Marketers lose ''millions'' in lost TV flightings

To combat loss of earnings, Ornico has introduced a system called SpotCheque, which alerts clients of errors to their ads by 12 noon, the day after the ad is flighted. This means that corrections can be made before the next flighting. This can prevent incorrect commercials going out or commercials flighted at the incorrect time or even not flighted at all.

Advertising agencies believe they can use their internal systems or broadcasters' log sheets to verify ads placed on TV or radio, however this task is impossible as the log sheets are not always entirely correct and it is time consuming.

MD, Oresti Patricios explains: "In most cases it is the client that subscribes to our system, Ornico then emails both the client and the media agency the error report."

Here are a few flighting examples of the error rates that have occurred between Nov 2003 and March 2004:

- Ornico took a sample of 7 255 ads over the period from Nov 2003 to March 2004 and these were the results: 14% of flightings were incorrect as related to the media schedule. That amounted to R14 million of revenue over five months and 992 ads. Out of this percentage of incorrect flightings, 69% in November were for non-flightings.

"This is exceptionally high as this is the time of year that you need to have all your flightings for the Christmas rush. In December, this number was not any better and stood at 53%. In January, 10% of the ads we checked were the incorrect ads. This can be disastrous, especially in retail when specials change weekly," explains Patricios.