Recall of radio advertising in low and high advertising clutter formats

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between radio advertising clutter and advertising recall using the Australian radio market as a test case. The term ‘clutter’ is defined here as a greater number of advertisements in a given time period. The study used an experimental design in which certain groups of participants were exposed to a radio format with high advertising clutter, while others were exposed to a low-clutter format. The ‘low-clutter’ respondents recalled as many ads on average as the ‘high-clutter’ respondents. Since the low-clutter respondents were exposed to far fewer ads, the proportion of ads recalled by the low-clutter respondents was more than double that of the high-clutter respondents, and this effect was consistent across multiple recall measures. That is, the low-clutter participants were twice as likely to recall a particular advertisement among those ads to which they were exposed. They were also twice as likely to correctly recall the product category the advertisement was for, and were twice as likely to correctly identify the advertised brand. In addition, the respondents exposed to a low-clutter advertising environment showed almost three times greater prompted advertising recognition.The study also tested the relationship between position in the advertising block and the recall of the ad. Ads that were placed at the start and end of large blocks of ads were better recalled than ads in the centre of such large blocks. This effect was comparatively stronger for ads at the start of a block and weaker for ads at the end of a block. These results suggest that low-clutter stations are justified in charging a price premium. Exactly how much this premium should be depends largely upon the measure of effectiveness used, but based on advertising recall the price premium could be double. More research is needed to establish a suitable premium and to extend the findings of this study into a real-life radio listening environment.