Insuring More Listenable Breaks: An Open Letter
This is a guest post by Sean Ross as part of the Ross On Radio series.
To the insurance company that follows me everywhere, anytime I listen to online radio.
I appreciate how much you love radio. I love radio, too. But every time I listen, I hear your ads in every online stopset. Sometimes, it’s more than once in a stopset. Sometimes, way more than once. It might be in between the Home Depot and O’Reilly Auto parts ads, but sometimes the ads are next to each other.
Sometimes there are several different campaigns. But often, it’s that campaign where bitter-yet-resolute women write Dear John letters to their old insurance company. Sometimes I hear two different women, but sometimes it’s the sassy Southern belle back-to-back. It’s hard on a fella getting dumped three or four times in the course of a stopset.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3vEOPENG1E&w=560&h=315]
Sometimes, for variety, there’s that other campaign of yours: the one about people’s silly social media postings. It’s meant to be a comment on the banality of social media, but the ads fall somewhere between funny and banal themselves.
In fact, after more than a decade, I’m still ambivalent about your radio ads. I know they must work, because you’ve been saturating radio for years — as long as there’s been Internet radio. I remember in the early days that broadcasters groaned openly about the ads. Now they’ve become comfortable and familiar, and better than another debt relief spot. There are some great moments in your TV spots. But I don’t get the same sense of overload from hearing one of Dick Orkin’s ads for RegionalHelpWanted.com repeatedly.
I will give you that you’ve spurred your rivals in the insurance business to more and better radio advertising. When it’s not one of your ads, it’s the Allstate mayhem ads, or Flo from Progressive. And I’m still ambivalent about those Progressive ads, too. At least those ads are self-aware enough to make fun of being on every station.
It’s not you, GEICO. It’s radio. Broadcasters have had nearly 15 years to work out ad insertion, but they still sell too much inventory to not enough sponsors. By the time I hear your ads, I’ve often heard a jock break or station promo cut off abruptly. Your ads are better than the same station promo repeatedly, or dire PSAs, or dead air, but by the time the break is over, I’ve often heard those, too.
For the last few years, I’ve suggested to broadcasters that listeners’ expectations for what might be considered a reasonable number of commercials in online radio are being constantly redefined. Pandora plays one or two :15s or :30s at a time. The new Beats 1 has only sponsorships. Songza rose to prominence with just pre-roll and native advertising. I’ve also suggested that maybe ad insertion would be less clunky if broadcast stations started to view their online efforts as homebase, not a simulcast.
But if broadcasters are going to persist in offering 12 minutes of online inventory, they have to do a better job of finding more believers, instead of over saturating a few advertisers to the point where those ads are practically devalued. Edison Research’s The Infinite Dial 2015 says that more than half of Americans 12-plus listen to Internet radio monthly. There are 119 million weekly listeners. We know that radio enthusiastically sells its overall reach, so why not to more online sponsors?
So I’m glad you’re there for radio, GEICO. But I need to start hearing other people.
Sincerely, Ross On Radio.
