AIRC Declares Accountability To Advertisers

At a press conference this morning the AIRC announced measures to improve accountability to advertisers. It said that by May 1996 its members would provide standardised transmission certificates which will give all details regarding a particular advert on the airwaves; by the middle of the year all national sales points would provide agencies with a post campaign summary for each national campaign; those members with non-manual traffic systems would provide electronic commercial logs to AIRC approved media expenditure systems like Register-MEAL and MMS to allow media planners more data regarding ad campaigns. Overall the AIRC hope that these measures will reassure radio advertisers that they will get what they pay for.

Last year commercial radio’s ad revenue was c£270 million, an increase of 22% representing a third year of growth. Derek Morris of BMP DDB Needham and the IPA Media Policy Group commented: “The last three years has seen a coming of age for the Radio medium. For most clients and agencies it is now seen as a major medium that can no longer be ignored or automatically excluded from a schedule. With this new status comes a responsibility to run a stable market with better accountability. The proposals being made are a large step in this direction. The fact that the initiative includes every radio station of the same timetable is a mark of how far the medium has matured.”

AIRC: 0171 727 2646