Is there a limit to how many ads a single advertiser should be permitted to buy on a radio station, and if so, what should that number be?
Well, let's be even more specific and ask what is the policy at your radio station? What is the maximum number of ads that an advertiser is allowed to purchase on your station? And why that particular number?
Look forward to hearing your thoughts and seeing what the consensus might be.
Sidebar: several years ago, we shared the case of a station's $10,000-per-month advertiser who was asked by a competing station's sales rep to split his budget, rather than spending his entire radio budget with just the one station. This was back in the 1980's, if I recall correctly, which means that both the rate and the budget would be higher in today's dollars. You can read the two-part discussion and see how the salesperson in question dealt with the challenge by clicking these links: Part 1 Part 2
Interesting question that does come up.
Back in the late 1980s I was the music director and afternoon drive at a rock leaning Top 40 station in a college town. Likely 30% of the population was students. I recall Taco Bell, like a few other fast food spots, kept the drive-thru open 24/7 when school was in session. Taco Bell spent big bucks on advertising. In fact, they wanted 4 spots per hour from Midnight until 3 am. I knew the salesperson well.
Back then clients got competitive protection. This means if you have a restaurant commercial in the commercial break there cannot be two restaurant commercials in the break. Usually this 'competitive protection' set the number a client could buy.
The station had no 'maximum number' policy then. They never needed one. In fact I don't think they needed one with the Taco Bell situation.
The fact was no other restaurant wanted to buy commercials from Midnight until 3am. I suppose Taco Bell might have inspired a copycat rival thinking the Midnight to 3am as a prime time slot but that copycat never appeared on the logs.
The station I worked for went nuts: proposed solutions: charge a higher rate per commercial, establish a maximum number of spots a client can buy in a 60 minute period or better yet, if they want 4 spots an hour make them buy the whole dang hour.
All of these ideas resulted in a policy of a well reasoned 2 commercials per hour maximum. They could buy 48 a day.
The problem was they floated each idea past Taco Bell until the client was so frustrated they bought 4 spots an hour on our direct competitor. We won them back after a few months.
You have the chicken or the egg syndrome here: Should you create a policy before the problem occurs? I'd say yes but let the client seek an exception for something oddball like the Taco Bell thing. Do you just not set the policy and hope you'll need to at some point in the future? Personally I am a fewer rules sort of guy but that's me.
I recall, not being experienced in radio beyond programming and on air, thinking the Taco Bell thing was crazy. Sure Taco Bell wanted to block out competitors by buying 4 spots per hour. There wasn't a problem. Taco Bell would merrily add 12 units at the overnight rate card to their ample schedule during other time slots. There would not be a problem until a competitor wanted that time slot. And there was never a competitor that wanted Midnight to 3.
I suppose my question is how often the problem of a client wanting too many ads pops up?
As a footnote: I have worked stations where it was overkill for a couple of aggressive competitors. At one station two financial institutions fought one another by buying a spot per hour, 24/7, with a pair of name mentions within an hour (weather, PSA, etc). So, each one was heard 3 times in an hour. Fortunately both paid to have very nicely produced spots and rotated about 5 or so at a time. You'd think there would be burnout on the listener's end, but it wasn't tiring to hear each one of these competitors every hour.
Having sat on all sides of a Radio station I can tell you this should NOT be a tough question, but it is.
We are a frequency medium. More should be better right? But we also know that with a simple push of a button, a listener can change stations and we are gone faster than if we played Minnie Riperton on a loop (people who were not in radio in the '70s, look her up on Youtube). How many times have you watched a movie on USA network or some other cable channel only to eventually switch out because you have seen the Miracle Hair Eraser commercial at the beginning of every set, five to six times an hour?
Let's talk about political ads! These are the vilest programming elements that we can run on our stations and these people are allowed to basically buy all they want! How many of those do you want to hear? Wouldn't it be great if we could limit those... yet... at the same time, there is the financial consideration. We want the money.
I have no rule of thumb here, but I would suggest that more than 10 ads in a day on a long term basis would be overkill. If we have TSLs of about 90 minutes we are going to be able to make about three impressions per day. This again, however, is where we fail in radio. How many times has a rep said: "he wants to keep that copy going". No, he does not. The rep said "what do you want to run this week", the business owner with 1000 things on his mind decided that he's rather just CC the copy than have to talk to the rep. Well, I believe most radio ads are like Billboards. You notice them the first two times you drive by and then they disappear from your sight. Want to test me on this? Make a point of having someone drive you on your route to work and look at every road sign, business sign and whatnot that is along your route. REALLY look for them. You are going to be shocked by how many you now see now that you are looking for them. You may have noticed them more if they changed every week!
So now we exit the question of how many is too many by asking how many of the SAME ads is too much. If we were doing our jobs, don't you think that in 90% of the cases we deal in we should be changing the copy at LEAST once per week? I mean if we were REALLY interested in doing what's best for our customers? And if we did that, would we ever be running too many of the same ad (political ads excepted).
Putting away my soapbox. I need to write some ads now. I run a marketing agency these days and I do a ton of social media. I change ads for every business I work with thre times per week.
Chris makes an excellent point. From my experience, if the ads are kept fresh why limit a station's ability to bring in sales revenue. Stuff that I post in the cafe is one way to keep the client's messages from getting stale and keeps 'em a safe distance ahead of what local competitors are doing for their clients.
It's simple. When you are sold out, you aren't charging enough.
With all due respect to Chris, whom I admire greatly, my experience has been that repetition is of at least equal and, in my view, greater value to the advertiser than variety, assuming an engaging message that is getting results.
Where the billboard comparison doesn't work for me is that it's an eye-oriented message, passive by nature, that is competing with a whole bunch of visual images at any given moment, whereas radio is auditory and intrusive, with nothing competing for the eargate at that moment. Well, maybe passengers' conversation, if that applies. But the point is: you can't shut your ears. (Short ads, in particular, can be incredibly effective for this reason: they're into the ear and brain before the listener's volition kicks in.)
One of my best, most successful advertisers has been running the same :30-second full-sing jingle (more than 100 times every month), month after month, for the past 25 years. The stories they can tell about how successful it's been in branding and building their business are plentiful. (You can call 'em to verify this: 509-334-1717.)
Rod: That is why I said 90%... there are always exceptions. There is a National Rosatti's commercial I have heard for years and love it every time!
