CCTV Brings in 9.26 Bln Yuan of Ad Bidding

China Central Television (CCTV) announced on Tuesday that the total bid value for its TV channels in 2009 topped over 9.2 billion yuan, which, insiders believe, reflects investors' confidence in China's economic future, local newspaper Jinghua Times reports.

Thousands of enterprises attended CCTV's annual prime-time ad auction on Tuesday in the Media Center Hotel in Beijing. It is reported that the ad amount CCTV sold its channels for next year is a jump of over 15 percent from last year's 8 billion yuan.

Midea, a Guangdong-based home appliances manufacturer, won the upcoming Spring Festival Gala time-check sponsorship with the price of over 47 million yuan.

Sichuan-based Langjiu, a famous liquor manufacturer, bid about 71 million yuan to sponsor 2009's poll on how viewers will respond to the upcoming Spring Festival Gala performances. And Guizhou Maotai, another world-renowned liquor, won both the ad spot right before the 7pm news broadcast and the 7pm time check with about 83 million yuan.

Sources believe that the current advertisement industry is relatively optimistic despite the global financial crisis.

Huang Shengmin, head of the Advertising Studies School with Communications University of China (CUC), said that the crisis does not have a severe impact on the domestic advertising industry, since it mainly targets domestic markets like the commodity, property and automobiles which enjoy potential buying capacity.

Yet, many companies like Shell Tongyi (Beijing) Petroleum Chemical Company Ltd., have increased their budgets for the year 2009.

Li Jia, a top executive of Shell Tongyi, said he is optimistic about China's economic prospect. He said his company has increased its advertisement budget for 2009 by 10 percent.