GROUND RULES
Other brands hit ad condition barrier
A limit of nine media sponsors for the upcoming World Cup is crimping total media spending in Thailand.
A limit of nine media sponsors for the upcoming World Cup has caused total media spending in Thailand to grow only 4% or almost 90 billion baht, despite a previous projection of 6-7%, says Media Intelligence (MI).
Total media spending in May unexpectedly dropped by more than 2 billion baht as the broadcast is not likely to attract brands and advertisers.
Media director Pawat Ruangdejworachai said the nine-sponsor cap for the World Cup has become a barrier to other brands whose products are in the same category during the broadcast period.
“The World Cup should be a season of pleasure and vigorous ad spending, but now conditions for placing ads were different from years past because of controversial and vague advertising issues,” said Mr Pawat.
The overall market should improve because of a big global event that is expected to drive advertising spending to grow by 6-7%. Besides the World Cup, other factors driving spending include the popular BNK 48 girl group and the Thai soap opera Love Destiny.
Mr Pawat said brands which are expected to shell out advertising dollars include television sets, cars, motorcycles and drinks.
Despite the growth of online and TV media players, along with the positive outlook of Thailand’s economy, media industry spending is only expected to grow 4% this year, reaching 89.6 billion baht. That is still better than 2017, when spending dropped 14% year-on-year.
“Although market growth this year is lower than it should be, the industry sees promising revenue prospects,” he said.
Media industry spending in the first five months of 2018 contracted 6%, but Mr Pawat predicts a rebound for the rest of the year.
Spending for TV (analogue, cable, satellite and digital) decreased from 62% of all media outlays in 2016 to 56.6% in 2017. That percentage further decreased to 55.7% this year.
According to Nielsen Thailand’s latest report in May, BBTV’s Channel 7 ranked first among digital TV operators in terms of viewership, followed by BEC World’s Channel 3 HD, WorkPointTV, Mono29, RS’s Channel 8 and GMM Grammy’s ONE HD.
For online media, MI reported expenditures grew from 14.1% for all of 2017 to 16.8% for the first five months of this year. For the same period, out-of-home media outlets (transit, in-store and outdoor) grew from 12.7% to 13.2%. Print media saw the biggest drop — from 9.8% to 7.2%.