TV Spots Shrink to Match Attention Spans

TV Spots Shrink to Match Attention Spans

By Emily Fredrix, AP, October 27, 2010

The number of 15-second television commercials has jumped more than 70 percent in five years to nearly 5.5 million last year, according to Nielsen. They made up 34 percent of all national ads on the air last year, up from 29 percent in 2005…

Fifteen-second ads cost about the same per second as longer ones but, of course, cost half as much. A 15-second ad on network TV cost about $20,000 on average last year, according to Nielsen…

More than half of commercials run by packaged-goods companies and 60 percent of fast-food ads are 15 seconds, according to Kantar Media. The advertisers simply show a picture of the products, flash a price and the brain knows what the marketer means…

The shorter ads also mean marketers can be on the air more frequently, even within the same commercial break. For example: During a recent episode of CBS’ “How I Met Your Mother,” viewers were bombarded with five brief ads in just a minute and a half, including two spots for Dunkin Donuts sandwiched around a more traditional 30-second ad for Aetna…

Big advertisers are driving the shift. Procter & Gamble, the maker of Crest toothpaste and Tide detergent and the world’s biggest advertiser, doubled its number of 15-second ads to more than 299,000 last year from the year before…

Shorter ads can be just as effective as longer ones. Viewers can form new associations, say, knowing about a discount, in a few seconds and then recall that information in just one second, Deborah Mitchell, executive director of the Center for Brand and Product Management at the University of Wisconsin says. People can’t help soaking up the message…

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