TORONTO – Is the advertising market on the rebound? Astral Media thinks so.
Speaking at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Toronto Wednesday, president and CEO Ian Greenberg said that he believes that the ad industry has already hit its rock bottom and has nowhere to go but up.
“What we’ve seen, from the point of view of activity, is clients and ad agencies calling us (again), instead of us having to go to them all the time, and looking for presentations on campaigns”, Greenberg said to the media after the presentation. “We’re certainly getting a better feeling as we go into the first part of the next calendar year that there will be a gradual return to increases over the previous year.”
Greenberg said that he first noticed the shift in October, and predicts that the climb in ad revenues will be underway by March.
That optimism may have helped fuel the Montreal-based media company’s plans to further expand its digital billboard network. After introducing the boards to Vancouver and Toronto in October, Greenberg said that the company plans to add more in those markets, plus offer “a B network” of smaller boards in Montreal, all in an effort to provide greater flexibility for advertisers.
In its television division, Astral hinted that it may look to add to its 20 pay and specialty TV channels.
“Certainly those channels would be of us interest to us if and when they became available”, Greenberg said in answer to a question from Cartt.ca about the appeal of the Canwest specialty TV stations. He also said that the company may add "the odd radio station" to its stable of 83 radio licences.
The company also plans to shop its TMN On-line product around to other TV distributors in 2010. It is currently offered only by Bell TV. But don’t look for The Movie Network’s content on Rogers’ new On Demand On-line product anytime soon.
“We think, frankly, that our model works better for our service, and when we’re talking to Rogers, we would encourage them to go with an on-line version of The Movie Network”, Greenberg said.
In other news, the company voted to add broadcasting veteran and former Alliance Atlantis exec Phyllis Yaffe to its board of directors.
