Long before the success of FAANGs (AMAMAs?), TVs used advertising for profit and between program segments. It became standard that most commercials were thirty seconds long. Most still are.
But very few commercials use all that time really effectively. I get networks need standardized lengths and want to sell blocks of usual lengths. But you might think, through the magic of repetition, fifteen seconds would be more effective if played twice. Obviously, there are many factors affecting efficacy. But two fifteen second commercials don’t need to be the same; different ones could go for different market segments.
So, how come you only see occasional shorter commercials? What is the Straight Dope on TV commercial lengths?
I once heard an ad executive explain in an interview that the standard length of a TV commercial (30 seconds) gives them just enough time to get your attention, tell you what they want to tell you, and then leave you with something to take away. I’m not sure you can do all that in 15 seconds even if you ran it twice consecutively. Also remember that people are used to 30-second commercials. It it ain’t broke…
I don’t know how they price commercials, but it may be nearly as expensive to show a 15-second commercial as a 30-second one. Perhaps pricing this way encourages longer commercials and generates more revenue for the network. I have no idea if that’s true. Just a theory.
The Straight Dope is that stations charge proportionately more for shorter commercials. If a 60-second commercial rate is $100, the rate for a :30 might be $60-$75, and the rate for a :15 or :10 might be $35-$40.
And you can’t just truncate a 30-second commercial into a :15. While short commercials can be effective, research shows they have to be structured differently, which requires a re-educated or different creative team, which negates some of the savings you might get with the shorter time.
I work in the ad industry. The above is pretty much my take on it. :15s have a role, mostly in reminding consumers about messages/offers that they have already heard about, and/or just serving to keep the brand top-of-mind. But, one can’t communicate much in that short time, and so, the :30 is still the predominant ad unit, at least on actual TV programming. (Online video is another beast entirely.)
Also, if a network or station sells a :15 during an ad “pod,” they pretty much need to be able to sell another :15 for that same pod. As not many advertisers use :15s, that’s why the price of a :15 slot is often not that much less than a :30.
Ad brokers can sometimes sell a block of ads with odd timing, although all I only recall 15 second commercials paired up into 30 second blocks. I get the impression there are more short commercials now than recent years but I remember there were more shorts aired for local businesses back in the 60s and 70s. Maybe there were more of any length commercials for local business back then, not sure about that.
Even if you put two different fifteen second commercials into the same commercial break (preferably not consecutively), I think it would often be better given a well written ad.
Unless it was some sort of a stunt (in which the two :15s act as a two-part story, and you have to see both of them to get it), few advertisers would do that, if for no other reason than the media cost for placing two :15s is typically higher than for a single :30.
Maybe. But a TV commercial might cost a thousand dollars or a million dollars to make, no?
People are affected by Internet ads they see for times much briefer than a TV spot. Novelty, repetition, tighter writing…. It would not work for complex stories, of course, but with modern attention spans I think it might have more advantages than staid stations suspect. Of you are selling cars driving around, or hamburgers, it is not like you are weaving a complex tale to begin with.
Unless you’re talking about the really low-budget local ones – it’s usually closer to the latter than the former.
But, that’s production cost. “Media cost” is what the advertiser (through their media agency) is paying to TV networks, and individual stations, to run the ad.
Decades ago, the :60 ad was the norm, and a lot of people though that :30s were too short to get the message across. But, the industry almost entirely* shifted to :30s, and that’s been the norm since I started working in marketing, 30+ years ago.
:15s came into being at about the time I started working, and at that time, there was a lot of debate as to whether they would become the norm. They largely never have on TV, in part because, as a general rule, lots and lots of testing has shown that they haven’t been as effective as :30s (except for the specific use cases I mentioned above).
That said :15s (or even shorter) are now really common in online video (like on YouTube and Instagram), and it’s entirely possible that they’ll eventually take over on TV, too. Agencies and more progressive/risk-taking advertisers are continually testing new approaches, after all.
*- There are still some cases where :60s – or even longer – are still widely used, though it’s primarily for “direct response” ads (like the cheesy ads for kitchen tools, skincare products, and gadgets), and for Medicare supplemental plans. You very rarely see such ads on prime-time network television.
These are effective local market short commercials. Even shorter than 15 seconds, although they often ran 2 or more in a row.
So watch this selection of Krass Bros. short commercials from the 70s and 80s, it won’t take long. Do you remember where they are located? Fill in the blanks “Krass Bros., 901 ______ St., store of the _______!”. And this is probably the first time you’ve seen these commercials too. I haven’t seen one in 40 years and I still remember.
I had a friend in the biz, too. Do you also use the word “content” for that…stuff that they show between commercials?
As for the length of commercials, I notices that after an ad has been on the air for a week or so, a shorter version starts appearing. Some of the “detail”, the fluff, the fun parts, gets removed. I call them the shorthand version. But I never notice - are these actually shorter? They don’t seem to have added anything, but having a 20 second comercial goes against the standard. Anybody notice these, have a thought?
What you are probably seeing are :15s that are cut-down versions of the :30 ads. :20 is an odd “size,” and while you might see that on an online video ad, it’d be pretty rare to see it on broadcast or cable TV. Networks and stations usually structure their ad “pods” around 30-second blocks, and a :20 would mean that they would need a :10 to balance out the time of that pod, and there just aren’t many advertisers making ads of that sort of length. So, the vast majority of TV ads easily fit into multiples/divisions of 30 seconds (15, 30, 60, 90, etc.)
Here’s an example of a 15-second ad. Watch and then try to answer these questions:
What is the name of the product?
How do you apply it?
What do you use the product for?
Question #1 gets answered four times in 15 seconds. The answer to Question #2 is shown three times. Question #3 doesn’t get answered at all.
The commercial would be equally appropriate for makeup removers or pimple cream. Ergo, good for name recognition, bad for connecting with the target audience.
Having toiled in the business of writing and producing commercials for a local TV station for many years, stand-alone :15s were rare. :15s were typically sold as “bookends.” Your first :15 appears first in a 2-minute cluster, followed by :30s or :60s for other non-competitive advertisers, and your second :15 follows to wrap-up the set. Your :15s could be the same spot, or one could be image-oriented while the second emphasized an offer. The station I worked for pushed :30s. For a :30, we would shoot video on location. We wouldn’t leave the building for a stand-alone :15. If they wanted a :15 it would be a truncated version of a :30. If they only wanted :15s, they would be bookends. We discouraged :10s. They were too difficult to schedule.
The station I worked for was owned by one of the largest groups and we approached the process using their methods, but local TV stations owned by other companies may approach things differently.
Interesting thing about TV commercials but not the “length” of the commercial but the quantity. Watch a current TV show and cut out the commercial time and you’re left with about 41 minutes of program time fitted into a one hour time slot. Rewind to 1963. I’m watching the TV series “the Fugitive” and as an example, Season 1, episode 14 (the girl from little egypt) has approximately 51 minutes of program time in that same one hour time slot.
Remember the Wilkins Coffee commercials and such. They were always less than 10 seconds long and they had a zillion of them. Don’t know how many in a row they ran, however.
Indeed I remember them. I grew up in the DC area where these were shown. I recall seeing more than one consecutively but after 60 years the details are blurry.
