Commercials have flooded television stations this Ramadan, giving a boost to an ailing industry, Ahmed Kotb reports Despite losses suffered by companies in all sectors as a result of political instability and unrest in the past year and a half, advertising expenditure this Ramadan is unexpectedly high. It seems that large companies, especially in the food and telecommunications industries, have been saving up throughout the year to stage expensive advertising campaigns in Ramadan. It is not strange, since Ramadan represents peak season for advertisers because television viewership is at its highest during the holy month, and general spending rises as well. According to an online consumer survey commissioned by Visa Egypt, 54 �ê�per cent of Egyptians spend more during Ramadan than the rest of the year. "Despite the fact that the number of TV stations has increased lately and the competition between them has intensified, the prices of advertisements have risen by about 25 per cent this Ramadan," said Sherif Moody, chief operating officer of Moody Graphics, an advertising agency that operates in Egypt, Morocco and England. Almost all TV stations have introduced a package system with a fixed price and a specified number of airings. According to Moody, one of the top TV channels offers two packages, one worth LE3 million with 125 repetitions of a 30-second ad, and another that costs LE5 million with 250 repetitions. Other TV stations adopt the same system with slight differences in the number of repetitions. The average price of a single 30-second advertisement is LE30,000. State TV, with lower viewership rates, introduced five different packages. The first package costs LE4 million with 2000 repetitions guaranteed; the second worth LE2.5 million with 1000 �ê�repetitions. The third offers 500 repetitions for LE1.5 million, while the fourth costs LE800,000 for 250 repetitions, and the fifth costs LE500,000 for 100 repetitions of a 30-second advertisement. Costs of advertising in newspapers and billboards, however, stayed the same because of weak demand during Ramadan in the face of television. A full-page advertisement in one of the highly circulated newspapers costs between LE150,000 to LE200,000. The monthly rent of an average-sized billboard costs about LE100,000. "Although these prices are far cheaper than they used to be in 2010, demand is very weak," Moody said, adding that his clients want to advertise on TV only because they realise its importance to customers who watch television more during Ramadan. Online advertising has also flourished lately because it is a cheaper option to advertisers and it reaches a wide range of consumers. Egyptian Internet users are currently estimated at 25 million. Some advertising campaigns are started on television and continued online, and others start online and gain popularity without any need to resort to traditional advertising methods. Nonetheless, "television is still the preferred medium for advertisers, especially in Ramadan," says Mahmoud Youssef, professor of advertising and public relations at Cairo University. He added that the advertising industry has recovered much of its losses this Ramadan. "The market has gained more than LE1 billion in profits this month," Youssef stated, adding that the total market volume of advertising is estimated at LE2 �ê�billion annually. "Ramadan alone represents, usually, 60 per cent of the whole advertising market." Youssef explained that this year's recovery is due in part to more television series being produced, leaving more audiences glued to the screen and representing an excellent opportunity for advertisers to reach their targets. More than 70 television series were produced this Ramadan, compared to only 40 last year. In 2010, 140 television series were produced. Moreover, Youssef said that the noticeable thing about this year's advertisements is that most of them were created in a series. "Some advertisers created four or five ads for the same product throughout Ramadan. That kind of spending was not seen before," he pointed out, adding that some advertisers featured several famous actors in one advertisement, and that this trend raises questions about the amount of money allocated for this year's advertising campaigns. Moody agreed with Youssef, saying that the telecommunication giants spent tremendous amount of money to create ads that people would remember for a long time. "It's a smart way of thinking, but very costly," Moody said. He also said that some firms that have been holding back on spending were more likely to spend a generous amount of money on more expensive campaigns. Although advertising expenditure is not what it used to be in pre-revolution times, Moody believes that the business is "mostly back to normal".
