UPC are increasing their offering this week with the launch of three new RTÉ Digital channels; RTÉ One+1, RTÉ Two HD and RTÉjr, their children’s offering. The new channels will be available to all UPC Digital customers. SKY will carry RTÉ One+1 and RTÉjr from May.

RTÉ Two HD will be a big draw for sports fans, broadcasting key sporting events across the year in high definition. As with the RTÉ player, Fair City will not be broadcast on RTÉ One+1 due to rights issues so the channel will be blank over this period.

“UPC is committed to bringing our customers the best possible Digital TV service and we are the only pay-TV provider to carry the RTÉ One+1 (EPG 107), RTÉ Two HD (EPG 135) and RTÉjr (EPG 600) channels,” said Simon Kelehan, head of TV, UPC. “The addition of these channels to our digital package offers our customers more television choice than ever before.”

Currently these channels are not tracked by Nielsen, however RTÉ One+1 is due to be monitored in the next 4 weeks with the other 2 having data in the next 6 weeks. RTÉ One +1, RTÉ Two HD and RTÉjr are available to Saorview customers at present, which translates to 49,000 homes. The latest Nielsen data estimates that there are a further 340,000 UPC Digital homes who can now benefit from these latest offerings.

RTÉ revenue is estimated to be up by 4% in February. As you can see from the table below impacts vary by station and audience but the majority are down significantly. RTÉ will be very disappointed with their performance after seeing some double digital decreases in February – MC A15-34 down 11% and MC A down 10%.

TV3 also had a poor performance with MC HW+CH down 3% and MC A25—44 down 10%. Sky was the only station to buck this trend and saw massive impacts increases across all their main audiences - MC A25-44 up 25%, MC HW+CH up 17%, so they will be very happy with their February results.

Stations once again struggled to deliver ratings in February. Whereas last year it was mostly Youth Audiences that stations struggled to deliver, now ratings delivery has been an issue across all the main audiences. This has had an impact on all clients as many campaigns continue to be under delivered.

The Irish Farmers Journal was behind launch of a new glossy quarterly publication this month – Irish Country Magazine. The new magazine will be edited by Mairead Lavery, the present editor of the Irish Country Living supplement. Lavery said the Irish Country Living team felt they could give something more to their readership. “To produce a glossy offering geared towards the female market - that was our dream, it was always on our wishlist. The growing readership of the Farmers Journal gave us the confidence to continue to grow,” she said. “We’re focused on the female readers and on reflecting their lives as authentically as possible in what we put together.”

The first print run consisted of 30,000 copies with each selling for €2.99. Country Magazine will also be available to read online, behind a pay-wall. The web version is also available, with an app hopefully to follow in the second half of the year. The magazine features a number of editorial pillars, including lifestyle and wellbeing, nutrition and food, gardening, fashion and beauty. Regular columnists will include psychologist Maureen Gaffney, and chefs Catherine Fulvio and Neven Maguire.

The 2011 NNI Press Ad of the Year awards took place on Thursday, 8th March at Dublin’s Four Seasons Hotel. The awards are the culmination of the NNI’s Press Ad of the Month competition which is designed to showcase and reward the best ads that appear in the pages of NNI member newspapers each month.

The night consisted of an exhibition of all of the entries from 2011 before dinner and presentation of the awards. This year’s awards were judged by Neil Dawson, Executive Creative Director of BETC (London). The overall Ad of the Year prize went to a campaign for Slimsticks entitled ‘Kill Your Cravings’ which was created by the Boys and Girls agency. Neil Dawson described the winning Slimsticks campaign as “genuinely insightful, a really fun way of addressing the issue”. The colourful ads show a series of sugary snacks and sweets that have been ‘killed’ by the Slimsticks weight-loss products.

The NNI Best Copywriting and NNI Best Art Direction categories produced second consecutive awards for Ogilvy & Mather (for TV3’s “Family Home – Best Copywriting) and Publicis QMP (for TG4’s Scéalta Átha Cliath’ – Best Art Direction).

As a result of a new digital audio broadcasting (DAB) radio trial, radio audiences in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway will have twice as many stations available to them this summer. The trial, which will be launched in June, will provide listeners in four counties with a cluster of new digital radio stations broadcasting on DAB for the first time. “The goal is for DAB to bring 30 brand-new radio stations to every single home and workplace in the country,” said Dusty Rhodes, director of DB Digital Broadcasting.

Listeners can tune into all the usual FM stations on their DAB radios. Using FM alone will never deliver what advertisers demand most: more targeted and track-able advertising, however with DAB, listener interaction can be tracked.  The new stations will include 1980s, 1990s and dance music stations, a news service and an Irish language youth station.

The JNLR Breakfast, hosted by Ipsos MRBI, focused this year on the unique role radio plays in our lives. New research shows radio performing strongly despite the rise of social media. In fact radio can benefit from new communications technologies which allow access to even more listening occasions. 

The breakfast also explored how radio needs to be ready to capture the attention of the next generation of teenagers. Today there are 355,000  teenagers in Ireland, in fifteen years this is expected to grow to an estimated 522,000 in Ireland alone (Projected from CSO Births data) This is a massive audience for marketers to tap into. The breakfast described radio’s ability to gain cut through, despite the plethora of media surrounding teenagers. Yesterday, in Ireland alone, it reached 80% of 15-19 year olds. (Source: JNLR).However, at present only 19% of teens listen to the radio on their TV, 45% on their mobile and 32% on their laptop.

Radio will not enjoy the same rate of population growth it has in the past two decades, and consumers are looking for value everywhere they can, thus the reason it is so important for radio to conquer these new platforms.

Timeline for Facebook Pages is the largest, most significant design change to Pages since their introduction in 2007. Here’s an overview of the changes:

-A large cover photo now occupies the top third of each Page. The benefit of this added personalisation is obvious; however, Facebook is keen on keeping this space purely creative and has indicated a number of restrictions apply.

-Larger Images on posts are now available to deliver brand impact.

-You can now choose to ‘Pin’ an update to the top of the page, and this update will stay at the top of the page for 7 days.  Useful to draw users to a specific tab.

-Another way to control content on Timeline is to ‘Star’ it.  Using this feature, brands can take up two column widths to display photos and videos more prominently.

-Pages now automatically pull in ‘relevant’ Conversations others (including your friends) are having on Facebook.  

-New milestone function allows marketers to humanize the brand and remove a perception of corporate anonymity

-One of the biggest changes is the removal of the default landing tab. Instead of up to 9 tabs/ applications being shown on the left hand side bar, 3 tabs are now displayed below the cover image beside a default ‘Photos’ tab, with an option to add up to 12 total tabs.

-Pages will also have the ability to receive Messages from fans. The Message feature can be turned on or off from the Manage Permissions area of the Admin Dashboard.

-Brands can now check out the Facebook performance of their competitors

-Facebook ads for mobile now available but only through page posts which are highly engaging enough for FB to move them into mobile feeds.

-All premium booking will now only consist of Sponsored stories while marketplace ASUs will remain as auction based.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in the UK has not taken any action against Mars over tweets sent by celebrities promoting Snickers.  This is the first ever ruling by the advertising watchdog on a Twitter campaign.

Celebrities such as such as Katie Price and Rio Ferdinand sent a series of out of character tweets – for instance Price tweeted on the eurozone debt crisis while Ferdinand tweeted about knitting.

The tweets ended with a photo of themselves eating a Snickers bar with the line ‘You’re not you when you’re hungry @snickersUk #hungry #spon’. Complainants challenged that the campaign was misleading because the activity did not explicitly state it was promotional until the final tweet. There was also a question mark over whether the hashtag ‘#spon’ clearly labeled it as a marketing communication.

Digital advertising company Electric Media this month announced a partnership with Skype that it said will allow Irish brands and advertisers to reach a global audience through the VoIP service’s website.

Skype, which was acquired by Microsoft in May 2011, has grown its subscriber base to 244 million since setting up nine years ago. Skype is a cross platform service and is available on computers, mobiles, TVs and home phones. 

Dermot Hanrahan, CEO, Electric Media said  “Digital online advertising is continuing to grow and we have seen first quarter growth of some 20pc in 2012. Online advertising has now overtaken TV advertising in the UK and Ireland is on a similar growth path. Skype has 700,000 users in Ireland alone. It is one of the largest websites that we represent and we look forward to working with the Microsoft team in marketing this wonderful opportunity for Irish advertisers. “A particularly exciting trend is to be seen in Skype’s year-on-year growth in Ireland of 25%, which is greater than the growth of Facebook and YouTube.” Electric Media now has 70 premium websites in Ireland and 20 major phone apps.

In the UK, Premier Foods-owned Mr.Kipling is debuting a novel marketing initiative, which will involve dispensing free cakes from scented outdoor sites. The tailored JCDecaux  sites can distribute up to 500 Mr. Kipling Angel Slices every day. At the touch of a button, the vinyl-wrapped posters will also emit the cake's aroma to try and lure in customers.

The move marks a change in advertising tack from Mr.Kipling as it undertakes more experiential advertising. The scented outdoor sites form part of a wider campaign headed by 'Gavin & Stacey' star Joanna Page.

Outdoor contractor Bravo has released a final shortlist of 15 companies for its ‘Make Me Famous’ competition. The idea of the contest is to give Irish SMEs the chance to win a campaign to the value of €150,000 on transport posters. Irish brands ‘primed for take off’ but lacking advertising funds were invited to pitch.

The campaign has the potential to reach 1.6 million commuters over two weeks. The judging panel includes Liam McDonnell, Aegis; Bill Kinlay, Mindshare; David Sheridan, CIE; James Barry, Bravo; Mark Fielding, ISME and John Kelly, AIB Business Banking. Bravo said they received a total of 214 entries.

The winner will be announced at a reception in the AIB Bankcentre in Ballsbridge on Thursday, April 12. The shortlist and more details on the competition are at http://makemefamous.ie