Backchannelmedia

New Straits Times

By Fauziah Ismail

MEDIA Prima is leveraging on its multiple channels and platform offerings to increase television advertising expenditure, writes FAUZIAH ISMAIL.

MEDIA Prima Bhd aims to expand television advertising expenditure (adex), which, at 29 per cent of total adex, remains very low compared with other countries in the region.

Its Television Networks chief executive officer Datuk Farid Ridzuan said it is the opposite in other parts of the world.

Farid said following Media Prima's consolidation exercise, which saw the re-positioning of the company's four television stations, "we are now able to deliver to advertisers a more comprehensive solution across multiple platforms and facilitate our clients to target their specific consumer segments more effectively.

"We hope that this provides a catalyst for television advertising and there will be gradual but certain shift in clients' advertising towards television. But we realise and accept that this development will be gradual and takes time," he said.

Over the last decade, the number of free-to-air (FTA) channels has virtually doubled and pay TV had achieved significant penetration among Malaysian households.

On the other hand, television share of adex has remained stagnant if not declined since the late 1990s. The decline was only arrested recently.

To increase the television adex, Farid said the company will work closely with agencies, media specialists and advertisers. "We will leverage on our multiple channels, multiple platform offerings to enable cost-effective reach to our advertisers.

"The opportunities are vast as many advertisers traditionally prefer only one media, and the challenge is to convert them into a multimedia platform like what we can offer."

He said price discounting is no longer an issue and it helps bring stability into the market.

"We have formulated and articulated to the industry a clear positioning for each of the individual network," he said.

TV3 remains a mass market station serving the best content for all Malaysians; 8TV as an urban youth station and targeting the Chinese community; NTV7 will reposition as an adult network targeting urban households while TV9 will be positioned as a station for the sub-urban Malay households.

AC Nielsen figures showed that TV3 continues to consistently secure most of the top 20 rated programmes with content such as "Buletin Utama" and "Cerekarama", while NTV7 and 8TV are known to air high quality content targeted to their audiences.

"This enables us to cover all main market segments in Malaysia and provide us the ability to offer cross-media solutions to all our clients that want to target their consumer segments cost- effectively," Farid said.

This Friday, Media Prima will hold its annual Screenings event, aimed at making its clients and advertisers excited with what it will be offering on all the four stations next year. This will be the fifth year the company is holding Screenings.

"It's a good sales and marketing tool for us. It gets the advertising agencies, clients and our viewers excited. It also gives us a good idea on what kind of advertising revenue and sponsorships we can generate," Farid said, adding that the company has been seeing an upward trend in the television adex since its first Screenings.

He also said that Media Prima's television stations have an edge over other free-to-air and pay channels. With the first right of refusal to buy the foreign programmes they enjoy, the stations are ahead of their competitors.

(c) 2006 New Straits Times. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.