Media windfall expected from KPK, police dispute

Nani Afrida ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Fri, 11/06/2009 11:13 AM  |  Business

Who will benefit  commercially the most from the ongoing saga involving the Corruption Eradication Commission and the National Police? The media will be one of the beneficiaries, says PT Nielsen Indonesia.

Having found in a survey that the media benefited from advertisement spending for non-commercial purposes — such as political advertising — during the first nine months of the year, the consultancy firm expects the media to get a fair share of advertising revenue from the KPK and police dispute in the last quarter of the year.

Ika Jatmikasari, Nielsen Media Indonesia associate director for client service, said that the two main agencies concerned with  the prosecution of crime (the KPK and the police)  would spend extra money on advertisements in the media in order to regain their tarnished reputations before the public.

“The recent dispute between the KPK and police will not overly influence advertising spending this year, but they will definitely spend more money on media advertisements to regain their previous good image in front of public,” Ika said Thursday on the sidelines of the Nielsen announcement on advertising spending in the third quarter.

She predicted that the police would advertise about police performance, while KPK would promote the anti corruption movement to the public.

She added that ad spending from those state institutions would contribute to the estimated Rp 10.5 trillion (US$1.1 billion) to be spent in total on advertisements in during the October-December period.

The company said such a trend, where the media benefits from advertisements for non commercial purposes, has already seen in the first nine months of the year when advertisements from political parties and presidential candidates contributed the bulk of advertising revenue booked by the media.

During the January-September period, up to Rp 35 trillion was spent on advertising, a 13 percent increase from a year earlier, driven by spending from government and political organizations.

“The elections held in April and July increased [expenditure in] the government and political category by 108 percent,” she said, adding that about Rp 2.92 trillion was spent on this in the last nine months.

The survey was carried out based on published rate averages (excluding discounts, bonuses, promo packages) involving 103 newspapers, 165 magazines and tabloids, and 24 TV stations  throughout the nation — excluding only Papua, Ambon and Aceh provinces.

In term of division of expenditure, television took 61 percent of the market share, while newspapers and magazines gained 35 percent and 4 percent respectively.

Ika said that from January to September this year, advertisers persistently opted to promote their products on television rather than via newspapers or magazines.

For the last quarter of the year, in addition to state institutions such as the KPK and police, Ika said advertisements would also come from companies wishing to take advantage of various year-end festivities.

“November and December are the festive holidays when people celebrate many holidays such as Christmas and New Year. The producers will promote beverages, motorcycles, banks and hair care to attract consumers and it will increase ad spending by 30 percent compared to total ad spending from January to September,” Ika said.

Meanwhile communications equipment, mostly mobile phone operators or providers, dominated the commercial product category.

“However, communion equipment ad spending was only Rp 2.8 trillion during the period, which dropped by 17 percent from the previous year.”

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