'Ratings matter more to advertisers than HD'

Broadcasting a digital TV channel in high definition might not mean that a station can charge higher airtime rates, as advertisers might care only about programme ratings, not the technology platform used.

Manee Eabe, managing director of Magna Global, a member of global agency IPG Mediabrands, raised this point last week during a Business Talk show on Krungthep Turakij TV. 

Advertisers always prefer to allocate their marketing budgets to TV shows with high ratings. A soap opera produced by RS Channel 8 makes for an interesting case study in the satellite TV business. RS spent heavily on this drama series to make it right for local viewers with the same standard as leading free-to-air series. 

The show became a hit, so RS could mark up its billing rate to more than Bt15,000 per minute, while other satellite TV operators can sell their airtime for only about Bt5,000 per minute.

“Hormone The Series” produced by GMM Tai Hub for satellite TV was another example. 

“Surprisingly, this series attracted a lot of viewers via online platforms like YouTube and GMM’s streaming service even though it was originally televised via its satellite platform. Following this trend, advertisers opted to spend their budgets on online media rather than satellite TV,” he said.

Manee and Ratiwan Srimongkolkul, president of JSL Global Media, agreed that the quality of contents remained the prime factor for viewers.

“The more people watch a TV programme, the higher the rating that the broadcaster can show and the more ad income it can earn,” Ratiwan said.

JSL Global Media is a leading production house that witnessed huge opportunities in the birth of digital terrestrial TV. The company, however, prefers to be just a content producer for digital TV broadcasters. It has no intention to operate its own TV station.

For digital terrestrial TV, seven HD channels are set to be auctioned off. The cost to secure a HD TV licence from the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) is high. The NBTC has set the starting price for digital HD TV at Bt15.1 billion. So potential bidders for this licence intend to set their ad rates as high as possible to get a quick return on investment. 

A TV broadcasting source said True Visions, a leading pay-TV operator, offered the same airtime rates for both its HD and SD channels on its platform. The source said popularity and ratings of the programme were key determinants of what rates should be. 

Pay-TV operators are also allowed to show only six minutes of commercials per hour, according to a NBTC regulation.