ATTY. GOZON ADMITS AD RATE ADJUSTMENTS & LOWER RATINGS CAUSED COLGATE-PALMOLIVE AND PROCTER & GAMBLE TO WITHDRAW!

Former GMA-7  President Atty. Felipe Gozon at last revealed the reason why top Advertisers Colgate-Palmolive Corp.and Procter and Gamble  left the Media giant early this year. In an interview Gozon admitted that higher ad rate adjustments and weaker ratings discouraged main advertisers early this year.

GMA jacked up its ad rates to make it on a par with rival ABS-CBN Corp.  Gozon said this was necessary. “Our effective prices last year were considerably lower than the actual prices charged by ABS-CBN….We should not have sold our airtime of high-rating programs at much lower prices than the lesser-rating programs of ABS-CBN last year. Having discovered that at the latter part of last year we have decided once and for all to stop that nonsense. So, we increased our actual prices at the same rate or level as that of ABS-CBN.”

As a consequence, there were two big advertising firms that pulled out from GMA. That plus poor ratings and the periodically weak third quarter brought GMA’s third-quarter performance down. Also, the third quarter of 2010 is a non-election campaign season, reported Gozon.

But with ratings improving at end-September, GMA’s advertising load is rising and a number of big advertisers have returned and made huge commitments with the television firm. “It took us less than a quarter to recover in the ratings contest and the trend of our ratings margin versus channel 2 is widening again,” said Gozon.

Sales as of yesterday already stood at P1.05 billion, Gozon said. It looks like GMA will exceed its P3.5-billion net income target for the year because of improved ratings. “It looks like we will not only meet our annual net income target but we may exceed it a little if this upswing trend will not stop. We expect things to go more smoothly this month all the way up to next year.”

Courtesy: Business mirror