Radio Sales Café

Here's this week's Friday poll question:

How are your :60-second ads priced relative to the cost of :30's?

Please post your replies below. Thank you!

Our :30's are 70%of the :60's rate

We charge $2 more per spot to convert from :30's to :60's

Good Morning, we sell our 30 second ads @ 80% of what our 60 second ads cost.

We do about 10-12% different (depending on the number -- like $79 would be a weird price) :60s to :30s. Some annual advertisers get priced at :60 but they're already too low to discount anymore when they run a :30. And we do :10/:15 for 60-65% of :30.

Our stations are unit based - not time based. We charge the same rate for :60's and :30's.

a :30 is 1/2 the price of a :60.

ours at at 1.75 times the 30 second rate. 15's are 75% of a 30 second rate.

The rule of thumb here is that a 60-second commercial is 20% higher than a 30....

Our 60's are 50% more than a 30 second ad

We are also unit based--they are the same price.

We do not believe that "Less is More," so our :30s are priced at 80% of our :60s, not the other way around. Regardless of writing skill, there are many clients who need :60 seconds to adequately tell their story, especially new businesses who must establish an identity in the minds of the listeners.

Another interesting topic...and another one I have a strong opinion about. When I was in traditional radio our :30s cost 60-65% of our: 60s. Why does radio get so hung up on rate? Will radio ever establish a cpm model? Isn't that ad industry standard?

In my opinion, if Radio is going to continue to stagnate itself with a spot rate, then :30s should cost more than :60s...and the cost for :10s should be higher. Move away from traditional stop-sets and drop the :10s between songs. Or, establish a cpm model and it won't so much matter the cost of :30s relative to the cost of :10s.

Move to a cpm model. Eliminate the :60s and shorten your stop-sets. Keep your listeners longer!

I want to encourage clients to use 60's therefore everything for the most part is priced as 60's, except for sports. So if you want a 30 it's 80% of the 60 price. We only have x units per hour, and usually stations that use x-minutes per hour can have inordinately long stop sets... Once listeners start hearing 5 -8 commercials in a row you have to wonder about the tune out factor.

Ours are about 50% higher

Our :60s are 1.5 times the rate for a :30.

:60's at the Pullman Radio stations cost an average of 20% more than :30's, making them a great buy for advertisers who need the full minute. (Working backwards, :30's are 75-80% the cost of a :60.)

Naturally, if the message can be communicated clearly and effectively in :30 seconds, it's usually best to invest the difference in additional frequency. But sometimes even a minute is less than one would like to have to create the ideal message.

J.R.W. used to push a concept called "The Universal Rate Card" - where radio time was sold in five-second "units" (comparable to the newspaper column-inch). Using his scheme, a station might sell bulk contracts of 1000 to 50,000 units per year, and the advertiser could stack those units as the message dictated, running :10's, :15's, :30's, :45's, :60's, :75's, etc.

Nice idea, in theory. Sell like the newspaper sells.

In practice, I am not aware of any station that ever adopted this system.

In an age of satellite-delivered syndicated programming and automated scheduling, trying to schedule ad lengths other than :30's and :60's is usually difficult-to-impossible. Too bad, from a creative standpoint. But that's the reality most stations have come to accept.

Anyone regularly use lengths other than :30's and :60's? (We might have to make this a separate poll question sometime - to see how many folks have the flexibility to create shorter/longer ads, and how they do it.)

From my experience, :30's are currently being priced at 80% of a :60 in the markets I'm working in. I am finding the deals "flying" here in Columbus. There is currently more inventory than those willing to buy.

Several Columbus stations are offering :05's, :10's and :15's. Pricing is fairly aggressive on these spots and make a good addition to a :30 or :60 schedule.
I am seeing some stations offering :15's and piggybacking non-competing sponsors into :30's to get over the satellite restrictions.

how does this unit based pricing work- sounds intersting.

One other thought on this question: Why do radio people seem to all want to round prices to the nearest dollar? Why should an ad cost $30 when it could cost $30.64? Imaging for a second an annual contract that is for 8 spots per day three days a week. That is an extra $798.72 per year in income. Some have told me that they like working in whole numbers.... easier to deal with. Well imagine for a second that you get into a rate negotiation (which 99 out of 100 times are caused by the fact that a poor, or NO copy idea was proposed) and you use whole dollar rates. You pitch 25 and they counter at 22. You are dealing in the only unit you have defined. Better if your rate is $28.47 and you counter in $.17 increments.

Just a thought. Remember, it does not take any longer to type $23.47 into a calculator than it does $23.00.

15's are 75% of a 30, and 60's are 150% of a 30. I agree that selling radio in 5 second increments would create some programming issues/headaches/work! Not that those of us in sales care anything about those programming people...  ;o)  Plus there also other things to consider using this model, like chasing listeners away having 20 commercials in an island (even though the commercial island is the same length it would seem alot longer) to making it work in logging software to the DRASTIC drop in information retention making the commercials less effective especially for branding (try to remember the sequence of car numbers and drivers as they pass by in a NASCAR race) hahaha.