Radio_commercial

A radio commercial (often called an advert in the United Kingdom, or a spot to people in the business) is a form of advertising in which goods, services, organizations, ideas, etc. are promoted via the medium of radio. Many commercials are produced by an outside ad agency or radio production company and, airtime is purchased from a station or network in exchange for sponsorship of its programming.

Radio commercials are sold in 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 or 120 second increments. While a :60 radio commercial is twice as long as a :30 radio commercial, it is rarely sold at twice the price. While practices vary, most radio stations only charge 20-30% more for the longer spot.

While many commercials are professionally produced, radio is not out of reach for the small retail business owner. Most local radio stations have the ability to produce radio commercials in house using their own announcers. Often local radio stations will write and even produce the radio commercials for local retail advertisers at no additional cost when the merchant purchases a schedule of "spots" on the station.

Radio Announcements can be made as a “live read” or broadcast through a personal endorser. When a radio announcer reads a copy of the advertisement per verbatim, this is what is referred to as a “live read”. When a product and/or service is incorporated into the announcers’ dialogue on a personal level, they are what is called a personal endorser. Personal endorsements are highly relationship driven. An endorsers could be a customer himself or be paid by the advertiser to help promote their product or service.

The term “Billboard” refers to highly condensed commercials that generally last about ten seconds which air before or after a feature or program that gives credit to the advertiser for sponsoring the segment. Often, the sponsor’s commercial will air immediately following the billboard. Radio Billboards are sale features that are considered “added value” to the advertiser.

With the formation of major radio companies in the 1990\'s, many radio stations (as a cost-saving measure) began to contract a substantial amount of their local and regional commercial production requirements to independent companies such as Airforce (Radio Commercials & Music Production).Companies such as these were usually founded by former radio station Commercial Producers believing that radio advertisers deserved more than \'sausage factory\' commercial production. Typical clients are local and regional businesses & organisations not wanting to employ advertising agencies, but still wanting good-sounding commercials without the agency price-tag.

Most national advertisers will use their agencies, though there is a trend to use specialist radio agencies to take advantage of specific radio experience.

Radio commercials can be delivered to a network of radio stations directly from the recording studio on a DAT cassette or transmitted via satellite, internet or ISDN.

The first radio commercial is credited to WEAF, New York on August 28, 1922 for the Queensboro real estate corporation. The ten-minute live commercial was voiced by H.M. Blackwell, a representative of Queensboro.

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