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Is anybody doing 5 second commercials

B

b-turner

5 seconds...about 22-23 syllables or 13 to 15 words (depending on your peference of 150 or 180 words a minute).

Personally, I really like them because they convey just one thought and can be slipped in any stop set or outside the stop set. iHeart was pushing short spots (don't recall them pushing 5 seconds).

Does anybody know of stations doing these?

I know 10 seconds are common (45 syllables/25-30 words) and are being done by lots of stations.

I worked a small market station that sold 5 second spots. They were 75 cents compared to a typical spot being $2. Yes, this was years ago. We set a maximum of 8 an hour with a minimum of 5 a day. Schedule had to run 7 days a week for a minimum of 3 months ($113.75 a month). Pitched to smaller businesses only.

Sales and production loved it. You could write it in seconds and produce it just as quickly. You got one going in and one coming out of stop sets (back then 4 stop sets of 3 spots plus the 5 seconds going in and out before the re-entry jingle). We were a top 40.

I was thinking as stations struggle for local dollars, maybe this might be an option for businesses that can't buy an adequate schedule at the normal spot rate.
 
The "From the Jeep Wrangler studio, this is WZZZ, Anytown" is a common short add or billboard (as Big A mentions). I have not seen the "13 to 15 word" ones you mention except in things like traffic reports: "WZZZ traffic reports brought to you by Mattress City where the prices are lowest on more than 15 famous mattrress brands".

In Argentina where I worked for many years, ads on all stations were sold by the second. We saw many 5 to 10 second brand reinforcement ads, and a stopset of 5 minutes could have as many as 25 different spots.
 
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Not sure this quite counts, but we run traffic and weather mentions as reinforcement to our 30s and 60s. These are just a few second long but are so inexpensive we run them in a ratio of 12 to 1 over our regular spots.
 
In Houston, Audacy sportstalker KILT often has five second spots that run at the end of commercial breaks, just before rejoin bumpers. These are NOT billboards.

On ad-supported streaming TV channels six second spots are quite common.
 
b-turner said:
5 seconds...about 22-23 syllables or 13 to 15 words (depending on your peference of 150 or 180 words a minute).

Personally, I really like them because they convey just one thought and can be slipped in any stop set or outside the stop set. iHeart was pushing short spots (don't recall them pushing 5 seconds).

Does anybody know of stations doing these?

I know 10 seconds are common (45 syllables/25-30 words) and are being done by lots of stations.

I worked a small market station that sold 5 second spots. They were 75 cents compared to a typical spot being $2. Yes, this was years ago. We set a maximum of 8 an hour with a minimum of 5 a day. Schedule had to run 7 days a week for a minimum of 3 months ($113.75 a month). Pitched to smaller businesses only.

Sales and production loved it. You could write it in seconds and produce it just as quickly. You got one going in and one coming out of stop sets (back then 4 stop sets of 3 spots plus the 5 seconds going in and out before the re-entry jingle). We were a top 40.

I was thinking as stations struggle for local dollars, maybe this might be an option for businesses that can't buy an adequate schedule at the normal spot rate.
Click to expand...

Hits 106 is KLMI Rock River Laramie.. powered by Toyota of laramie.. blah blah"

That counts as a commercial and is about 5 seconds

Sometimes there's a "locally owned and operated service of Wolf Creek Radio Broadcasting" in there, but I forget where it in the legal id it is
 
KCBS has, for several years now (I forget precisely when it started) inserted little "sponsored by" blurbs in the traffic report, except they're usually midstream, for example: "there's a nasty crash, this report is sponsored by $BUSINESS, on northbound 880 in Hayward just past 92..." Then the traffic announcer recites a spot for $BUSINESS, must be somewhere between 5-10 seconds, at the end of the report.

I can't say I like it much, but it's minor and usually slips by mostly unnoticed.

c
 
"5 seconds...about 22-23 syllables or 13 to 15 words (depending on your preference of 150 or 180 words a minute).

Personally, I really like them because they convey just one thought and can be slipped in any stop set or outside the stop set. iHeart was pushing short spots (don't recall them pushing 5 seconds)."

I think the OP's intent is way different from most of the responses here. I believe he's talking about a stand alone actual 5 second spot...independent of a sponsor tag or a report sponsorship, which of course should be short and simple. I dont know who is doing these, outside of Youtube...similar but not the same...and i wonder how you would charge for that, but im sure there are outside the box thinking programmers and sales people who will figure it out at somepoint. I think it would really only work for certain advertisers and certain types of advertising (brand awareness or maybe a quick sale message)
 


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