Election helps boost ad spend in Thailand

Research figures from Nielsen show that political parties spent US$8.72 million on media advertising since January. In June alone, they spent US$4.86 million on ads to create awareness and attract votes.

The election fervour has partly boosted advertisers’ confidence to increase spending across all media during that period.

Procter and Gamble (Thailand), for example, increased its spending to US$40.2 million from US$39.5 million in the same period last year.

L'Oreal (Thailand) spent US$30 million, up from US$27.33 million.

However, the biggest advertiser Unilever (Thai) Holdings cut its ad spending to US$107.44 million from last year's US$115.5 billion.

Television, the main medium, saw a surge of 11.17 per cent year-on-year to US$1.08 billion, accounting for 61 per cent of total advertising billings.

This is followed by newspapers at 13.54 per cent of total advertising billings, which enjoyed a 3.64 per cent increase to US$239.3 million.

Cinemas then constituted 6.27 per cent, radio 5.4 per cent and magazines 5.14 per cent, of the total advertising billings.

In-store media were the hottest channel, doubling to more than US$33.4 million from US$17.38 million last year.

Meanwhile, internet ad spend was up 69.4 per cent to US$7.6 million, from US$4.48 million.