PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Aaron Michelon
AU  - Steven Bellman
AU  - Margaret Faulkner
AU  - Justin Cohen
AU  - Johan Bruwer
TI  - A New Benchmark for Mechanical Avoidance of Radio Advertising
AID  - 10.2501/JAR-2020-007
DP  - 2020 Mar 23
TA  - Journal of Advertising Research
PG  - JAR-2020-007
4099  - http://www.journalofadvertisingresearch.com/content/early/2020/03/19/JAR-2020-007.short
4100  - http://www.journalofadvertisingresearch.com/content/early/2020/03/19/JAR-2020-007.full
AB  - Radio remains popular, delivering an audience reach of over 90 percent, but radio ratings may overestimate real advertising exposure. Little is known about audience and media factors affecting radio-advertising avoidance. Many advertisers have believed as much as one-third of the audience switch stations during radio-advertising breaks. In the current study, the authors combined Canadian portable people-meter data ratings to measure loss of audience during advertising. They discovered a new benchmark of 3 percent (across conditions) for mechanical (or actual physical) avoidance of radio advertising, such as switching stations or turning off the radio. This rate is about one-tenth of current estimates, but was higher for music versus talk stations, out-of-home versus in-home listening, and early versus late dayparts.