ith only 2 per cent of the total ad spend in India going into it, radio can hardly be billed as an advertiser�s first choice. Right? Wrong. At least partly.

Radio has, in fact, emerged as the destination of choice for the burgeoning retail industry, spearheaded by independent small-time retailers. And you can�t but take this group seriously because its ad spend across all media has grown 200 per cent between 2000 and 2003, and accounts for three-fourths of the total radio advertising pie. This, and some more revelations are courtesy Radio AdEx, the first radio advertising monitoring service by TAM Media Research in technical collaboration with AirCheck India (subsidiary of RCS Inc USA). Radio AdEx monitors 13 radio stations across the four metros. ... more