What to do when media campaign measurement reveals weak website traffic or meager brand lift? Blame the media plan or media vendors?  Most often, creative is the issue and your campaign is failing to “brand early and often.”

One of the most frequently asked questions the Radio Advertising Bureau receives on audio creative involves wear-out. Wear-out is defined as the point where creative testing declines from its peak due to message frequency fatigue. To explore whether wear-out is an issue, the Radio Advertising Bureau commissioned a study from ABX Advertising Benchmark Index, a global leader in creative testing, with half-a-million ads evaluated to date.

Creative testing giant System1, Adam Morgan, founder of ad agency eatbigfish, Jon Evans, Chief Customer Officer of System1 and host of Uncensored CMO, and Peter Field, the legendary “godfather of marketing effectiveness,” recently released a major study analyzing IPA (The Institute for Practitioners in Advertising) data that revealed brands must spend significantly more media money on dull ads compared to interesting, non-dull ads.

It is commonly accepted wisdom that a talent read by a podcast host or AM/FM radio personality drives powerful brand impact and sales effect. Now, a new study from System1, the creative effectiveness measurement leader, uncovers how talent reads impact a brand’s market share and short-term sales effect.

Several firms recently collaborated to produce a first of its kind study that examined thousands of campaigns. Audiotrack is a UK audio distribution service that sends ads from creative agencies to audio publishers. Audiotrack delivers audio ads to all UK and Republic of Ireland radio stations, digital streaming, and podcast platforms. Colourtext, a leading media analysis firm, examined over 10,000 campaigns that aired between 2019 and 2021. The study revealed the lower the audio word count per minute, the greater the brand standout, which in turn increases campaign web response.

The Cumulus Media | Westwood One Audio Active Group® has tested hundreds of audio ads over the years working with the leading experts in creative testing. The findings from those tests, along with marketing effectiveness and creative strategy work from industry giants, have been combined to form Cumulus Media | Westwood One Audio Active Group®’s comprehensive Audio Creative Best Practices.

Veritonic, the audio intelligence company, measures, scores, and benchmarks all manner of audio content: voices, music, ads and audio logos. In their recently released fifth annual Audio Logo Index study, Veritonic evaluated over a hundred of the top consumer brands audio logos. One of the key findings? An audio logo has to say the name of the brand and have melody.

There are two types of advertising campaigns to create impact: sales activation campaigns and brand building campaigns. What's the difference between the two?

Guest blogger Christopher Smith is a Writer and Brand Creative Group Head at The Richards Group, specializing in producing award-winning work for clients who want to combine high-level brand building with effective, agile retail messaging. Here are a few of his guidelines for best practices that brands can use to create effective AM/FM radio ads.