Bikaji × Paytunes: How Festive Audio Ads Delivered 2.5× CTR Uplift Across Uttar Pradesh

 

 

Introduction & Campaign Overview

Bikaji, one of India’s most popular traditional snack brands, is known for bringing authentic Indian flavours to households across the country. During the festive season, when snack consumption and brand competition both increase, Bikaji partnered with Paytunes to strengthen its brand presence among digital-first audiences. The campaign ran for one month in December 2025, focusing on listeners across key cities in Uttar Pradesh. By leveraging premium digital audio platforms and combining immersive audio storytelling with companion banners, the campaign aimed to connect with mobile-first audiences during their everyday listening moments. This collaboration highlighted how digital audio can help FMCG brands capture attention and sustain listener engagement during peak festive periods.

 

Objectives

• Increase brand awareness among listeners across key markets in Uttar Pradesh.
• Maintain strong Listen-Through Rate (LTR) as the primary indicator of audience attention.
• Improve Click-Through Rate (CTR) through companion banner interaction.
• Strengthen festive recall for the Bikaji brand among digital audio consumers.

Strategy & Execution

 

• The campaign was delivered across premium audio inventory including Spotify, YouTube Music, JioSaavn, PocketFM, and selected gaming applications.
• Ads were served in Hindi and English audio formats of up to 30 seconds, ensuring relevance for regional listeners.
• Companion banners accompanied the audio creatives, allowing listeners to interact with the brand while continuing their listening experience.
• Geo-targeting focused on high-potential cities in Uttar Pradesh such as Kanpur, Agra, Lucknow, and Varanasi.
• Two audio creative variations were deployed to test messaging effectiveness and sustain engagement.
• Real-time dashboards and third-party tracking ensured transparent monitoring and optimization throughout the campaign.

 

Key Results & Outcomes

 

 

• Listen-Through Rate (LTR) achieved a 1.16× uplift, demonstrating strong listener attention and message completion.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR) recorded a 2.5× uplift, highlighting strong audience interaction with the companion banners.
• Reach remained stable at 1.0×, indicating that the campaign delivered consistent scale aligned with the planned audience coverage.
• Impressions closely matched campaign expectations while maintaining high listening quality throughout the campaign duration.

Audience Demographics & Segmentation

• Primary audience consisted of men and women aged 25–45 in Uttar Pradesh.
• Targeting focused on mobile audio consumers across music streaming and gaming platforms.
• Retargeting signals from prior campaign interactions helped reach users already inclined toward snack and FMCG content.

Daypart & Timing Insights

• Listener engagement increased during mid-December festive days, especially around holiday periods.
• Weekend listening sessions generated higher CTR activity, indicating stronger user interaction with banner creatives.
• LTR remained consistently strong throughout the campaign, showing stable listening behaviour across different days.

 

Device Type Breakdown & Reach Strategy

• Mobile Android
  Dominated delivery with ~87.74% share of total impressions.
  Primary driver of LTR and CTR uplift across the campaign.
• Mobile iOS
  Accounted for ~10.92% share, representing the second-largest contributor.
  Played a key role in complementing Android reach, especially among premium users.
• Tablet (Android)
  Very minimal share (~0.6%)
  Likely contributed to incidental or passive listening sessions.
• Desktop (Other)
  Represented ~0.42% of impressions.
  Minimal engagement; not a core device for audio-based interaction.
• Smart Home Devices / Smart Watches
  Combined share 0.17%, highlighting negligible interaction on wearables or IoT devices.
• Tablet (iPad)
  Lowest delivery at ~0.14%, indicating limited usage among the campaign’s target demographic.

Insight: The campaign’s engagement metrics, like LTR and CTR, were primarily driven by mobile-first consumption, validating Paytunes’ strategy of focusing on audio delivery across smartphones, where user attention and interaction were most consistent.

 

Geographic/Regional Performance

Allahabad, Kanpur, and Meerut emerged as the strongest attention markets, delivering the highest Listen-Through Rate uplift relative to the campaign benchmark. These cities demonstrated exceptional listener retention, indicating strong alignment between the creative messaging and local streaming behaviour.

 

High-Volume Cities

Major delivery hubs such as Lucknow, Agra, and Varanasi contributed significant reach while maintaining strong above-benchmark listening quality. These cities combined scale with consistent audience attention, ensuring broad exposure without compromising completion strength.

 

Emerging Attention Markets

Several mid-tier cities delivered strong engagement despite lower impression volumes. These markets highlight the effectiveness of audio advertising in focused listening environments where audiences tend to remain attentive throughout the ad experience.

 

City-Wise Segmentation

 

 

Several cities recorded strong Listen-Through Rate uplift, reflecting high attention quality and sustained message retention throughout the audio experience.

Allahabad – 1.21×

Allahabad delivered the highest LTR uplift across the campaign, demonstrating exceptional listener engagement and minimal drop-offs during the audio message.

Kanpur – 1.19×

Kanpur maintained strong completion behaviour, supported by stable streaming patterns and attentive listening environments.

Meerut – 1.18×

Meerut recorded consistently high attention quality, reflecting strong resonance between the campaign messaging and the local audience.

Varanasi – 1.16×

Varanasi sustained strong listen-through performance, closely aligned with the campaign’s overall uplift.

Moradabad – 1.17×

Moradabad demonstrated solid completion behaviour with reliable audience attention.

Agra – 1.16×

Agra maintained stable above-benchmark listening performance across a high delivery base.

Lucknow – 1.16×

As the largest delivery city, Lucknow sustained strong attention levels while delivering significant campaign reach.

Aligarh – 1.16×

Aligarh delivered dependable completion strength with consistent listener engagement.

Saharanpur – 1.16×

Saharanpur maintained stable attention levels and reliable message retention.

Bareilly – 1.15×

Bareilly recorded slightly softer uplift relative to top cities but still maintained strong above-benchmark completion.

Mathura – 1.15×

Mathura showed steady listening behaviour with minor drop-offs.

Ghaziabad – 1.15×

Ghaziabad maintained consistent completion levels with slightly lower uplift relative to leading markets.

Gorakhpur – 1.14×

Gorakhpur recorded the lowest relative uplift among campaign cities but still performed strongly above the benchmark threshold.

 

Strategic Insight

The geographic performance demonstrates that attention efficiency varied across cities but remained consistently above benchmark levels throughout the campaign.

• Cities like Allahabad and Kanpur delivered the strongest listening intensity.
  • Lucknow and Agra provided the scale backbone while maintaining strong completion quality.
  • Several mid-tier cities delivered highly attentive listening environments, reinforcing the effectiveness of targeted regional audio strategies.

By combining high-volume reach markets with high-attention mid-tier cities, the campaign successfully maximized both scale and listener engagement across the region.

 

Key Learnings & Takeaways

• Digital audio consistently delivers stable LTR performance, making it an effective channel for sustained brand messaging.
• Festive season alignment significantly boosts engagement, particularly in markets with strong cultural celebration periods.
• A multi-platform mix combining music and gaming apps helps maximize reach and interaction within regional markets.

 

Challenges & How They Were Addressed

• Minor fluctuations in impression delivery were addressed through continuous monitoring and platform optimization.
• Variations in holiday traffic patterns were balanced by maintaining controlled frequency levels, ensuring listeners were not overexposed to the same message.

 

Recommendations for Future Campaigns

• Expand targeting to adjacent states with similar audience behaviour and cultural patterns.
• Test sequential storytelling creatives to deepen engagement and further improve listening completion.
• Introduce brand lift measurement tools early to evaluate qualitative brand impact alongside engagement metrics.

Audio Attention in the Real Attention Economy

In today’s digital landscape, the battle for user attention is fiercer than ever. The average human attention span has fallen to about 8 seconds—shorter than ever before. Brands must not only grab attention but also sustain it long enough for their message to drive real impact.

 

The Problem: Fleeting Attention on Most Digital Platforms

• Banner and display ads on websites usually keep user focus for only 1.6–2.6 seconds before they are ignored or scrolled past.
• Short-form video ads and reels hold attention for about 7–9 seconds on average before users swipe away or skip.
• This fleeting engagement translates to lower brand recall and minimal action.

 

The Unique Edge of In-Stream Digital Audio

• In the Bikaji campaign, only 30-second in-stream digital audio ads (accompanied by clickable companion banners) were deployed—no other audio or video formats were part of the strategy. 
• Here’s why it matters:
  The campaign saw average Listen-Through Rates (LTR) of approximately 1.08x industry norms.
•  This result means a substantial share of the audience listened all the way through—far higher than what visual formats deliver in the same time frame.

 

Attention Economy Benchmarks (per 100 exposures):

Platform/Format	Avg. Attention (seconds)	Completion Rate (per 100)	Audio Attention Uplift
Banner/Display Ads	2–3	12–18	4–8x lower than audio
Short Video (Reels)	5–9	18–25	3–4x lower
Full Video (In-Stream)	7–10	15–25	3–5x lower
Audio (30s spot)	≥25	70–95	1.16x  higher

 

• Banner ads are rarely noticed long enough to reinforce a message, leading to weak recall.
• Short-form video and reels offer a slightly longer window but are quickly dismissed with a swipe.
• 30-second digital audio ads command undistracted, multitasking-friendly attention, leading to 70-95 more completion events per 100 impressions than most display or short video placements.

 

Conclusion

The Bikaji and Paytunes partnership demonstrated how digital audio can help FMCG brands capture meaningful attention during high-activity festive periods. By combining targeted audio placements, strong creative messaging, and companion banners, the campaign successfully sustained listener engagement while encouraging audience interaction. The strong improvements in both listening quality and click behaviour highlight the power of audio advertising in building brand recall among mobile-first audiences.

Want your brand to connect with listeners in the moments that matter most? Partner with Paytunes and create audio campaigns that truly resonate.

 

Also Read – Saraswat Bank Audio Ad Campaign Results | Paytunes