Radio Listeners – 93% Stay During Ad Breaks

December 13, 2011
By John Mountford | No Comments

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Ask any advertiser, agency, or friend, and they’ll probably admit they fear that the ad breaks are the time most of us re-tune or switch off. Well, the wonders of modern data monitoring have just blown that one out of the water.

Respected audience measurement body Arbitron, Media Monitors and Coleman Insights have together produced “What Happens When the Spots Come On: 2011” – a comprehensive update of a landmark 2006 study on the radio audience behaviour during commercial breaks.

The report studied 18 million commercial breaks across 48 markets – that’s a year of audience data amounting to 62 million minutes of commercials on 866 stations – and compared the audience level for each minute of a commercial break to the audience against the minute before the spots began. Its remarkable finding was that more than 93% of a break’s lead-in audience, no matter what the station, remained there during the average commercial break.

One to three-minute commercial breaks deliver audience levels that are practically the same as the lead-in audience. Longer spot breaks of four to six minutes-plus delivered an average minute audience that was nearly 90% of the lead-in audience. Four-minute breaks delivered 92% of the lead-in audience; five-minute breaks delivered 87%. Even spot breaks of six minutes or longer delivered an average minute audience that was 85% of the audience level before the commercials began.

Among people aged 18-24, radio delivers nearly 90% of its lead-in audience during commercial breaks. Among people age 65 and older, radio delivers 98% of the lead-in audience once the commercials come on. But there was a warning too from American Radio Industry site RBR.Com – ‘The more clutter during an ad break, the more listeners you lose’. And if you’ll allow me to interpret just a little further – it’s still more than possible that the radio is on, but the listener has ‘zoned-out, hoping the next disc, or piece of chat will be up within three minutes. At four minutes it dawns on the listener this might be a long slog and they start to tune away, at five minutes plus they’re on the move.

To reinforce my argument, Arbitron found breaks in the breakfast shows held onto the highest percentage of listeners (typically 97%). Why? Because they’re generally short breaks. And, I guess, because the programme content that surrounds those breaks is high quality, compelling, and packed with important start-the day-information. So good content retains audiences too.

Ergo, if you put something creative, ear-catching, outstanding or persuasive in a shorter break – you’ll stand a massive chance of that station’s entire day-part audience actively listening to it. Conversely if you have a dull, uninspired piece of copy, even if you repeat it over and over, the audience won’t listen – they’ll just leave the radio on until the music returns.

Full report available at http://www.arbitron.com/study/spot_study.asp