account for 70-80 percent of all consumer purchasing through a combination of their buying power and influence.  According to Nielsen, this will amount to between $43.5 billion and $49.7 billion this year.

Overall, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the US Census Bureau:

• Single women across all income brackets spend, on average, $34,817 on goods and service
• Working married women contribute over a third of their families’ incomes
• Over a quarter (29.4%) of wives earned more than their husbands in 2018, an increase from 15.9% in 1981.

Furthermore, according to research published by Forbes:

• The top homebuyers after married couples are single women (18%, double the percentage for single men at 9%).
• Women are 50% more likely than men to regularly watch online how-to videos.
• 94% of women between the ages of 15-35 spend over an hour per day shopping online.
• 70% of travel consumers are women.
• 85% of women say that if they like a brand, they will remain loyal to it.

For Tampa Bay small business owners to successfully capture a meaningful share of the local female economy requires advertising.

Tampa Bay's first radio station, WDAE-AM, began broadcasting on May 31, 1922.  The process of getting the station's programming from the studio into the home of local listeners required tall-transmitting towers with miles of underground copper wire in the middle of massive fields.

For the next 71 years, this massive investment in real estate, steel, and cooper was the only method of delivering a radio advertiser's message into the ears of Tampa consumers.

In 1993, however, new technology permitted Tampa radio stations to augment the reach of their tall towers by simultaneously streaming its over-the-air programming via the internet. This provided local consumers with the choice of listening to their favorite stations on their car radios, clock radios, and boom boxes or on an internet connected devices like computers, smartphones, or tablets.

Today, based on estimates from Edison Research, 11% of listening to local radio stations occurs on a streaming media device.  The ability for AM/FM to migrate from their tall towers to internet streaming allows Tampa radio to reach more local consumers every week than all other media.