News and current affairs channels have the highest average advertising rates amongst FTA (free-to-air) satellite channels in the Arab world, said a report.

The average advertising rates of free-to-air satellite news and current affairs channels in the Arab world is $ 5,219 for a 30-seconds advertisement during peak time, said a new report titled “Satellite TV Advertising Rates in the Arab World 2010” released by the Arab Advisors Group.

General FTA channels rates followed while music channels had the lowest rates. Ad rates remain quite low by global standards, the report said.

Arab Advisors Group’s analysis of advertising rates across 38 free-to-air satellite TV channels revealed that news and current affairs, general channels, movies and series channels have the highest average advertising rates amongst the FTA satellite channels in the Arab world.

The average advertising rate for a particular time segment represents the mean advertising rate for a standard 30-second TV commercial spot (known as a TVC) in that time segment throughout the week.

Satellite TV advertising rates across 38 FTA satellite TV channels chosen as a representative sample of the total market for the report.

The choice of channels was also partially based on the surveys’ findings with respect to viewership, where the list includes very popular channels as well as much less popular ones.

The categories in which the analyzed channels fall under are as follows: children and youth channels, general channels, movies and series channels, music channels, news and current affairs channels, religious channels and sports channels.

“News and current affairs channels, general channels and movies and series channels have the highest average advertising rates amongst the channel categories covered in this report,” said Noura Abdulhadi, Arab Advisors senior research analyst.

“The fact that these channel categories have considerably higher advertising rates than the rest of channels could be attributed to a number of factors such as: high viewership and a wide variety of content,” she added. – TradeArabia News Service