Radio Sales Café

Happy Friday, everyone!

This week's poll question is from Jack Walker of Branson, MO:

In the past six months I’ve had several requests for :15, :10, and :05 second rates or a “sponsorship."  Is anyone else seeing this trend?  Are you offering these increments and what are you charging?

Thanks for the question, Jack.  As always, we look forward to reading everyone's replies!

My station has been selling :10/:15 second spots for a few years. All :10 seconds are attached to a news/weather sponsorship. These are priced at $20 each as they are assigned to a set time. :15's are usually short commercials promoting the clients website and are sold for $20 each as well.

Since my station is live 24/7, all :10's are live reads and the :15's are live or can be produced. Hope that helps!

Sometimes a potential client doesn't have enough budget to run a proper campaign with 30s so I'll sell them 15s to give them better frequency.

 

I've been buying and selling shorter spots for years. They're a great way to help build frequency without eating up a lot of cash.

:15's can be limited, in high demand and sometimes half the price of :30's.  Depending on format and live & local, they may air only in Prime.

:10's are great when they're live reads, maybe $20 a pop.  :05 sponsor mentions are just that, usually no charge.

Shorter avails depend on the traffic system & programming.

We're a small independent Contemporary Christian station.  We've definitely noticed a trend with our advertisers requesting :15 spots. Some comment that in today's attention deficit society, anything longer the listener will lose interest.  So...I've created a "Power Plug Blast" package that includes 40 :15 plugs to air 8x per day Monday-Friday, 6A-11P.  I present this as a very special package with a discounted price point of only $250 (flat rate). I now have couple clients who I've never been able to get on before now buying 1 or 2 of these packages per month.  I also allow the client the option of rotating 2 different scripts - giving each message 20 plays. 

We have sold pre-recorded 10s, 15s and 20s for years. have clients who run them as an annual and we regularly include them in packages. The cost runs approx 65% of a 30. The appeal to clients is rarely schedule or CPC - it's the opportunity to make one point or talk one product or feature at a time and use higher frequency to do it. So we produce 3-5 15s to rotate and run 5-8/day. the key is keeping the daily frequency so better to run 8x MWF than 3x MTWTFS. You are going for a cume effect. A local florist loves these - they work for him as constant reminders you don't need a special occasion to give flowers. They work well for things like county fairs at which you have a lot of varied activities or a business with a lot of product categories. Keep them consistent re: music, voice, copy platform so listeners clearly understand you're always talking about the same business or event. Advertisers often feel like they are on all the time and sound like they carry or sell a lot of different things.

Thanks to all for the specifics you are providing. I'm sure there are many others learning here also.

I learned a very radical way of selling radio back in 1973 when Jim Williams of the Welsh Company first proposed a Unit Rate Card System. The idea was that the merchants were used to buying print, understood the rates and made it easy to buy. He created the Radio Inch, a 5 second unit, and built everything under that. We had a rate card that offereed Quarter Page, Half Page, Full Page and Double Truck's worth of radio. The clients loved it. They could buyt in bulk and then use them howerver they wanted. We charged a little extra for premium times. And it allowed us to tag a PSA for the Bloodmobile with a five or ten second paid tag from the drug store, flower shop etc.  Guess it's a little harder to do with the automated logs, but good grief, that's what a computer is for.  I have not had anyone at the last three stations I've worked for even consider it, but for me, there are a lot of benefits, mainly to our clients.  Just my two cent's worth.

:30s make more money than :60s in the long run but around here :15, :10 and :05 are hard to fit into sports and network slots because you still need the difference to fill out the avail.

I'd like to see some too!!

I tried something similar to combat print, too.  Sold generic, annual commitments, without a specific schedule, breaking $$ into quarters. Booked 'template' schedules. Worked pretty good for clients that didn't make a lot of changes....just minor tweeks.

We offer mostly 10's as live sponsorships, usual price is 1/4 to 1/3 the price of a 60. 

I've also sold recorded 15's for about 1/2 the price of a 60.

We usually go with unit rates, not separate prices for 60's and 30's,  but I have lot's of freedom to adjust prices based on the big picture.

Results for the 10's are often as good or better than a 60 but I usually do both for a client. 

I haven't seen a trend one way or the other, and we use :15's where it makes sense, and they are mostly attached to weather sponsorships. They're good for direct response campaigns. However, for clients with long buying cycles that are in a branding campaign, we use :30's and :60's. They give more time to communicate an engaging story that captures attention and emotion over time.

Our modern country music station sells :15, :30 and :60 second spots now, but our management wouldn't let us sell :15's as recently as 2004. The combination of salesperson and customer requests, stagnant economic conditions in southwest Wisconsin and the whole debate about "shortened attention spans", led our managers to institute a :15 commercial spot availability in 2004 or 2005.  Now our spot sales are about two-thirds at :15 seconds, maybe 25% at :30 seconds and less than 10% being :60 (or more) seconds.   

Our competitors out of the nearby City of Madison (WI.) seem to sell a large percentage of :05, :10 and :15 second spots. We are not convinced that :05 second spots would really help our clientele, but we may be open to adding :10 second spots some day in the future.  (Of course, our rates are about 1/10th of the rates of the 'true' Madison radio stations, so they may be selling :05 and :10 second spots out of necessity.)

:15 second spots are approximately 3 full sentences in copy length, which can be plenty if your prospective client has a business or profession that is well-known to the public.  (Do you really waste time - in your clients' ad copy - explaining what a grocery store is ... or what a dentist does?)

But, if my prospect has a business with the undescriptive name of, say, "Jack Armstrong Enterprises" and Jack specializes in 'proximity-fused security systems' for livestock barns ... well, we could use up that entire 15-second spot (or more!) just explaining who Jack Armstrong is ... and what a 'proximity-fused security system' is.  In other words, use your common sense when selling 15-second (or shorter) spots, because some businesses require a certain amount of explanation, before you even get a chance to describe how they're the best company in their field and the advantages of their current "10% off on every security system sale" !

Some clients just NEED a 30-second or 60-second ad spot and you would be doing your client a real disservice by selling them a flight of 5-, 10- or 15-second advertising spots !