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0Higher Viewer Retention with HD

There’s an interesting new study published in Adweek about Hi-Def commercials. Here’s the upshot:

After studying return path data culled from some 100,000 DirecTV households, DG and Kantar discovered that viewers are much more likely to stick with an HD spot than an ad shot in vanilla SD. All told, retention for HD spots was 18 percent higher than for standard-def spots, and that lift jumped as high as 28 percent when the ad in question was slotted in the “A” position of the commercial pod.

In the critical prime-time daypart, HD ads delivered a 12 percent lift over their standard-def counterparts.

So why don’t more people produce in HD? Soundscapes has been ready for several years with 5.1 Surround Sound mixing capability. Most good TV post houses shoot & edit in HD.

What we’ve found in calling television stations is that they’re not equipped locally to run spots in HD. It’s a budgetary question based on demand.

Here’s an idea…if you’re an ad agency, why not call the sales manager of your local stations and strongly suggest that they equip themselves to run spots in HD? Surely a push from the ad community might get their attention.

And when you’re ready for great surround sound in post, you know how to find us.

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Posted on February 10th, 2012 in Creativity, Video, Web & Technology

0Music is Just Music…Right?

Recently, we were sent a piece of ad music composed and mixed for a client by a rock musician in their town. He writes pretty good music…edgy, hip, listenable. But there’s a problem. Not being a media professional, he didn’t understand the intricacies of creating music for advertising.

The piece of music he wrote was all guitar, keyboards & hip, honked-up filtered drums. The voicing of every instrument was in the midrange (the same midrange that the human voice occupies.) Terrific if you’re just listening to the music. Perfectly horrible if you’re trying to mix it with voice. And this music will always be mixed with voice.

Mixing it was a nightmare…we ended up having to carve a huge EQ hole in the jangly midrange, widen the stereo to create a space for the voice, and bring up the low and high frequencies so that when mixed, the music would still be present enough to hear without blocking the message. Oh…and it was 34 seconds long. Nice.

This is happening a lot in these budget-conscious days. Because of cutbacks, local club players are being called on to create music for advertising. They’ll typically do it for cheap, and after all, everyone has some kind of software on their computer that can mix multiple tracks of music. From Garage Band to purloined copies of ProTools, people have copped the attitude that software makes production easy. But easy and professional have never been good roommates.

Quality matters. Knowledge of our industry matters. When hiring people to create music for your client, budget the few extra bucks it takes to get real media professionals to compose your brand music. You’ll get far more than you bargained for, because we know that solid brand music for your client isn’t the same as a 34-second rock tune. No matter how hip or edgy it is.

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Posted on January 4th, 2012 in Creativity, Custom Music

1A Tour of Santa’s Workshop

IMAGINATION—It’s what lights the eyes of children at Christmastime. (No matter how old they are.)

We made this audio Christmas card with kids in mind…the ones we take care of,
as well as the ones who still live inside us.

So join us for A Tour of Santa’s Workshop and set your imagination free.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from your friends at Soundscapes.

A Tour of Santa’s Workshop by SoundscapesCreativeAudio

…and if you missed it from last year, we offer Bob Hulsey’s reading of “Twas the Night Before Christmas.”

Twas the Night Before Christmas by SoundscapesCreativeAudio

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Posted on December 21st, 2011 in Copywriting, Creativity, Miscellany, Voice Talent

0Radio Spot Listenership Higher Than Imagined!

A surprising new study has just been released by Coleman Insights, showing that radio listenership through commercial breaks is incredibly high. Much higher in fact than many industry analysts had imagined. The study—”What Happens When the Spots Come On: 2011 edition”—was conducted over a 12 month period covering 18 million commercial breaks on 866 radio stations.

The result? In a 3-minute commercial break, the average radio station retains 96% of its listeners. If the break lasts 6 minutes, the retention drops to 85%…(but what station would be cruel enough to run 6 minutes of commercials?)

Of course, we believe that the quality of the spot matters. Is it entertaining and engaging enough to hold a listener’s attention? Does it entertain first and sell second? These are the spots that get solid results for the advertiser. For more on that, enjoy my series Tune Your Radio.

For a summary of this new report, click here. To download the report, click here.

—Brent Walker

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Posted on December 8th, 2011 in Copywriting, Radio

0Catvertising® Staying on the Leading Edge


We’re equipping our studios with litter boxes, as well as hiss screens for all microphones.

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Posted on November 15th, 2011 in Creativity, Miscellany

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