When will advertisers realise less is more?

Please have some sympathy for media owners; the constant struggle to deliver ever increasing “value” for agencies and advertisers, while maximising the effectiveness of their campaigns is not an easy task (MW October 13).

Chrysalis’ Don Thomson argued that it is by reducing ad clutter that we can ultimately deliver greater advertising standout, rather than chasing ever greater levels of exposure through cheaper pricing.

It’s great to see that commercial radio is once again leading the way, by looking to reduce the number of advertisers competing for attention within ad breaks.

But it’s not a new initiative and we should be proud that as an industry we have been collaborating to deliver this sort of effective advertising for many years in the form of newslink, which began in 1987.

Newslink is commercial radio’s largest single advertising opportunity, reaching over 20 million adults every week. Broadcast on 268 stations to the entire UK population, newslink offers advertisers a solus ad spot within the morning news.

This combination of credible, trusted content and solus environment has been proven to deliver a 42 per cent higher recall than standard radio advertising. Surely, most would agree that the greater the number of ads, the greater the risk of avoidance and low effectiveness. Solus advertising positions are the embodiment of the idea that “less is more”.

When people tell me they don’t buy into the value that the newslink environment offers, I suggest the idea of “Ad FM”; non-stop advertising 24 hours a day. You won’t have any lis

teners to your ads, nor will you gain any standout, but we’d be happy to sell it to you for that &£1 CPT (cost per transaction) you are constantly striving for.

Kirk Vallis

Head of network sales

GCap Media

London WC2