MRG Evening Meeting – Commercial Break Ecology And Environment
John Billett, The Billett Consultancy
John Billett’s report on his consultancy’s recent study on advertising effectiveness threw up some intriguing ideas and suggestions at the MRG meeting on Monday 18 January 1999. The main thrusts of his report were first that the BARB definition of ‘viewer’ as ‘present in the room with the set switched on’ is no longer acceptable. The study had concluded that 41% of those noted in the room only saw part of the break – yet BARB would record all of these as viewers.
The research also confirmed that almost twice as many men as women, 16% versus 9%, flick channels during a commercial break, while 34% of women will leave the room, as against only 27% of men. The study also found that there was no real difference between terrestrial and satellite homes – and the young came out as being the most attentive advert-watchers.
Billett then suggested that BARB could improve its monitoring by running a parallel study every quarter in which loyal viewers could be measured for both empathy and attention. He also argued that cluttering television programmes with advertising can seriously damage recall. On average, 42% of adverts were recalled (the same number as resulted from the Billett Consultancy’s 1993 study) but the programme environment influenced this in a variety of ways:
a) Positioning:
An advert placed at the beginning of a break with four or fewer commercials was twice as likely to be recalled as one in the middle of a break with eight or more.
b) Length:
A sixty second advert has recall only 21% higher than a ten second one – suggesting that it may be counter-productive to lengthen adverts
c) Genre:
Surprisingly enough, the programme genre has a dramatic effect on recall, while attention to the programme has an acceptable but not spectacular influence, and empathy with it has scarcely any significance.
d) Clutter:
Programmes that already included sponsorships or on air promotions brought down the recall for the adverts.
In conclusion, John Billett suggested that advertisers would gain from looking more carefully at the programme environment, and that it would be counter-productive to massively increase the volume of advertising on UK television. He added that a great many questions about advertising effectiveness remained unanswered, and that there was therefore an urgent need for more and more impartial research.