Digital TV Launches Drive Up Broadcasters’ Adspend

The promotion of digital television services in recent months has seen UK broadcasters’ total advertising spend grow massively year on year. According to MMS data compiled by Admap/CIA MediaLab, the broadcast media spent £150 million on advertising, an annual growth of 79%.

BSkyB particularly threw a lot of weight behind its digital campaigns, spending £25 million promoting the Sky Digital brand. BSkyB spent over £47 million on advertising in the twelve months to June 1999, making it the largest advertiser amongst UK broadcasting companies. Similarly, Carlton and Granada spent a joint £22 million to launch the ONdigital terrestrial digital TV service. This pushed terrestrial TV’s total adspend up by 240% year on year.

Amongst all the broadcasters, cable and satellite groups accounted for the lion’s share of spend, at 57.1%. Other TV companies’ contributions accounted for 31.9% of total spend.

There is a growing trend amongst TV companies of promoting their programmes as brands. This is especially a feature of channels 4 and 5, third and eighth in the table respectively, which both promote their own shows in commercial breaks.

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