Erica Riebe

Recall of radio advertising in low and high advertising clutter formats

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.

How Clutter Affects Advertising Effectiveness

ABSTRACT Consolidating past findings on clutter with analysis of four new data sets, we document the empirical patterns for how advertising works in television and radio with different levels of clutter. We find that advertising avoidance is similar in low and high clutter environments, so when there is more clutter, audiences really do see more advertisements. Doubling the clutter, however, does not halve the number of advertisements recalled, and in less clutter audiences are less likely to correctly identify the advertised brand in commercials they do recall. Overall, we find that the impact of clutter is not large, especially when compared to creative elements of executions.

Double jeopardy in brand defection

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test whether brand defection shows double‐jeopardy effects, and whether stochastic models provide useful benchmarks of expected brand defection rates.Design/methodology/approach – The approach takes the form of an empirical study of brand defection in four markets using panel data, comparing the performance of simple OLS models with a stochastic model.Findings – Brand defection shows double jeopardy. Almost all brand defection in the markets studied could be explained by the category examined and the market share of the focal brand. A stochastic model of choice fits these data well, and provides many further practical and theoretical applications.Practical implications – The study provides improved benchmarks for brand defection, allowing managers to spot whether their brand is performing better or worse than expected. It also allows better analysis of market structure for subscription services, especially under dynamic conditions, and better estimation of custome...

More Mutter About Clutter: Extending Empirical Generalizations to Facebook

ABSTRACT This article examines the impact of clutter on advertising placed on Facebook. This platform is quite different from broadcast media, yet the current study unveiled very similar findings as previously seen for television and radio—that advertisements were better recalled when placed among fewer other advertisements. The improvements in advertising recall, however, do not appear to be sufficient to justify the likely price premium that advertisers would have to pay to reduce clutter on Facebook. The research found that larger brands are more immune to clutter than small brands, so low-clutter environments are more important for lesser-known (i.e., smaller and new) brands.