Broadcasters - TAM ROW: Broadcasters with weekly TAM ratings may gain!

The ongoing row between the advertising agencies, advertisers and the eight broadcasters who opted for monthly TAM rating system showed no sign of any solution yesterday. There was more or less a status quo in the positions of respective parties. 

A senior broadcaster confirmed this to Adgully that today was a NO day as no solutions could be arrived at based on the discussions yesterday (i.e Wednesday). This was also due to the fact that a few broadcasters were unable to be a part of discussion which had been happening for a last couple of days. Therefore the rest of the group felt that they ought to be a part of the process and hence the entire team may go back to the drawing board for discussions.

We spoke to some senior advertising professionals too on the likely scenario in the coming days and the week. Some felt that the business may soon get back to normal. A large section of them said that a lot of media planning is happening at this stage; also things are in a flux. At this stage whatever planning is happening, most of the money is being diverted. In the absence of GECs from their media plans, most decisions will happen in favour of other mediums like print newspapers, magazines, outdoor, cinema, Radio FM, digital advertising and the other channels which have weekly ratings, such as Discovery, TV Today group, Sun TV group etc. Chances are that the incremental revenues for these channels will be around 30-35 per cent. GECs are not being issued any fresh ROs at this point of time. While there may not be a long term impact, GEC’s inventories is perishable. This may affect their business in the range of 5-7 per cent.

They further added that the dispute may not get over much too soon and can get dragged on to the coming week. Since ads are also running so there might be a payment problem since clients have cancelled ads. During this period many advertisers are expected to divert their ad spends to other mediums. “And once clients understand that their media plan is successful without the GECs, we may not hesitate to use other mediums. Clients will make a saving and have better RoIs,” claimed a source.

Sources tell us that there is going to be an important meeting between the Indian Broadcasters Federation (IBF) and Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA) stakeholders today. We tried to know the possible outcome from the meeting but could not get a definite response. However it is believed that some important decisions may be taken in the meeting however everyone remains tight lipped at the moment.