MediaCorp TV managing director of airtime sales and marketing Eric Lynge said that NMR's usage of ratecard numbers failed to provide an accurate measurement of the heavily-discounted market. "Every media buyer knows (of the TV and newspaper discounts) but it is not always clear to the client," he said. "Mass entertainment TV has been outperforming the general market for the last two years due to more aggressive sales efforts, increase in popular local formats and clients' willingness to use TV as a tactical media."
NMR Singapore executive director Rebecca Tan agreed that discounted and actual figures can differ, but noted that discounted figures would not affect the growth rates it reported. "The advertising spending growth rate is reflective of the local market environment rather than the nature of the data reported, gross or discounted," said Tan.
Lynge added that published figures by Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) "call into question NMR's contention that Channel i's closure caused an 18 per cent decline in TV advertising". SPH ceased broadcast operations on January 1 this year, after reporting S$54.3 million (US$32.3 million) in broadcasting and multimedia revenue for 2004. NMR reported that TV adex had dropped to S$348.7 million for the first half of 2005, driving an overall adex decrease of eight per cent, year-on-year. At the time, Tan said: "This decrease in is largely due to the sharp drop in TV advertising resulting from the cessation of MediaWorks and closure of Channel i, effectively leaving less station choice. Additionally, cross-advertising -- a feature of the days of com- petition -- has also ceased."
Lynge further pointed to a Media article of December 13, 2003, which highlighted a S$210 million discrepancy between NMR's 2003 adex estimate for MediaWorks, and SPH's disclosure of $42 million adex for the same period. "The same metrics and difficulties with the study apply today," said Lynge. "So I find it incomprehensible that NMR still persists in saying that Channel i's closure had a big impact on TV adex." Defending the mechanism, Tan said: "We will continue to share adex data with our clients -- who make up their own estimates for discounting -- while we seek agreement from the industry for a method that will allow them to account for these discounts."
