Effective Frequency

Radio Campaign Weights Common practice amongst agencies when planning an average weight campaign has been to run at 4 OTH a week over a period of 4-5 weeks. Lighter weight campaigns will be at 2-3 OTH (often used for maintenance or drip campaigns within mixed media schedules). A heavy weight campaign would be 6 OTH+, often used for product or campaign launches.

Effect of campaign objective Brand launch vs. Brand maintenance. How much noise do you need to generate for the brand or message to cut through initially? Do you want to generate high awareness quickly over a short period of time (in which case running at a higher weight makes sense)? Or keep nudging/reminding over the longer-term? Some campaigns use a combination of the two i.e kick starting the campaign at higher weights of 4/5 OTH to get the idea established then falling back to a lower-weight nudging strategy.

Other factors to consider Radio's role within the media mix Is radio a support to other media hence playing more of a gentle nudging/reminding role? Message complexity Bearing in mind that people are doing something else when listening, how many times do they need to hear the ad in order to get the message? The average frequency of 4 OTH takes into account the fact that with many ads the listener needs to hear it a couple of times before they take out the full message.

Frequency Trend line Gains in ad awareness by weekly OTH Source: 600 campaigns on radioGAUGE Source- radioGAUGE analysis

A reach strategy on radio delivers the best returns Radio: the ROI multiplier

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