Mumbai, April 29: Blame it on Mahi magic or SRK’s song-and-dance routine or simply the frenzy of a cricket-crazy nation, advertisement rates for the Indian Premier League have soared to a record high.Armed with an average TRP rating of 5.5 even for weekday matches, SET Max hopes to touch Rs 5 lakh-Rs 5.5 lakh for a 10-second slot during the IPL semi-finals and final, a channel source said.

Companies that took their chance and invested early, like Coke and Vodafone, are grinning from ear to ear. Those that missed the bus by opting to wait and watch are busy queuing up.The question now is whether the IPL will dilute the ad spend on ODIs and Test matches.“No,” said Syam Shankar, president of India Media Exchange, the media-buying arm of the Publicis Groupe.

“Although the IPL is a new category altogether, most companies had budgeted for it earlier in terms of the spend on sponsorships and so on. The ad spend on TV spots do not make a large chunk of an advertiser’s budget,” he said.“And only a few late entrants will be buying at that high rate. So the high rate of ads on SET Max will in no way affect the advertisers’ spend on cricket as a property.”SET Max had flagged off the auction for the IPL ad spots at the same rate as a cricket World Cup or T20 World Cup. The 10-second spots that initially sold for Rs 1.5 lakh-Rs 2 lakh doubled as the TRPs for the first Calcutta-Bangalore match touched 8.21.

Saas-bahu serial ad rates were left trailing at an average of around Rs 70,000 per 10 seconds.A source in Coke said the company had been able to offset the high rates for IPL adspots without upsetting its marketing budget.“We have gained because we began early. We got the cheapest rates, though they were high by any standards. But the IPL has the potential to become India’s answer to the Super Bowl and we gained through an early association,” he said.

But the high rates have not scared the late entrants away. Companies like J&J and Heinz have begun re-allocating ad expenditures and shifting investments from soaps to the T20 extravaganza.“SET Max has about 150-200 seconds of inventory left. It plans to sell the next 15-20 matches at Rs 3.5 lakh-Rs 4 lakh per 10 seconds, and the last 10 matches at about 30 per cent more for 10-seconders,” a Sony official said.The sources iterated that this was not likely to affect the ad rates for India’s international matches.

“The rates for the IPL are special as it is truly manoranjan ka baap, meant as entertainment for the entire family. It is like the Super Bowl. The current ad rates for IPL will not be a benchmark for Team India’s other international fixtures,” said Manish Porwal, chief executive officer, Percept Talent Management.Big spenders like Hindustan Unilever, Colgate and P&G, however, chose not to hop on to the IPL ad bandwagon.A Hindustan Unilever source said the company did not see any cost efficiency in investing in the T20 extravaganza because the IPL brand was more powerful than the brands riding on it.

Source: telegraphindia.com