The untested 10 percent of your station’s output
Posted on Saturday, March 10th, 2007 at 7:18pm. #
Frankie Roberto posts a rather unfair anti commercial radio comment on Matt Deegan’s blog, saying (among other things):
* adverts are annoying, interruptive and repetitive.
Matt, like me, currently gets his mortgage paid by commercial radio; so it’s no surprise that he rallied to commercial radio’s cause:
If ads were such a turn-off, Capital’s reduction down to two ads in a row would have instantly transformed its output. Indeed the same thing would have happened to the ClearChannel stations who halved their ads. Did it? No.
I work for a competing station to Capital Radio; and pointed out on Matt’s blog that, in fact, the ‘two ads in a row’ policy resulted in an increase in the amount of interruptions for ads - which I point out was hardly a winning plan - and also mention that, as far as I know, there hasn’t been a single demonstrable example of this policy earning extra audiences anywhere in the world. (Nova 96.9’s success was due to lacklustre and complacent competition which didn’t understand the effect of the first new genuine choice for a number of years in their marketplace; and it was shortlived).
But, there’s more. So, let’s come back to Frankie’s argument: which is that ads are ‘annoying’, ‘interruptive’ and ‘repetitive’.
The ‘annoyance’ of ads can probably be traced to three things: the ‘interruption’, the ‘repetition’, and the ‘relevance’.
Irrelevance is the biggest failing of much advertising - whether in the newspapers, on TV, or on the radio. I have no interest in lipstick or in double-glazing; so the ads cannot give me any useful information. These are, then, unwanted. But there’s a fundemental difference between the two. I may want double-glazing in the future; and, when that time comes (and it may be five years away), I will want a preferred brand; so advertising to me now is not a wasted effort, even though the payback will be many months away. However, I will never require lipstick. A more personally tailored unicast stream may help in this regard; and Google’s work with dMarc may return some dividends here.
I’ve already dealt with the interruption, but not with the repetition. And guess what - nobody has dealt with the repetition. In radio, the important number is an ‘OTH’ - the Opportunities To Hear a particular spot. Any number of websites will tell you:
An accepted advertising industry “entry level” for is 3 OTH. Obviously, the higher the OTH the better.
Curious, then, that music programmers live and breathe ‘burn’ figures. A song which has a high ‘burn’ - that is, is being heard too often - will turn away listeners, so it is rested. But nobody has ever tested this, as far as I can tell, for radio advertising.
And the lack of testing doesn’t stop there. Just the same as a new song will be relentlessly tested before it achieves full airplay on a radio station, so you’d expect radio creative to also be tested. And, once again, guess what - it’s not. I worked at Emap Radio between 1990 and 1999, writing radio commercials. Not once was any of my creative ever tested before going on-air. No programme director ever passed comment on any of my ads; much less pulled them.
And some radio creative is simply and obviously wrong. Imagine an Eminem take-off, with heavy and irritating rap, on a rock station; or an operatic musical masterpiece being carried on a pop station. Both of these are running, on their respective stations, right now. It’s arguable that a lack of ‘programme compatibility’ will make an ad stand out more; it probably will, but it won’t make it any less annoying. And you don’t, generally, wish to annoy a consumer in order for them to buy something.
A typical radio station devotes at least 10% of every hour to radio ads. That’s less time than a typical DJ will talk. A DJ’s output will be tested and meticulously worked upon; musical choice of a station is sacrosanct and vital to its success. News and other areas of a station’s output is also tested to destruction. Yet nobody bothers to test the biggest portion of programming: the ads.
David Ogilvy said
If you are lucky enough to write a good advertisement, repeat it until it stops selling. Scores of good advertisements have been discarded before they lost their potency.
That makes sense from an advertisers’ point of view. But from a radio point of view, we need to, unpalatable though it might be in the current advertising environment, test the ads - and remove those that lose us audience.
Andy said at March 10th, 2007 at 10:05pm 
Paul Easton said at March 11th, 2007 at 9:06am 
