Double the Units: How Increasing the Number of Advertisements while Keeping the Overall Duration of Commercial Breaks Constant Affects Radio Listeners

Recently, a major radio station ownership group pressured the advertising industry to transition the accepted unit of advertising from the 60-second commercial to 30-second spots. This transition shows signs of being successful, and it is now possible for stations to play twice as many individual ad units while keeping the overall duration of commercial breaks constant. This within-subjects experiment tests the effects of such a circumstance on variables including listener cognitive effort, arousal, attitudes, and memory. Results suggest that breaks with more ad units lead to cognitive disengagement, increased duration estimates for the ad breaks, and more negative attitudes compared to ad breaks with fewer units.