1st of May 2020

Published by WARC See original article

Radio ad avoidance may be lower than assumed

Advertising avoidance may be lower on radio than is often assumed, according to a study focused on Canada that was published in the Journal of Advertising Research (JAR).

Aaron Michelon, Steven Bellman, Margaret Faulkner, Justin Cohen and Johan Bruwer, all from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, addressed this topic in A new benchmark for mechanical avoidance of radio advertising: Why radio advertising is a sound investment.

The idea of “mechanical avoidance” involves audience members taking actions like switching to another station or turning off the radio in preference to listening to commercial messages.

“Overall, mechanical avoidance generally was low, with an average of 3 percent across the day,” the authors wrote in their paper.

That insight runs counter to widespread assumptions in the industry. “Many advertisers have believed as much as one-third of the audience switch stations during radio-advertising breaks,” they added.

Such a finding was drawn from 800 panel members from Vancouver, each using portable people-meters to track their behaviour while listening to the radio.

Read the full article on WARC.

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