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June 25, 2007

Hey Clear Channel, Radio Advertisers Aren't Stupid

Does Clear Channel think radio advertisers are brainless?

Don't they know that we know the real reason they're selling 2-second "blink" ads?

I can't think of a more transparent move by a company to rationalize a completely selfish business decision.

Washington Post writer Paul Farhi's column in the June 17 edition contains many hints about the thought processes going on at Clear Channel.

"Nano-ads are being sold as a clever innovation for advertisers"

Yes, they're being sold. They need to be sold because on their own they make zero sense. What everyone knows is that Clear Channel's "Less is More" initiative really amounts to an effort to give advertisers less and charge them more for it. In that sense only does Less is More ring true.

"The two-second format -- Clear Channel calls them "blinks" -- offers two immediate benefits for advertisers. Because the ultra-brief ads pop up within the programs themselves, they don't compete for consumers' attention with longer ads packed into minutes-long commercial breaks.

They're called Blinks because as an advertiser your money is gone in a blink with nothing to show for it. They don't compete for consumers' attention because they aren't long enough to get any of it - not because there aren't longer ads around them.

Why stop at 2 second ads? If the goal is to make ads so short that people won't change the channel, why not make one second ads? Or half-second ads?

"The second advantage is the ads' brevity and, well, sneakiness: A listener would have to be mighty fast on the draw to zap a two-second spot. (Clear Channel declined to disclose the price charged for nano-ads.)"

Ahem. We've now changed the reason an advertisement is aired from "drive sales" or "build a brand" to "don't lose Clear Channel any listeners". The tail is officially wagging the dog.

Note that Clear Channel declined to disclose the price charged for 'nano-ads'. Why would they hide this information?

"At this point, the longer the commercial, the more annoying it is to people," says Dave Pugh, the head of Clear Channel's eight stations in the area. "If it's going to be longer, it has to be more interesting, more engaging and more meaningful. Longer isn't necessarily better.

Says Dave Pugh, whose eight station kingdom makes him what, the new prophet of consumer behavior? Three questions for Dave: How do you know what annoys people? More interesting, engaging and meaningful for whom? And, what happens for Clear Channel when advertisers figure out that a 2 second ad doesn't produce any business results?

"Let's face it," Pugh adds, "we're an ADD [attention deficit disorder] society."

Yes, we've all got ADD. How silly of me to have missed that important industry-changing event that provides ample justification for 2 second ads that don't deliver any business benefit.

In a last second saving-grace for radio advertisers, Mr Farhi writes that:

"The radio industry intends to find out just how effective super-short ads are. The National Association of Broadcasters, composed of radio and TV companies, in April commissioned a year-long academic study on the new ads. David Allan, a St. Joseph's University marketing professor who will conduct the research, surmises that "blinks" are best remembered by listeners who've already heard 60- and 30-second ads for the same product or service."

Let's hope this research on "blink" ads is designed well and conducted without biases. Something tells me that will be difficult to do. As importantly, we hope that Mr. Allan evaluates "blinks" based on the same metrics that businesses who pay for advertising would: measurable business outcomes like directly related sales, cost per lead, or cost per order.

Clearly blink ads aren't going to be effective for many people. Maybe we don't need to hear Clear Channel say that. What really bothers us is that Clear Channel a) feels a "good" ad is one that doesn't cause people to change the channel verses one that delivers profitable business results for an advertiser, b) fails to see the existing automatic mechanism that is vetting bad ads, c) offends their paying customers wth garbage like "blinks" and the rationalizations they give for them.

Posted by Jeff Small & Brett Astor at 01:05 PM | Permalink