• by adam.m , Michael Deibert , August 22, 2005

The Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB) will transmit the latest installments of its radio ad effectiveness research at a time when all forms of advertising will be on the minds of Madison Avenue. In seminars scheduled during Advertising Week on Sept. 28 and 29, the RAB said the research would examine the pros and cons of blending television and radio advertising campaigns--as well as return on investment in radio advertising. The research is based on the latest installment of the RAB's Radio Advertising Effectiveness Lab (RAEL) studies.

One of the seminars, based on two RAEL-commissioned studies, examine the pros and cons of blending television and radio advertising campaigns--as well as return on investment in radio advertising--and will take place on September 28th and 29th, respectively.

The latter, analyzing what the RAB says is radio's return on investment (ROI) advantage over television, is drawn from a June 2005 RAEL study conducted by Millward Brown and Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), which examines the results of four pairs of radio and television campaigns conducted over a six-month period in four different markets and in a range of product categories.

Using the IRI's Targetable TV capability--which was able to dictate which ads were delivered to which households--the study analyzed scanner sales data for each test cell while at the same time controlling other factors such as pricing, promotion, in-store displays, and competitive activity.

The RAB found that the incremental radio campaigns preceded sales lifts of 4.1% according to IRI, while the television campaigns were higher at 7.5%. Once media costs were accounted for, it was in fact the radio campaigns that showed greater ROI, the study's authors posit.

In its December 2004 study of the synergy between radio and television-based advertisement campaigns, which forms the basis for the other Advertising Week presentation, the RAB will reveal that a PreTesting Company-proposed analysis of two television ad exposures--as compared with one television ad combined with two Radio exposures--showed that opting-out of one of the two television advertisements in order to defer to two radio ads increased unaided brand recall by 34%, whereas replacing one of two newspaper exposures with two radio advertisements almost tripled unaided brand recall.