I refuse to accept the current advertisement situation on terrestrial radio.  Nearly all stations run 10-20 minutes of advertisement every hour.  This is inexcusable.

Logically, there is a value to the listeners attention.  That value is reduced proportionately to the length of advertisement.  In the end, reducing the total of advertisement is the solution to making more money.

Advertisement value is a simple equation.

Ad value = Audience + Timing + Length

Audience is the amount of people listening.
Timing is your spot in the commercial break.  The thinking is the first ad after programming is in the best position and the last ad in the commercial break is in the worst position.  The listener is more likely to turn the dial as time progresses.
Length is exactly that – the length of the commercial, but as I suggest here, it is relative.  If all ads are short, then they all have the same length value.  Only if one ad is longer than another, will it have a longer length value.

Stations try to sell as many minutes as they can get away with, only limited by what they think the average listener will tolerate.  Around the holidays or election cycles, it’s even worse.  There are many folks wanting to buy ads, and the stations figure they can get away with an increase on a temporary basis.   It’s like printing your own money.  You reduce it’s overall value with each new bill.  Looking at the above equation, for each increase in commercials sold, the value of the individual ad goes down.

The solution is to get the sales staff and the usual advertisers together for a little pow wow, where you explain that you are going to shift the standard.  You will work with them on consolidating the ads and get everyone on board with the idea.  Even if it was for a particular show, or period during the day of just 2-4 hours.  This way you wouldn’t be putting it all on the line, and people would be more willing to participate.

The example – if a station that ran 10 – 60 second ads, for a total of 10 minutes an hour, reduced those ads to 15 seconds each, and ran 2:30 in commercials an hour instead of 10:00, the only thing they would have to do is let people know that they had 1/4 of the total advertisement of the competition.   Logically it would make their station more desirable than the competitor, thereby making those shorter ads more valuable than those longer ones, playing on the other channels.  In the end, a better product for all.