What Happens When the Spots Come On: 2011 Edition

Radio does a remarkable job of maintaining its audience delivery once the commercials come on. Now that the Portable People Meter™ service can track radio audiences on a minute-by-minute basis across 48 top markets, we can demonstrate how radio constantly replenishes its audience with new listeners during commercial breaks.

Using data from a full year across all 48 PPM® measured markets, the study shows:

• Radio delivers more than 93 percent of its lead-in audience levels during the average commercial break.
• One- to three-minute commercial breaks deliver radio audiences levels that are practically the same as the lead-in audience.
• Longer spot breaks of four to six minutes plus delivers a surprisingly high an average percentage of the lead-in audience level.
• Commercial breaks in morning drive deliver some of the highest percentages of their lead-in audience levels, on average. In the study, you’ll discover what drives this daypart’s performance.
• Details of commercial break impact on audience levels by market and by month.

This study, as the previous edition, takes advantage of the increased precision of passive electronic measurement, both for radio audiences and for commercial occurrences.

What Happens When the Spots Come On: 2011 Edition is a comprehensive update of the landmark 2006 study on radio audience behavior during commercial breaks by Arbitron, Media Monitors, and Coleman Insights. The 2011 study analyzes 18 million commercial breaks, 62 million minutes of commercials, and 866 stations for a year of audience data from all 48 PPM markets to compare the audience level for each minute of a commercial break to the audience for the minute before the commercials began.

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