The Power of Radio
Earlier this month, EARS hosted key industry stakeholders for a panel discussion on the state of radio in Uganda. Dubbed EARS@7, IPSOS presented an exclusive preview of the latest NAMS Wave 3 data, along with fresh insights.
Our Managing Director opened the day with a reminder: “Radio is not dying. It is evolving. Radio remains the preferred medium in Uganda.” He went on to announce a new development at EARS: the EARS App, a new digital audio platform capable of aggregating FM radio live streams from across the region.
IPSOS then took the stage with an insightful presentation that left the industry with a clear picture of where radio stands today.
In attendance were representatives from Uganda’s advertising, broadcasting, marketing, and regulatory bodies. Here’s what matters for your next media investment.
Radio Has Always Led — The Margin Keeps Growing
Uganda’s media consumers now total 22.3 million people aged 15+. Of that, 20.8 million engage with radio, reaching more people than any other individual medium. NAMS Wave 3 shows radio reach at 82% of Ugandans, against 44% for TV, 33% for social media, and just 9% for newspapers. If reach is the foundation of your media plan, radio remains the strongest foundation available.
Radio Leads With the Next Generation Too
Among 18-24 year-olds, the audience most often assumed to have moved on from radio, reach sits at 77%, well ahead of social media’s 42% for the same age group. The audience isn’t just consistent. It’s consistent across generations.
It’s Not Just Reach, It’s a Daily Habit
10.3 million Ugandans tune in to radio every single day, for at least two hours at a time. It’s a fixture in how Uganda’s population structures its day, weekday and weekend alike.
What This Means For Your Media Plan
The data is a reminder: the audience with the most consistent, daily, trusted relationship with a single medium is still found on radio and it’s larger and more loyal than most media plans currently account for.
If you’d like to talk through what this data means specifically for your upcoming campaigns, our team is happy to walk you through the fuller findings. You can also follow the link here to the full presentation.
At our 7th Anniversary event, IPSOS presented an exclusive preview of the latest NAMS Wave 3 audience research, the most current picture of how Ugandans engage with radio, television, print, and digital media.
The presentation explores the state of radio in Uganda through the lens of reach, competition, and reinvention, and offers a data-led view of where the industry stands today and where it’s headed. We’re pleased to share it publicly for broadcasters, advertisers, and industry stakeholders who want to ground their media decisions in the numbers.
[View or download the full IPSOS presentation]
Radio has long been the heart of mass media in Uganda. For generations, it was simple: tune your radio set, press play, and listen. Until recently, that was enough to reach most Ugandans. Today, the way people access radio is changing.
As digital adoption grows, traditional FM broadcasts are being augmented by streaming and online radio access expanding reach, diversity, and listening experiences. But let’s start with the data.
Even as digital platforms expand, radio remains deeply embedded in Uganda’s media habits:
These figures remind us why radio has remained and continues to be the most accessible and trusted mass medium in Uganda.
While traditional FM radio continues to deliver the broadest reach in Uganda, online radio streaming is steadily emerging particularly among younger, urban, and diaspora audiences. Recent audience segmentation estimates suggest that approximately over 340,000 Ugandans actively stream radio online, with the majority of these listeners falling between 18 and 34 years old, indicating that streaming adoption is strongest among digitally connected youth.
This growth sits within a broader digital context where internet penetration remains at around 22% of the population, meaning that while millions can now access radio digitally, a far larger audience still relies on traditional FM listening . The picture that emerges is clear; streaming is expanding radio’s reach, including to Ugandans abroad but FM radio remains the foundation. Digital platforms are not replacing radio; they are extending it to new audiences and new listening moments.
At EARS, we see radio as a living medium, one that adapts rather than fades. Radio’s tradition of broad accessibility remains intact, even as streaming and digital adoption introduce new pathways to listen. In this era, radio’s relevance isn’t defined by signal alone, but by how easily it can be found, shared, and enjoyed across platforms.
For brands, this means; radio remains a core anchor for reach and trust, digital platforms can extend message lifespan and measurement and integrated radio + streaming strategies deliver deeper engagement
If your brand is thinking about how to integrate radio and digital audio effectively in 2026, now is the time to act. Radio still delivers reach. Let the EARS team help you build a campaign that harnesses both reaching audiences where they listen today and where they are headed tomorrow.
Contact us to start planning your next radio & digital audio campaign.
In Uganda, the most important media moment of the day happens before most digital platforms fully come to life.
From early morning, people are already moving, preparing businesses, commuting, tuning in for news updates, traffic information, music, and conversation. In those hours, radio is not competing for attention. It already has it.
Morning listening in Uganda is built on routine. Radios are switched on in homes, shops, taxis, offices, and roadside businesses as part of the start-of-day rhythm. This habitual behaviour creates a level of consistency that few other channels can match, especially in the early hours when screen-based engagement is still limited or fragmented.
What makes this time especially powerful for brands is not just reach, but mindset.
Morning listeners are alert, receptive, and mentally preparing for the day ahead. Messages heard at this point tend to land when audiences are most focused, making them easier to recall later.
Yet many campaigns treat morning radio as a tactical placement rather than a strategic anchor. Spots are booked without enough thought given to station choice, language, or frequency. The result is presence without impact.
When planned properly, morning radio does more than deliver impressions. It sets the tone for brand awareness across the entire day. Digital activity that follows, whether on social media, search, or messaging platforms benefits from that early audio exposure.
In Uganda’s media environment, radio does not compete with digital in the morning. It leads. Digital activity comes later.
Brands that understand this don’t rush radio into the plan at the last minute. They use morning radio intentionally as the foundation of awareness, not the filler.
If you’re planning your next campaign, morning radio deserves more than a slot, it deserves a strategy. Talk to EARS and let’s plan how radio can work at the most powerful moment of the Ugandan day.
In an era where screens and social platforms get much of the attention, the everyday media reality in Uganda tells a different story: radio continues to deliver the broadest, most inclusive reach. Understanding this truth allows brands to leverage aggregated audiences meaningfully, rather than chase fragmented buzz.
IPSOS 2026 National Audience Measurement data (NAMS) approved by the Industry Technical Review Team (TRT) consistently shows that 68% of Ugandans rely on radio for information, compared with 43% for television and just 19% for social media, even amid expanded digital access. This isn’t nostalgia, it’s reach and resilience.
The Power of Aggregated Audiences
Aggregated audiences refer to combined listenership across multiple stations, regions, and segments. In Uganda, this aggregation matters because:
Uganda’s fragmented FM stations covering urban and rural areas alike.
About 38.3% of households own a radio, far more than the 14.1% owning televisions or 2.3% accessing social media platforms.
Radio covers almost all demographics, income, education, and geography far more evenly than social media, which remains concentrated among younger, urban and higher-income groups.
For advertisers, aggregated audiences are more than numbers. They represent the real, targeted impact of a message, not just where engagement feels trendy.
FM Radio’s Resilience in a Social Obsessed Narrative
There’s no denying that digital consumption has grown and the number of social media accounts in Uganda edges upward each year, with roughly 2.4 million active social media user identities, representing about 4.6% of the population.
Even where digital content is available, it rarely matches radio’s population coverage, a key metric for reach planning.
What This Means for Brands
Reach Comes Before Precision: Aggregated radio audiences deliver scale across segments. While social campaigns may drive engagement among specific cohorts, radio ensures broad awareness, the foundation on which engagement thrives.
Context Trumps Buzz; Social media captures attention among connected users, but it cannot replace a medium accessed by the majority of Ugandans.
Integrated Planning Requires Intent: Brands that succeed with radio don’t treat it as an afterthought. They use aggregated audience data to; Identify which stations together deliver mass reach, understand regional nuances across Uganda and build campaigns that are strategically sequenced (reach → reinforcement → conversion)
Data Is the Differentiator: Campaigns guided by data, not intuition avoid the pitfalls of assuming digital equals reach in every market. In contrast, radio’s consistent reach data reveals where actual audience attention lives.
A Strategic Mindset, Not a Tactical Choice
In Uganda’s media landscape, listening is an everyday behaviour. People don’t just use radio occasionally, for most, it is a daily habit, trusted and familiar.
Digital platforms are valuable, but they do not yet rival radio’s reach at the population level. For brands that integrate aggregated audiences into planning, the result is stronger awareness, deeper resonance, and media plans that reflect how Uganda truly listens.
They say the future belongs to the youth, and in Uganda, they make up about 23.5% of the population (aged 18–30). As media habits continue to evolve, this generation remains at the heart of radio’s future. A 2016 study found that 94.6% of young people in selected districts tuned in to radio for an average of 173 minutes a day though more recent trends show digital platforms increasingly competing for their attention.
Young Ugandans are embracing digital-first habits: for example, among “radio streamers” in Uganda, 78.5% are aged 25-34 years. While radio remains widely accessed, the shift to mobile streaming, on-demand audio and social platforms means stations and advertisers must evolve. Importantly, this doesn’t mean abandoning radio, it means adapting radio for youth.
At EARS, we recognise that staying relevant means embracing both FM and digital. We aggregate local radio stations into regional and national packages and support them to deliver youth-centric content.
Our services include; partnering with stations to develop youth-focused programming, offering packages that combine regional FM reach + online streaming support, providing data and analytics so advertisers can measure youth engagement across platforms
Reach with relevance, Hybrid execution, Track youth behaviour. Radio’s relevance to Uganda’s youth is not over, it’s evolving. With the right strategy and partners, you can connect youthful audiences where they listen, live and engage.
Want to explore a youth-centric campaign? Get in touch with us at EARS today.
In today’s world of media and advertising, knowing exactly who is watching or listening to what—and when—is very important. It supports media companies and advertisers decide where and how to spend their money. Countries like South Africa and Kenya have built strong systems to measure media audiences. By learning how they do it, Uganda can better understand how far we have come with our very own National Audience Measurement Survey (NAMS).
South Africa: Rigorous Broadcast Measurement via the BRC
South Africa’s media research is managed by the Broadcast Research Council (BRC). For radio, they use a system called RAMS (Radio Audience Measurement Survey), which interviews people by phone the day after they’ve listened to radio. The phone numbers are randomly selected to make sure the sample represents all types of people from different regions and backgrounds. For TV, they use people meters—small devices installed in selected homes that track what people watch every day. These two methods provide regular, trustworthy data. All this information is then brought together through a system called FUSION, which helps media planners see the full picture across TV, radio, print, and digital platforms.
Kenya: Phone Calls and Diaries for Real Insights
Audience measurement in Kenya is done by Ipsos and Geopoll. Ipsos uses a day after recall method supported by Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI). They call people and ask them what they watched or listened to the previous day. These calls happen every week, and each person also keeps a diary of their media habits. The data is collected from all 47 counties, and the number of people called is based on how many live in each county. This helps make sure the results represent the whole country. Media companies and advertisers trust this data, which supports them to plan better.
Uganda: Levelling up
In October 2023, advertisers, media houses, marketers and aggregators among others came together to form a Technical Research Team (TRT). This would form the committee that’d guide the process for the next survey. The survey was not only about media but included products as well. The result was the Uganda All Media and Products Survey (UAMPS) and was launched February 2025.
The ongoing survey uses two main approaches. First, it sends researchers to homes to do face-to-face interviews. Then, it follows up with regular phone calls (a Tracker Survey) using the same day-after-recall method as Kenya and South Africa. The survey is designed to be representative and acceptable using GPS mapping and random sampling. With 3000 correspondents contacted every month, the aim is to talk to 36,000 people by the end of the year, making it the largest and most reliable audience survey Uganda has ever had.
From Learning to Leading
What we see from Kenya and South Africa is clear: having strong audience data supports all the players in the media industry make better choices. It improves trust and leads to smarter media buying. Now that Uganda has its own trusted system, we can finally take our place among countries where media is traded based on real, shared facts.
This was the first part of our NAMS Series. In the next part, we’ll explore how this data is more than just numbers—it’s a currency in the making. And how the current NAMS data could be its most valuable media tool yet. Stay Tuned!
What is Audience Data? Data is information, like numbers and trends that tells us who listens to radio, where they are, and when they tune in. In Uganda’s rich media landscape, with over 35 languages broadcasted across the entire country, effective radio advertising hinges on data, not intuition. Gut feelings can lead to costly errors, like choosing a station that misses your target audience or overspending on ineffective slots. Data ensures your advertising budget delivers results.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) like ratings reveal a station’s popularity, showing how many listeners tune in. Reach measures the number of unique listeners exposed to your ad, while opportunity to hear tracks how often they encounter it. Gross Rating Points (GRPs) combine reach and frequency to gauge your campaign’s impact. For cost efficiency, Cost Per Thousand (CPM) offers you value for money so you only pay for the targeted audience per 1,000 listeners, ensuring you get the best value.
Uganda’s diversity demands precision. A station popular in Kampala may not resonate in Acholi, Kigezi or Karamoja, where different content, language and cultures thrive. A station with the highest reach may not give you the value you seek.
Data provides you stations that align with your audience, in the right place and at the right time. Without data, you risk missing entire communities, reducing your ad’s effectiveness and wasting resources.
East Africa Radio Service (EARS) simplifies this with data-driven packages tailored for Uganda’s diversity. With our plans, you can maximize reach and representation across the country while optimizing costs in one single booking.
You want an impactful radio campaign? Contact us at EARS or visit https://www.ears.ug/national-package/ for more details
This year offers a unique situation where both Christians and Muslims have lent and fast in the same period. As Ramadan and Lent come to an end, the joyous celebrations of Eid and Easter approach. With consumer spending surging during these holidays, businesses in Uganda have an opportunity to promote their products and boost sales. Here’s how radio, the most preferred medium can support you increase your reach during this season.
1.Last-Minute Sales Promotions
Businesses can run short, catchy radio ads with optimum frequency to promote special offers on their products. For example, Supermarkets, clothing stores, electronics and gadget retailers can emphasize discounts and limited-time deals to create urgency.
2. Sponsor Programs and Segments
Brands can increase visibility by sponsoring Eid and Easter segments on radio stations. A restaurant can sponsor a segment on Eid meal preparations, while a financial institution can highlight mobile banking services for holiday spending.
Best time slots:
3. Engage Listeners with Giveaways
Running call-in competitions and social media-linked promotions can encourage audience participation. Offers like shopping vouchers, Easter brunch giveaways, or free data bundles could keep your brand top of mind and drive engagement.
4. Use Trusted Voices for Endorsements
Leveraging the influence of popular personalities and respected religious leaders, product mentions can be seamlessly integrated into audience engagements, thereby creating brand affinity.
So, Eid and Easter celebrations here! Businesses must act fast to capture consumer spending and also to stay top of mind post-season.
Partner with EARS today and harness the power of data-driven audio advertising to connect with the right audience, boost engagement, increase reach and drive sales this season.
Get in touch today
In 2025, creativity and high-quality production are more crucial than ever for advertisers looking to capture audience attention and drive results. The advertising landscape is evolving rapidly, with consumers demanding more engaging, authentic, and innovative content across multiple platforms.
In today’s market, brands that invest in creativity and top-tier production see higher engagement, better brand recall, and increased return on investment. Whether it’s a radio spot, a digital ad, or an integrated campaign, quality production elevates your brand and ensures your message is heard.
At EARS, we understand that creativity goes beyond just making an ad—it’s about crafting a message that resonates, stands out, and leaves a lasting impact. With the rise of AI, personalized advertising, and shorter attention spans, advertisers are looking for that “wow factor” they are looking for content that will stand out of the clutter. Content that not only informs but also entertains and connects emotionally with audiences.
High-quality production plays a vital role in delivering your message effectively. A well-produced radio ad, for example, ensures clarity, consistency, and professional sound quality, making it more persuasive. In contrast, poorly executed content risks being ignored or forgotten.
At EARS, we support advertisers maximize their impact by combining creative with professional end to end production from ideation to execution, to distribution ensuring their campaigns achieve the best possible results. In 2025, brands that prioritize creativity and production will lead the way—make sure yours is one of them.
Let’s create something powerful together. Get in touch today