Radio ad spend jumps 23% in Malaysia

Malaysia – Despite having a wide range of channels for outreach, ad-spend on radio in the peninsula recorded a 23% increase as at September 2008, according to the latest Radio Audience Measurement (RAM) study by the Nielsen Company.

Advertising spending recorded a total of RM216 million – outperforming the total advertising marketing (excluding classifieds) which recorded a 19% increase against the same time frame last year.

The main contributors to the increased spending have been identified as food retail, bank and finance institutions, fast food centres, automotive and pharmacy as well as medical supplies.

Andrea Douglas, executive director for Nielsen Media Research, the Nielsen Company, Malaysia said the increasing number of radio channels on the airwaves is “testament to radio’s mass appeal and staying power”.

“It will be interesting to see radio increase its share of advertising spending and at the same time provide more opportunities to advertisers for niche targeting,” she added.

The poll showed 15 million people tuning in to their preferred channels weekly and the figure represents 92% of the total population of people aged 10 years and above.

On average, 1.99 million Malaysians in the peninsula listen to the radio in any give 15 minute time slot throughout the day and an average radio listener tunes in for 22 hours, in a week.

Radio stations under the AMP Radio Networks took the lead across the English and Malay language channels.

In the English section, AMP’s hitz.fm topped the list with a weekly reach of 873,000 while MIX fm (493,000) and LiteFM (439,000) followed but Media Prima’s Fly FM (Media Prima) was third with 470,000 listeners and the government’s channel TraXXfm (61,000) made the tail of the list.

ERA continues to soar with the highest reach of 27.5% (4.5 million listeners) and was followed by Media Prima’s hotfm which captures 4.3 million listeners.

AMP’s Sinar FM saw a 16.2% increase to 3.3 million listeners.

MY FM stays ahead of other Chinese channels with 13% reach (2.2 million listeners) while minnalfm takes lead of the Tamil channels with an audience of over three percent.

Datuk Borhanuddin Osman, president of Commercial Radio Malaysia commented that the industry has improved and increased over the years thus creating a healthy growth.

“As a result, operators gain more from a bigger ‘pie’ and with consumers having a pool of options today, this pushes the need for operators to be more competitive and embrace the constant change in trends,” he added.

Nielsen RAM is conducted twice yearly and measures the demographic profile, listening preferences and product consumption of the people in Peninsular Malaysia.

The study is based on individual quarter hour diaries completed by a representative sample of 3,000 individuals in the peninsula and expects to provide valuable insights for advertisers to reach target audiences effectively.

It was conducted between Aug 4 and 17.