Advertisers Increase Pressure For Improved Media Value

A key finding of the seventh annual Advertiser Opinions on Media Survey by Media Audits has revealed that advertisers’ budgets are set to rise by an average of only 3% this year. This is down from 6% in 1995 and falls short of media inflation predicted at 10% for television and 5% for press during 1996. This will put more pressure on media buyers to improve their clients’ media value.

Just over a quarter of advertisers surveyed (27%) have cut their 1996 spend with ITV as a result of poor audience share in 1995. The launch of Channel 5 will hit ITV’s share even harder. The survey reveals that the new channel’s income will not come from additional advertising expenditure. An overwhelming 91% of respondents said money would come from ITV, this was followed by Channel 4 at 57% and satellite at 27%.

The decision to use Channel 5 will be driven by advertisers’ desire to reach sought-after audiences (the young and upmarket), closely followed by a low capital cost and as a high ratings competitor to ITV. Advertisers’ favoured trading currency for Channel 5 is a discount from ITV Station Average Price.

Advertisers expressed strong views on TV programming. Sport on ITV came in for particularly fierce criticism. Almost half the advertisers questioned (45%) believed that the quality of ITV’s sports programming has fallen, while only 8% noticed an improvement. Advertisers also noticed a decline in the quality of sport on both BBC1 and BBC2 – down 33% and 19% respectively.

BSkyB’s strategy of acquiring the broadcast rights to major sporting events such as the Premiership and England cricket tests abroad, continues to reap dividends with 44% of advertisers seeing an improvement and none seeing a decline. 82% of advertisers however support terrestrial TV’s access to major sporting events being protected in the new Broadcast Bill.

44% of advertisers do not think that a Labour government would harm the advertising industry – only 29% felt that Labour could be a threat while 27% have no opinion. The majority of advertisers (27%) are against the relaxation of cross media ownership restrictions, yet the Labour party is in favour of liberalising legislation.

82% of advertisers also felt that the concentration of sales houses has reduced competition in TV sales and 68% of advertisers have experienced conditional selling in the past year. 70% stated that conditional selling was not in their interests. With increasing concentration of media ownership the move towards conditional selling will increase.

Media Audits Advertising Consultancy: 0171 734 4080