Les Binet, Head of Effectiveness at adam&eveDDB, and Peter Field, Marketing Consultant, studied the IPA Databank, the world’s largest database of marketing case studies for their book The Long and the Short of It: Balancing Short and Long-Term Marketing Strategies.īased in London, the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (the IPA), maintains the IPA Databank of over 1,200 case studies submitted to the IPA’s Effectiveness Awards Competition. Prioritize brand building over sales activation at a 60/40 ratio They spend most of the ad being entertaining, holding the attention of the audience, and serving the one central idea.” He cites this Snickers ad to illustrate the point: “They have one idea – you’re not at your best when you’re hungry. AM/FM radio’s sixty seconds of ad time just gives you the chance to say it in an entertaining and memorable way.” In advertising, you need to have one thing to say. The truth is, if you want to talk about everything, then you really have nothing to talk about. It’s why so many commercials end up sounding like laundry lists. A 15-second ad with one simple message will generate better recall than a 30-second ad with three or four messages.Ĭhris Smith, Principal and Chief Creative Officer at Plot Twist Creativity, advises his clients with his own audio creative best practices including: “Be single-minded: say one thing.” He explains, “A lot of advertisers think that because radio affords you sixty or thirty seconds, they have the time to say everything there is to say about their brand. The more messages crammed into an ad, the less likely consumers can recall the messages. Their data shows that the first message in an ad with four messages has only 43% of the recall of an ad with one message. The fewer messages, the better the advertising recallĬreative testing giant Millward Brown reports the more messages an ad attempts to convey, the lower the likelihood of a single message being communicated. Campaigns are more likely to wear in than out.” In their book How Not To Plan: 66 Ways To Screw It Up, Les Binet and Sarah Carter report on the non-issue of wear-out: “Millward Brown concludes that genuine wear-out is rare, and limited to ‘new news’ ads. If the creative is high quality, the scores will be stable.

Pre-test the audio and then test it again in six months. The better the audio creative, the longer the ad can run. The best way to avoid wear-out? Develop quality creative.

This occurs because of listener fatigue due to message frequency in a continuous time period. Wear-out is the point where creative performance declines by 50% from its peak. Instead, focus on the number of messages included, the mix of brand building and sales activation, and utilizing emotional copy over rational messaging to influence the effectiveness of creative. In the grand scheme of audio creative, the length of an ad is a minor factor in effectiveness. Hundreds of podcast brand effect studies conducted by Nielsen find 30-second ads achieve nearly the same ad recall and purchase intent of 60-second ads.ĭon’t get caught up on spot length. Which is better? This question is often asked without any context.Ĭreative tests show only a modest benefit between 30-second ads versus 60-second ads. 15-second ads versus 30-second ads versus 60-second ads. The most frequently asked question about creative is about ad length. When developing creative, keep these strategies in mind for high quality audio:Īd length plays a minor role: The most asked question has the smallest impact on marketing effectiveness The findings from those tests, along with marketing effectiveness and creative strategy work from industry giants like Les Binet, Peter Field, Alice Sylvester, Bryon Sharp, Leslie Wood, Paul Feldwick, Jenni Romaniuk, and Orlando Wood, have been combined to form CUMULUS MEDIA | Westwood One Audio Active Group’s comprehensive Audio Creative Best Practices. The CUMULUS MEDIA | Westwood One Audio Active Group has tested hundreds of audio ads over the years working with the leading experts in creative testing: ABX, Veritonic, and Sensory Logic. What are best practices? Is a thirty-second ad better or worse than a sixty-second ad? What is the difference between a host-read ad versus a pre-recorded ad? When it comes to audio creative, there are a few commonly asked questions.

By Pierre Bouvard – Chief Insights Officer at CUMULUS MEDIA

Milward brown pixel tester