It has agreed with major shopping plazas such as Future Park Rangsit and Seacon Square to use store space for advertising. Negotiations with Fashion Island are likely to be completed by the middle of the year.

"We have to expand our investment for both new billboards and in-store advertising media following the strong demand for new media that comes at a lower cost than mass media such as television and print advertising," said chief financial officer Prasong Aimmanoj.

He said the value of in-store media recorded strong growth of 166 per cent or Bt160 million in the first four months of the year, from Bt60 million in the same period of last year. Mass-media spending - television, radio and print advertising - dropped.

"Most consumer-product makers have changed their strategy to use different advertising channels which are cheaper than mass media, but which influence consumers' decisions. That will drive their sales to meet targets this year when spending shows signs of dropping," Prasong said.

Outdoor media and in-store media will be the best choice for advertisers' marketing activities direct to their customers.

Outdoor media - including billboards and street furniture - and in-store media recorded value of Bt6 billion, representing 7 per cent of overall advertising value of Bt88 billion last year. The business shows signs of growing to 10 per cent of the market within the next year.

The company's investment budget will come from both bank loans and cash flow.

"Some of our investment may come from our strategic partner with whom we started negotiating last year," he said.

The company expects revenue from in-store and mass-transit media will increase from 10 per cent from the current one per cent in the next three years.

Currently, 70 per cent of Master Ad's sales comes from 1,100 billboards nationwide, 29 per cent from street furniture media and the remaining one per cent from mass-transit media and in-store media.

The company announced sales of Bt123.2 million and net profit of Bt1.32 million for the first quarter - a drop of 9.97 per cent and 93.2 per cent respectively from the same period last year.

"Our sales dropped in the first quarter of this year because the advertising business had slight growth, especially outdoor media. As a result we expanded our business to in-store media to drive sales in the last eight months of this year. That will lift sales to Bt614 million by the end of the year, or up 10 per cent from total sales of Bt558.51 million last year," Prasong said.

Master Ad is responsible for billboards larger than 60 square metres, while its subsidiary Master&More is responsible for smaller sizes.

Somluck Srimalee

The Nation