Advertising Wearin and Wearout: Ten Years Later—More Empirical Evidence and Successful Practice

Ten years ago, “An Empirical Investigation of Advertising Wearin and Wearout” (Blair, 1987) presented data which demonstrated not only the ability of pretesting to predict advertising's in-market effect, but also how that advertising's selling power is delivered in market. The past decade has yielded a great deal more evidence on both subjects. Ten separate studies with a total of 500 observations have supported the original findings and provided insight into additional areas such as how advertising works for large brands and how an execution's wearout is affected by the airing of other commercials for the same brand. The practitioners who are applying this learning are achieving revolutionary improvement in advertising's impact on their revenue growth.