Are 60-second ads twice as effective as 30-second ads?

This paper asks whether the recent trend among advertisers towards favouring shorter television commercials is a sensible one, or if longer advertisements do in fact yield better product recall.

Are 60-Sec ads twice as effective as 30-Sec Ads?

Andrew GreenZenithOptimedia

There has been a clear trend over the past 40 years to running shorter-length TV commercials.

In 1965, 77% of all US network TV commercials lasted 60 seconds, a share which dropped to 27% five years later and has since fallen to 7% (2004).

30-sec ads made up 23% of the total in 1965 and 72% in 1970, but fell back to 56% in 2004. 15-sec units, introduced in the late 1980s, made up a third of all messages by this date.

In the UK, similar trends towards...

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