Media specialists do no agree as to whether Moroccan households are saturated with TV commercials. There is however a consensus among them that the time and cost of TV ads during the month of Ramadan's prime time, which is from 6:00 PM to a little after 7:00 PM have reached record highs. This year, for each 26-minute sitcom during prime time, commercials consume a whole 13 minutes. They say the share of commercials in Ramadan programs is still below Western standards where it averages 15 minutes in Europe, for instance. After the break of the fast, known as the Ftour, commercials amount to between 16 and 18 minutes per hour. Excluding the month of Ramadan and comparing Morocco's TVM with France's TF1, the latter broadcasts 144 minutes of commercials in a 24-hour period, against TVM's 55 minutes.
If some media experts say households are bombarded by commercials, others argue that there are not enough commercials for a market the size of Morocco. This latter category of experts argue that media agencies have solely focused their attention on large corporations and their products that Moroccan consumers are accustomed watching on TV. They add that these large companies account for just about 10% of the business sector in the North African country, and thus some 90% of the firms that are SMBs do represent an untapped opportunity for the ad market.
But even without a wider participation of companies, ad agencies that focus on the TV commercial market say their revenues during the month of Ramadan generally increase by 50% compared to the average monthly revenue in the rest of the year. The increase in ad agency revenues is directly related to the spike in household consumption during the month of Ramadan and vendors need maximum exposure. Many of these companies do not hesitate to boost their advertisement budgets, with most of them fluctuating between MAD 400,000 and MAD 500,000 for the month. This trend of increasing ad budgets is also a function of TV viewing patterns. Moroccan families are indeed increasing the time they spend watching television. Research also shows that the Moroccan TV viewers increased their preference to and bias toward national television programs as opposed to foreign programs, essentially from France or the Middle East.
Two television stations compete for the ad market in Morocco. They are 2M and TVM. The two compete with their own strategies focusing on what each believes is the proper mix of programming and scheduling, while raising their prices. The two stations hiked their tariffs by 40% for programs starting 6:00 PM, while reducing them during the day as viewership declines.
© The North Africa Journal 2004
