Arun Katiyar: But who will do the research?

TUNING IN

No research is available to answer the questions of audience propensity with regard to commercials. But, it is necessary to have this insight before you pay for your position in the station's commercial break.

A radio station is its audience. There is no other way to look at radio as a product. If a station identifies the audience it wants to address, researches that audience and delivers to its demands, the station becomes that audience. Which is why, some stations are called 'elite' and others 'janata.'

There is plenty of "� diverse, it may be added "� research available to provide insights into radio consumption. Do more housewives listen to Station X-FM between 10 am and noon? Are more in-car listeners available to advertisers on Station Y-FM? Do more English-speaking adults listen to Station Z-FM after midnight and before 6 am?

The point isn't really what audience is available. While that is a driving factor, the critical questions to ask are:

When listening to a station, how many commercials will your audience tolerate before shutting the station or moving on to another station?

When listening to a station, what percentage of your audience will tune out after the first commercial?

When listening to a station, what percentage of your audience will tune out after the second commercial?

When listening to a station, how many of your audience will listen to all the commercials?

While radio research is still nascent, the fact that radio reaches a broader and larger audience "� often exceeding the reach of print "� means that the metrics it delivers must be cut finer, examined more closely and used more cautiously. Today, there is no research available to answer the questions of audience propensity with regard to commercials.

But, it is necessary to have this insight before you pay for your position in the station's commercial break. After all, a newspaper charges extra for a solus position, a magazine charges a premium for right hand, front of the book space.

So, you, as an advertiser, should demand differential pricing for a position within a commercial break. And if you know the percentage drop in audience, between the first and (say) the fourth commercial, you should be factoring this into the rate you buy at.

Of course, the station's sales head is going to argue that the radio equivalent of 'solus' or 'right hand page' is in the morning or at drive time. The fact that solus or right hand page delivers more 'attention' within an audience set, regardless of the time of day, will hardly matter to the station sales head.

But that's the truth "� as an advertiser, the composition of the listenership is key to your decision-making process, the time of day (between what the station calls prime time and what it calls non-prime time) is the first step towards negotiating a rate, followed by the total time you buy across the year. Then a position within the ad break should be the final step in negotiating the rate.

The truth could be as follows: you put in considerable effort into finding a station that delivers your target group, you researched the kind of commercial they want to listen to and created that commercial (an award winning one, doubtless), you put in a healthy budget behind the commercial and never really figure out that if your commercial is the fourth one to play within each break, your carefully-tracked audience has flipped the dial.

The point at which your audience stops listening within a commercial break can be dependent on several factors. Without going into the complexities of those factors, it is sufficient to know that this point will vary from station to station and from audience to audience. And will perhaps show some variance depending on the time of day!

Who should do this research? At what point, within the maturity of the medium, should such research be undertaken? What impact can such research have on advertising rates? In whose interest is it to undertake such research?

Radio stations will, forever, cry hoarse that the research they conduct will always be suspect in the eyes of the advertiser. True. And there must be a good reason why advertisers say this.

Advertisers will not want to research the impact of positioning as the research will cost way beyond their budget and make radio investments unattractive. Radio stations will always trash the findings of an independent researcher (nothing new, right?).

So, the only way out could be a body constituted by advertisers (the research is in their interest) with members of the radio industry as a part of the body.

Oh yes, the problem of "who will do the research" is an even more fascinating one than "what research should be done in the interest of advertisers deriving value". On that interesting note, this column comes to an end.

Arun Katiyar has spent over two decades working in the print, internet and radio media. He can be contacted at katiyararun@yahoo.com