Advertising agencies have given a broad welcome to the first week of Sky News Ireland viewing figures, with the new Irish bulletins bringing in additional viewers.
While still far behind RTÉ or TV3, the new Irish orientated bulletins at 7 pm and 10 pm are "slowly beginning to gather momentum" for Sky, according to AFA O'Meara, the Dublin agency.
The standard non-Irish 7 p.m. bulletin was very much a minority taste up to now, attracting only about 9,000 viewers.
But the Irish 7 pm bulletin, fronted by Gráinne Seoige, managed to attract 27,800 viewers on average over its first five days of broadcast. The first night's bulletin attracted 46,000 adult viewers.
AFA O'Meara said combined with figures for the 10 pm Irish bulletin, Sky News Ireland was now holding 3.3 per cent in market share.
While things appear to be moving in the right direction, a power cut at Sky's studios a few days ago hardly helped. One of the Irish bulletins had to be scrapped as a result.
The boss of Sky News in the UK, Nick Pollard, said recently in Dublin that nobody expected Sky to pass TV3 or RTÉ out in the immediate term, but Sky is hoping that when major international and national stories break Irish people will tune into the service.
This week also revealed that despite heavy criticism of Eurovision and its creaking format, audiences remain strong.
RTÉ still managed to attract more than 628,500 viewers for the competition broadcast from Turkey. This represented 60 per cent of the viewing public on Saturday night.
Distillers account
The Irish Distillers media buying and planning account is out to pitch.
The account would be worth about €4 million, according to industry sources.
The usual media agencies are expected to apply, although some of them will be precluded because of existing links to drinks firms.
Several large agencies already hold Irish Distillers brand accounts and they will be included in the pitching process, said a spokesman.
Outdoor advertising
The Government spent more on outdoor advertising than anyone else in the first quarter of the year, according to new figures from Poster Management Limited
The poster specialists said the Government spent almost €1 million promoting the new smoking ban, pioneered by the Minister for Health, Micheál Martin.
This was 100 per cent more than the unit spent in the same period in 2003.
The spending was done by the Health Promotion Unit, which is part of the Department of Health and Children.
Guinness was the second highest spender with €787,121, while the Irish Independent was ranked third with a spend of €628,434 on its new compact edition.
The other high spenders were the usual suspects like 02, Budweiser and Meteor.
Tesco spent €422,698, an increase of 241 per cent on the year before, whereas none of its rivals - Superquinn, Aldi, Dunnes Stores and Lidl - made the top 20.
The figures illustrate once again that much of the outdoor advertising spend nowadays in the Republic is driven by health and public education campaigns.
For example at number seven was the Government's waste management campaign, Race Against Waste, with a spend of €475,575.
Diageo, while spending heavily on Guinness itself, also invested over €500,000 on a sensible drinking campaign.
MindSet service
The Dublin media agency Mindshare will shortly launch an unusual new research service called MindSet.
After conducting extensive trial tests with consumers in Ireland, Britain and Mexico the agency will ask a group of consumers to carry around a hand-held device for 48 hours which will record their media consumption patterns.
The device will be able to monitor what consumers watch and hear. The research will even records peoples' moods at given times over the two days.
Mindshare believes marketers are looking for a more scientific analysis of consumer behaviour by providing what it calls "reality data". While the technology will make some people squeamish (the Truman Show parallels are too close for comfort), the agency believes there will be strong demand for the data.
MindSet will be officially launched by MindShare in Dublin on June 16th with 900 consumers in Ireland and Britain.
College campaign
Third level colleges are not normally prolific advertisers, but the National College of Ireland, based in the heart of the IFSC, is about to change that with a new campaign beginning this week and running throughout the year.
The campaign, devised by Creative Inc, will emphasise the college's aim of offering education to as wide an audience as possible.
The 20-second advert will air on RTE 1, Network 2, TV3, TG4, MTV, E4, Sky 1 and Sky News. The advert was shot on location at the IFSC-based campus.
Emmet Oliver can be reached at eoliver@irish-times.ie
