Marbridge Daily

CCTV Increases 2008 Ad Rates

Sohu IT, 11/09/07

CCTV's Advertising Department has announced that the cost of advertising will increase from January 1.

CCTV now has nine specialist channels with a share of viewing figures over 1% (ten, including CCTV1), while there are 14 Chinese satellite channels with a more-than-1% share.

The cost of single-show advertising on CCTV-10 will increase by up to 90%; time-slot advertising on CCTV-2 up by a estimated maximum of almost 50%, while single-show advertising may go up by as much as 35%, with an average rise of 15%. The average increase on CCTV-10 is expected to be over 40%. Advertising on CCTV-4 and CCTV-News may go up by more than 20%, CCTV-12 by about 20% and CCTV-3 by over 15%.

LENS: CCTV maintains two main sales channels for ad space on 14 of its 15 channels: direct public bidding for its prime advertising slots (mostly in CCTV-1); and resale of all other slots through over 100 ad agencies such as Future (its only ad agency subsidiary), Golden Bridge, Mass Media International Advertising (MMIA). CCTV-6, the movie channel, has its own, independent sales channels. The price increase mentioned in the article above refers to the slots sold through resellers.

Bidding for CCTV's prime slots ("golden resources") for any given year begins on November 18th the preceding year. The bidding for 2007 slots attracted RMB 6.8 bln, up 15.8% over the 2006 total of RMB 5.87 bln. In this year's bidding, with the 2008 Olympics approaching, the total is expected to jump to RMB 10 bln.

In mid-September, CCTV opened bidding for sponsorship slots to Olympic sponsors only, and sold 11 out of 16 slots (see "CCTV 2008 Ad Rate to See Sharp Increase," MW 9/21/07 issue). The total amount was not revealed, but Yili Group, which won the four 15-second slots before and after the Olympics' opening and closing ceremonies, paid a total of RMB 20.08 mln. The remaining 5 Olympics packages will be auctioned in the November 18th annual bid, with a combined starting price of RMB 670 mln.

Keywords: CCTV TV advertising rates television 2008