Reaching the Aspiring Homeowner: The Brief Behind Shriram Finance’s Saarthi Loan Audio Campaign

 

 

Shriram Finance, one of India’s most trusted names in accessible financial services, partnered with Paytunes to launch a large-scale digital audio campaign for its Saarthi Loan product from February to April 2026. Designed to reach the aspiring homeowner and borrower across India’s heartland, the campaign spanned 12 states and was delivered in eight languages, making it one of the most linguistically diverse audio campaigns in the NBFC category. Activated across YouTube Music, JioSaavn, Pocket FM, Zeno Radio, and South Radios.com, the campaign used 30-second in-stream audio ads with companion banners and daypart-based targeting to connect with male listeners aged 25 to 55 in the NCCS CDE segment, reaching them on affordable Android smartphones during their most attentive listening moments. The result was a sustained, high-completion audio campaign that delivered a strong 1.15x LTR uplift and a notable 1.23x CTR uplift across all markets.

 

Connecting India’s Aspiring Borrowers with Accessible Home Loan Solutions Through Audio

• Drive brand awareness for Shriram Finance’s Saarthi Loan product among India’s mass-market, value-conscious audience.
• Maximise listener retention (LTR) as the primary performance indicator, ensuring audiences heard the full message.
• Achieve broad multi-state, multi-language reach across 12 key markets spanning North, South, East, and West India.
• Maintain balanced frequency without causing listener fatigue across a multi-week campaign window.
• Drive click-through interaction via companion banners to support downstream lead consideration. 

Eight-Language Audio Across YouTube Music, JioSaavn, Pocket FM, Zeno Radio, and South Radios.com: Reaching India’s Mass-Market Borrowers at Their Most Attentive

• Activated across five platforms: YouTube Music, JioSaavn, Pocket FM, Zeno Radio, and South Radios.com, combining music streaming, podcast, and regional radio environments.
• Delivered in eight languages: Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Kannada, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, and Malayalam, ensuring deep vernacular relevance across every target state.
• Targeted males aged 25 to 55 in the NCCS CDE segment, using Android-only device targeting (phone cost under 25k) to align with Shriram Finance’s core borrower profile.
• Used daypart-based scheduling to serve ads during peak listening windows, maximising attention quality and completion rates.
• Deployed 30-second in-stream audio ads with clickable companion banners, combining audio recall with a clear visual call-to-action.
• Covered 12 states across India: Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh-Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Kerala, Punjab-Haryana, West Bengal, and Bihar-Jharkhand.
• Continuously monitored and optimised performance through the Paytunes dashboard, adjusting delivery pacing across markets and platforms throughout the campaign. 

1.15x LTR Uplift and 1.23x CTR Uplift: How Shriram Finance Measured Audio Success Across 12 States

 

• Listen-Through Rate (LTR) delivered a strong 1.15x uplift, indicating high listener retention and effective creative resonance across all eight language variants.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR) achieved a notable 1.23x uplift, reflecting meaningful audience interaction with the companion banner and strong intent signals from listeners.
• Reach delivered at 1.00x target, confirming precise delivery against plan across all 12 markets.
• High completion rates reinforced digital audio as a powerful medium for sustained attention and brand message delivery in the NBFC category.
• Consistent performance across languages validated the multi-lingual creative strategy, with vernacular creatives performing at par with Hindi in their respective markets. 

Mass-Market, Android-First Borrowers Aligned with Shriram Finance’s Saarthi Loan Profile

• Targeted India’s mass-market borrower segment: males aged 25 to 55 in the NCCS CDE category, reflecting Shriram Finance’s core customer base.
• Android-only, affordable smartphone users (device cost under 25k) ensured delivery reached listeners whose digital habits and financial profiles aligned with accessible loan products.
• Eight-language creative suite ensured cultural and linguistic alignment in every state, with the dominant local language carrying the highest share of impressions in each market.
• Affinity-based targeting layered on top of demographic filters to reach listeners with demonstrated interest in financial products, home improvement, and construction. 

February to April: How Shriram Finance’s Audio Presence Compounded Across India’s Financial Planning Season

• Campaign ran from February to April 2026, spanning India’s financial year-end period when loan enquiries and financial planning activity typically peak.
• Daypart scheduling ensured ads were served during peak listening hours, aligning with commute times, evening leisure, and weekend consumption patterns.
• LTR remained consistently strong throughout the campaign window, with no signs of listener fatigue despite sustained multi-week delivery.
• Performance improved during the mid-to-late phase, suggesting that repeated exposure built cumulative recall and familiarity with the Saarthi Loan message.
• Frequency levels were well-balanced across the campaign, ensuring sustained exposure without over-delivery to any single listener segment. 

Android-First Delivery Across YouTube Music, JioSaavn, Pocket FM, Zeno Radio, and South Radios.com: Reaching India’s Value-Conscious Listener

YouTube Music

Served as the primary reach driver, delivering scale across all 12 markets with strong completion behaviour. YouTube Music’s Android-heavy user base aligned closely with the campaign’s affordable smartphone targeting, making it the ideal platform for reaching Shriram Finance’s core audience during music streaming sessions.

 

JioSaavn

Contributed significant delivery in Hindi-belt and regional markets, offering deep vernacular penetration. JioSaavn’s strong presence among mass-market, data-conscious users complemented the campaign’s CDE segment targeting and supported sustained listener retention.

 

Pocket FM

Delivered highly attentive, long-session listeners through its audio storytelling format. Pocket FM users tend to listen for extended periods, creating an ideal environment for 30-second in-stream ads to be heard in full without interruption.

 

Zeno Radio and South Radios.com

Extended the campaign’s reach into niche regional and internet radio audiences, particularly in South Indian markets. These platforms provided incremental reach among listeners not captured by mainstream streaming apps, adding cultural depth to the overall delivery.

 

Insight: The campaign’s LTR and CTR uplifts were primarily driven by Android-first, mobile consumption across all five platforms, validating Paytunes’ strategy of targeting affordable smartphone users where audio attention and interaction are most consistent.

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Karnataka and Maharashtra Lead: Where Shriram Finance’s Multi-Language Audio Resonated Deepest

Karnataka, Maharashtra, and the southern and western markets recorded the strongest attention quality, delivering the highest listen-through uplift across the campaign. These states demonstrated strong alignment between the vernacular audio creative and local listening behaviour, resulting in superior completion rates and sustained listener attention.

 

High-Volume States

States such as Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Uttar Pradesh contributed significant delivery scale while maintaining stable above-benchmark attention levels. These markets played a critical role in ensuring broad reach without compromising listening quality.

 

Emerging Attention Markets

Several mid-sized states delivered strong relative LTR uplift, highlighting the effectiveness of vernacular audio advertising in focused listening environments where audiences are more attentive and receptive to financial product messaging.

 

State-Wise Segmentation

Karnataka – 1.16x

Karnataka delivered the highest LTR uplift across the campaign, driven by a digitally mature, Kannada-speaking listener base with strong platform adoption. The Kannada-language creative performed exceptionally well, reflecting deep cultural resonance in one of India’s most active digital audio markets.

 

Maharashtra – 1.15x

Maharashtra maintained consistently strong completion behaviour, supported by the high-performing Marathi-language creative and robust streaming penetration across Mumbai, Pune, and tier-2 cities. The state’s large and diverse listener base contributed both scale and quality.

 

Andhra Pradesh-Telangana – 1.15x

The combined AP-Telangana market delivered strong listener retention, with the Telugu-language creative driving high completion rates. The region’s growing urban construction and real estate activity created a receptive audience for Shriram Finance’s loan messaging.

 

Gujarat – 1.15x

Gujarat matched benchmark-leading performance, with the Gujarati-language creative resonating strongly among the state’s entrepreneurial and property-building audience. The state’s high economic activity and strong culture of ownership made it a natural fit for the Saarthi Loan message.

 

Tamil Nadu – 1.15x

Tamil Nadu demonstrated strong listener retention driven by the Tamil-language creative, which carried the dominant share of impressions in the state. The platform mix of JioSaavn, YouTube Music, and South Radios.com provided comprehensive coverage of the state’s digitally active population.

 

Rajasthan – 1.14x

Rajasthan delivered above-average attention quality, with the Hindi-language creative performing well among the state’s semi-urban and emerging-urban listeners. The market showed strong receptivity to financial product messaging through the audio format.

 

Uttar Pradesh – 1.13x

Uttar Pradesh contributed significant delivery scale while maintaining solid listening quality. The Hindi-language creative connected effectively with the state’s large and diverse listener base, particularly among younger, mobile-first audiences in tier-2 and tier-3 towns.

 

Madhya Pradesh – 1.13x

Madhya Pradesh rounded out the geographic spread with solid attention metrics, demonstrating that even in emerging digital audio markets, the Hindi-language creative was effective at holding listener attention through to completion.

 

Why Vernacular Audio Outperforms for NBFC Brands: Shriram Finance’s Multi-Language Listener Retention Insight

• Multi-language audio creatives deliver comparable or superior LTR to single-language campaigns, proving that vernacular depth does not compromise performance at scale.
• Android-first, CDE-segment targeting aligns naturally with digital audio, as affordable smartphone users consume streaming content during commutes, work breaks, and household tasks, creating attentive, non-skippable listening sessions.
• Daypart scheduling maximised attention quality by serving ads during peak consumption windows rather than distributing evenly across all hours.
• The 1.23x CTR uplift demonstrates that companion banners are effective when paired with audio in the NBFC category, offering a clear visual call-to-action for listeners ready to explore loan options.
• Sustained multi-week delivery did not cause listener fatigue, confirming that well-paced audio campaigns can run across extended windows without diminishing returns. 

Scaling Eight-Language Delivery Across 12 States While Maintaining Consistent LTR Performance

• Coordinating delivery across eight languages and 12 states required granular market-level pacing to ensure each region received its planned impression share without cannibalising adjacent markets.
• Maintaining uniform LTR quality across both high-volume metros and smaller regional markets was addressed through platform-level optimisation and daypart adjustments.
• Ensuring vernacular creative quality at scale required close coordination between language-specific production and platform-level ad serving, with each creative variant monitored independently for completion performance.
• Balancing reach across five platforms with different audience profiles, ad formats, and inventory dynamics was managed through real-time dashboard monitoring and weekly allocation reviews. 

Seasonal Loan Campaigns, Retargeting Listeners, and Regional Creative Deepening: Shriram Finance’s Next Audio Chapter

• Align future campaigns with seasonal loan demand peaks, such as festive season home buying, Diwali renovation periods, and financial year-start disbursement windows, to maximise relevance and conversion.
• Introduce retargeting of high-LTR listeners through sequential audio creatives that deepen the Saarthi Loan proposition, moving listeners from awareness to consideration with follow-up messages.
• Deepen regional creative customisation beyond language translation to include region-specific scenarios, local testimonials, and culturally relevant storytelling.
• Expand platform mix to include emerging audio formats such as smart speaker placements and regional podcast networks for incremental reach among CDE-segment households.
• Test dynamic creative optimisation to automatically serve the highest-performing language variant in multi-lingual urban centres where listener language preference may vary. 

Why NBFC Brands Cannot Afford to Be Ignored in 8 Seconds: A Paytunes Perspective

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. For financial services brands, where trust and comprehension are essential, capturing and holding attention long enough to communicate a meaningful message is the single most important challenge in digital advertising. Brands must not only grab attention but also sustain it long enough for their message to drive real impact.

 

Your Loan Ad Has 2 Seconds to Speak. Here’s Why That’s Not Enough

Banner and display ads on websites usually keep user focus for only 1.6 to 2.6 seconds before they are ignored or scrolled past. For a product as considered as a home loan, that window is far too narrow to communicate value, build trust, or drive action.

 

Short-form video ads and reels hold attention for about 7 to 9 seconds on average before users swipe away or skip. This fleeting window may work for impulse products, but for NBFC brands selling financial security and long-term commitment, it translates to lower brand recall and minimal action.

Why Shriram Finance’s 30-Second In-Stream Audio Delivered 1.15x Industry LTR

In the Shriram Finance campaign, only 30-second in-stream digital audio ads (accompanied by clickable companion banners) were deployed across YouTube Music, JioSaavn, Pocket FM, Zeno Radio, and South Radios.com. No other audio or video formats were part of the strategy.

 

Here’s why it matters: the campaign saw Listen-Through Rates of approximately 1.15x 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)	≥18	70–95	1.15x 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 to 95 more completion events per 100 impressions than most display or short video placements. 

Conclusion

This campaign highlights how digital audio can cut through the noise and hold attention in a cluttered financial services advertising environment. By focusing on strong listener retention, multi-language vernacular relevance, and consistent reach across 12 Indian states, Shriram Finance successfully built a deeper connection with India’s aspiring borrowers. The 1.15x LTR uplift and 1.23x CTR uplift, sustained across an eight-language, multi-platform campaign, reinforce that when executed well, audio is not just heard. It is remembered.

 

If you want your brand to achieve similar impact through high-attention audio experiences, partner with Paytunes and start building meaningful listener connections today.

 

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FAQ’s

 

Q: How did Paytunes ensure the Saarthi Loan message reached the right audience across 12 Indian states?
A: The campaign targeted males aged 25 to 55 in the NCCS CDE segment on affordable Android smartphones, using daypart-based scheduling across YouTube Music, JioSaavn, Pocket FM, Zeno Radio, and South Radios.com. Creatives were delivered in eight languages — Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Kannada, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, and Malayalam — ensuring each state received the message in its most relevant local language.

Q: What made digital audio an effective format for promoting a financial product like Saarthi Loan?
A: Audio ads are heard during focused, personal listening moments such as commutes and household tasks, making them ideal for communicating trust-driven financial messages. The campaign delivered a 1.15x LTR uplift and a 1.23x CTR uplift, showing that listeners not only heard the full message but actively clicked through to explore the loan offering.