Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) 10-minute-an-hour cap on advertising in TV channels poses a new challenge to ad film makers, and advertisers – to make shorter ad films. And, many TV commercials are required to be compressed, to be more effective, says Gayathri Swahar, Director, Nielsen NeuroFocus.

According to a recent study by Nielsen India, more than 80 per cent of the TV commercials being aired run beyond 30 seconds when most of them can be compressed to a third of their length.

With an expected substantial increase in ad rates following the implementation of the TRAI rule from October, advertisers are taking a hard look at ad planning and spends. And factoring in the various parameters such as time , geography and shows, it’s necessary for brands and marketers to have a precise understanding of the impact on the viewer, says Swahar.

Quoting the NeuroFocus report, she says scientifically compressing them in an effective way will give advertisers an enormous amount of flexibility. They will be also able to optimise media spends by understanding the reach over frequency option for your ad.

A team of neurologists lead by Shivadatta V. Prabhu, studied human brain wave activity in real time and analysed the core neurometrics of attention, emotion and memory retention for every second during various advertisements. “This has helped us to diagnose the effective and ineffective parts of the ad and uncover areas of improvement second-by-second,” says Swahar.

Nielsen NeuroFocus algorithms automatically compress the ad by selecting the most neurologically effective seconds thus creating an effective shorter edit of the ad, she adds saying, “We have retested the compressed version and found it to be more effective and persuasive than the original ad.”

ravikumar.r@thehindu.co.in

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