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800.275.2840 MORE NEWS» insideradio.com THE MOST TRUSTED NEWS IN RADIO TUESDAY, MARCH 10, 2015 Radio’s still testing new spotload strategies. A growing number of stations are launching with low spotloads and vowing to stick with them as a long-term point of differentiation. The trend is most apparent for brands targeting younger demos accustomed to low-inventory online alternatives. Operators are optimistic the lighter loads will help drive time spent listening and translate into a better value proposition for advertisers. Emmis launched CHR “Now 96-3” KNOU, St. Louis on Super Bowl weekend with a promise of “60 minutes commercial-free every time we start the music.” That involves an average seven minutes of commercials per hour clustered into one stop-set, significantly lower than its direct competitor. Emmis plans to stick with the lower inventory for the long haul. “We have a hard cap which we won’t violate,” Emmis president of programming Rick Cummings says, adding that the station launched “fairly close to full” in terms of client demand. Entercom, which cut spotloads in half last summer at Seattle modern rock “The End” KNDD, is trying a similar approach in a second market. Country “94.1 The Wolf” WLFP, Memphis prides itself on playing “half as many commercials as the other guys.” More than five months after bowing, “The Wolf” has stuck with a ceiling of six-minutes per hour, divided across two breaks. In Fresno, One Putt Broadcasting last week signed on classic hip-hop KJZN (105.5) with four 2-minute breaks an hour and a pledge of 14 songs per hour. Sister station “Jewel FM” KJWL (99.3) promises “55 minutes of great music every hour” with one spot per break. How committed is One Putt to the low inventory celling? “Over my dead body will those spotloads ever increase,” co-owner John Ostlund says. The pros and cons of lower ad loads. Proponents of lower ad loads are banking on a payoff that goes beyond improved ratings. They believe advertisers will pay a premium for delivering their message in a less cluttered environment. While it’s too early to quantify, Emmis president of programming Rick Cumming says anecdotal listener reaction to CHR “Now 96-3” KNOU, St. Louis suggest they’re sitting through the seven-minute stopset. “If people are willing to stay and consume their messages, then that’s a true benefit for those who use our new brand to advertise,” Cummings says. Entercom-Seattle and One Putt-Fresno hope to create higher demand and drive ad rates up by lowering the supply and increasing an advertiser’s “share of voice.” But after buying three Fresno stations from Wilks Broadcasting in January, One Putt had to inform clients their rates were going up, which cost it some business. Co-owner John Ostlund says the “vast majority” of clients understand the strategy. “They do see the value,” he says, “but that’s not to say every client thought it was a good idea to raise the rates.” In making presentations to clients before launching Fresno’s “Jewel FM” KJWL last year, account execs asked clients what it would be worth to have the only spot in a break. “It was shocking what advertisers told us,” Ostlund recounts. “They said it would be worth significantly more than we ultimately started charging.” While not everyone converted to the new business model, he claims a vast majority of clients agreed to pay 50%-100% rate increases in exchange for being the only spot in a break. But having less inventory to sell, limits a station’s revenue potential and Ostlund concedes that such a strategy may result in “a more modest bottom line.” Quality of ad creative seen as important as quantity. As Alpha Media has grown from bit player to a group of about 90 stations, it has worked to rein in spotloads at newly acquired station clusters, some of which had no limits in place. The goal, according to EVP of programming Scott Mahalick, is to run one minute or one unit less than the competition — to drive demand and improve its market position. That has involved caps of eight minutes at classic hip-hop “Old School 105.1” WGHL, Louisville; CHR “Y100” WXYY, Savannah; and country “96.7 The Bull” WGBL Gulfport, MS, among others. But advertising is, after all, radio’s lifeblood, and so Alpha has put a greater focus on improving the quality of its creative than just lopping off [email protected] | 800.275.2840 PG 1 NEWS insideradio.com TUESDAY, MARCH 10, 2015 units. The company launched the Voodoo Awards to reward stations for what Mahalick calls “mesmerizing creative.” Audio clips of the campaigns are posted on the company’s intranet for sister stations to use. Better creative increases a station’s chances of getting the audience to stick around through stopsets and having that message be effective for the advertiser, he says, regardless of the number of units. “It takes a concentrated effort and a deliberate focus to make that happen,” Mahalick points out. The goal, he says, is to get listeners about 25 seconds into the spot before they realize it’s an ad. For instance, a campaign for the CW Networks fall season was integrated into a $1,000 Minute contest where contestants had to answer 10 questions correctly in one minute to win the cash. “It was really an endorsement ad for CW,” Mahalick says. “But if you listened to it you had no idea.” Take the Inside Radio Reader’s Poll on spotloads. To improve the environment for both listeners and advertisers, some radio stations are taking steps to reduce the quantity of commercials they broadcast. Inside Radio is conducting a Readers’ Poll on broadcast radio spotloads. Click HERE to take the survey. Study: Online ad loads less than a third of broadcast radio. While some broadcast radio operators experiment with ways to rein in overstuffed spotloads, a study of pureplay webcasters shows their average online radio ad load to be just 2.69 minutes per hour. That’s less than a third of what the average broadcast radio station airs. Conducted by ad tech company Xappmedia, the study examined commercial loads of four pureplays from November through January. It didn’t include any broadcast streamers. With the vast majority of ads served consisting of :30s, the average number of units per hour on the streaming services was 6.45. But like broadcast radio, different webcasters employ different ad deployment strategies. Of the four services studied, one aired mostly 15-second ads for an average of 9.74 units per hour while another averaged just 4.34 ad units an hour. Overall, :30s accounted for 77% of ads served. By comparison, the average radio station in PPM markets aired about nine minutes of commercials an hour, according to a 2011 study by Coleman, Media Monitors and Arbitron. The Xapp report introduces what may be a new metric to radio broadcasters: Time to First Ad or TTFA. Because pureplay streaming is a one- to-one experience, publishers can control how much music or content a listener is served after launching a station before the first ad is served. The study shows the average TTFA was 11 minutes from the start of the listening session, with a variance among services of only two minutes plus or minus the average. “Each of the services has determined that getting 2-4 songs in before an advertisement is optimal for balancing between listener experience and economic necessity,” the study concludes. Broadcast radio and web pureplays share a lot of advertisers. Seven of the top 10 broadcast radio advertisers from 2014’s first two quarters, as reported by the Radio Advertising Bureau, were among the accounts identified by Xappmedia in a new study of advertising on online radio pureplays. Five of radio’s top 10 spenders from the third quarter are also on the list. “There is little doubt that internet radio and broadcast radio are competing for ad dollars and relevance with top audio advertisers,” the report concludes. The study of four pureplay services shows the impact of seasonality on streaming ad loads with a rise between November and December followed by a January fall, reaffirming online radio as an ad platform used by retailers during a critical shopping season. November yielded an ad load of 2.77 minutes per hour, which climbed to 2.84 in December and fell to 2.47 in January. There was even greater variance in the number of advertisers across the survey period. November’s 29 advertisers on the four services nearly doubled to 57 in December before falling back to 44 in January. The number of active accounts varied from service to service. On one there were over 50 distinct advertisers identified while the other three averaged only 22 unique advertisers during the period. In all, 101 different advertisers were identified. The average online radio advertiser bought only one deep. The vast majority of advertisers, 87%, appeared on only one of the services while 10% were identified on two services and 4% on three. No advertiser was on all four services. Entercom says DOJ ‘wrong’ and presses forward with LFM deal. The Justice Department has stalled Entercom’s proposed $105 million deal to buy Lincoln Financial Media, but CEO David Field is confident the sale will close. The only [email protected] | 800.275.2840 PG 2 NEWS insideradio.com TUESDAY, MARCH 10, 2015 question is how many LFM stations in Denver are along for the ride. “I don’t see the deal getting upended,” Field said yesterday at the Deutsche Bank Media Conference in Palm Beach, FL.