Marketers Profiting From Chinese Market, Growing TV Viewers

WPP Group CEO Sir Martin Sorrell "believes the Games are a watershed event for world consumers' view of China and for revenue at CCTV," according to Jonathan Landreth of the HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. CCTV ad revenue growth in '08 is up 30% because of what WPP's GroupM Asia Pacific CEO Mark Patterson calls "the Olympic effect." Patterson said that GroupM is able to "predict that the lone Olympics broadcaster in China ... will earn Olympics-related advertising revenue of [$50-60M], given that it paid a 'modest market rate for a sole bidder.'" CCTV has not disclosed what it paid the IOC for the rights to broadcast the Games (HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, 8/12). In N.Y., Holly Sanders reports China's "red-hot advertising market will last long after the Olympic torch is extinguished." A study by GroupM indicated that overall ad spending in China "will grow almost 20[%] in 2009, to $38[B]." Those figures are "down from 22[%] this year, when multinational companies, spurred by the Olympic spectacle, poured into China, but it is far from the post-Games plunge some had predicted" (N.Y. POST, 8/12). In '09, ad spending in China "is expected to grow 19.5% to $42[B], which actually represents a decline from the explosive 29% annual compound average growth of 2001-2007." GroupM's media and marketing report "identified the Beijing Olympics as a key component in accelerating media investment growth in China" (MEDIAPOST.com, 8/12).

ALL EYES ON ME: CSM Media Research reported that "more than 771 million" viewers in China watched some part of Day 2 of the Olympics on TV. The average Chinese viewer was tuned in for "nearly 3 1/2 hours" (USA TODAY, 8/12).