ADVERTISING SPEND DOWN IN THAILAND
Data from Nielsen Media Research Thailand released yesterday showed a 1.18 per cent decline in advertising spending during the first two months of the year compared to the same period last year. In February alone the decline was 6.3 per cent.
Television is by far the largest advertising medium in Thailand, occupying a 60.36% market share. This is followed by newspapers (14.88%), radio (6.34%), magazines (5.43%), outdoor (5.31%), cinema (4.70%), transit (2.36%) and in-store (0.62%).
These percentages relate to market share during January and February 2009 but do not include online. My guess would be online is currently responsible for less than 5% of total advertising spend.
Magazines recorded the largest year-on-year decline (13.79%) in market share and newspapers (11.75%) saw the third largest decline. Television (4.60%), transit (58.12%) and in-store (3.95%) were the only sectors showing an increase.
6 comments:
Obviously advertisers see a decreasing readership. Is it because of the cost of newpapers and magazines to the end user vs. the cost of TV and other forms to the end users?
If magazines and newspapers were free, do you see an increase in readership? Of course, then the issue is one of distribution, but still...
Your point about a decreasing readership (in terms of print) is interesting because there's no transparency and no real way of knowing if that's happening.
My own magazine is increasing readers month-on-month but you only have my word for that. I agree cost does come into it for general publications so publishers need to make their title a must-have every week or month.
Free, in my opinion, isn't going to matter unless you can back it up with transparent and independent sales or circulation figures.
What advertisers an instant, measurable return on their marketing investment. That's extremely hard to achieve in print.
So circulation figures are often dubious for any publication because no matter what system you make, people try to manipulate it.
Here since advertising is so important every publication has a vested interest is making themselves bigger and more appealing.
To increase circulation, I have seen publishers offer 97.5% discounts.
Huge discounts or even free advertising to make the publication look good and try to attract other paying clients.
At least with an ABC circulation audit you know exactly where the copies go. In my view that's what publishers need to aim for if they're going to survive in the medium and long term. It will mean a lot of titles disappear - especially the ones claiming to have a circulation of 50,000 but in reality lucky to sell 2,500. Only the strongest will be able to survive, but they'll get stronger because of it.
Free, or nearly free, advertising would be a worse disaster than free content. Far better to create something that people would be willing to pay for, and then market that to advertisers.
An accurate head count of where and to whom the advertising is presented only makes sense. Radio lives and dies through a clear and detailed presentation of listenership, so what advertiser is going to advertise in a rag if they have no idea if it's being read at all?
".. what advertiser is going to advertise in a rag if they have no idea if it's being read at all?"
That's EXACTLY what is happening right now, David. There's no auditing and you only have the publishers word of how many copies they are printing.
Of course a little rsearch of your own goes a long way. Printers and distributers are usually pretty open about telling you how many copies of a magazine they handle.
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