NEW YORK – Radio delivers more than 93% of its lead-in audience during the average commercial break, according to a new U.S. study of radio ratings data and commercial occurrence data conducted by Arbitron, Media Monitors and Coleman Insights.
Building on the results of a 2006 study on the radio audience behavior during commercial breaks, What Happens When the Spots Come On: 2011 Edition analyzed 18 million commercial breaks, 62 million minutes of commercials and 866 stations for a year of audience data from all 48 PPM U.S. markets to compare the audience level for each minute of a commercial break to the audience for the minute before the commercials began.
It found that radio maintains its audience delivery during commercial breaks, contrary to the common misperception among advertisers, agencies and radio executives that audiences during commercial breaks are a fraction of the numbers that were listening to the station just before the commercials began.
“The incredible ability of radio stations to deliver audiences during commercial breaks suggests that programmers should not obsess over their stations’ spot placement strategies,” said Warren Kurtzman, president and COO of Coleman Insights, in the report’s news release. “There is no doubt that running excessive commercial inventory can undermine a station’s brand and hurt its long-term performance, but we see very little evidence that commercials cause nearly as much audience tune-out in the short term as many radio industry professionals believe.”
