TVision study: Longer television ads do not always justify higher cost of inventory

Stephen Whiteside and Jo Bowman

Longer television spots do not always justify higher budgets in terms of the reach and attention they generate when compared with shorter TV ads, a study by measurement company TVision suggests.

An established rule of thumb for buying television advertising is that prices increase in direct proportion with the length of a spot.

In practice, that means a 60-second ad often requires twice the budget of a 30-second commercial. And a 15-second ad, in turn, will cost half the dollar amount commanded by 30 seconds of airtime set aside for brand messaging.

“So, the interpretation there is that each second of ad time in a program is priced evenly,” Tristan Webster, svp/product and operations at TVision, the measurement company, explained to a town hall convened by the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF),...

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