MEDIA research firm Nielsen Philippines caused acrimony and confusion instead of public erudition after it released an incomplete survey of the radio and television advertisement spending of candidates in next year’s elections, the camp of Vice President Jejomar Binay said Tuesday.
Joselito Salgado, media affairs head of the office of Vice President Jejomar Binay, questioned why Nielsen released its survey on political advertisements for 2015 when they knew that the results only covered the period January to November and could still change with the December data.
But Nielsen Philippines spokesperson Liza Martija explained that the survey was commissioned by private parties and the media firm itself is covered by non-disclosure agreements with subscribers.
But Salgado, who claimed their camp is a subscriber to the service, said Nielsen did not even bother to clarify its data when the camp of Liberal Party candidate Mar Roxas claimed that the survey named Binay as the top television advertiser in 2015 with television advertisements amounting to P595.7 million
Salgado claimed the figure did not include the “tandem advertisements” of Roxas and his running mate Lenny Robredo although that would change the results of the survey and show Roxas to be the top spender with P774.1 million in radio, newspaper and television ads in 2015.
Binay was second with ad expenditures reaching P695.5 million and Senator Grace Poe was third with P694.6 million. PDP-Laban candidate Rodrigo Duterte was fourth with P129.5 million .
But the Roxas camp jumped at the opportunity and demanded that Binay explain where he got the money to spend for his television advertisements.
“As far as I know, VP Binay was named as the top spender in the report, spending more than P600 million. Secretary Mar was a far third with just over P420 million spent,” said spokesman and Akbayan Rep. Barry Gutierrez.
“I don’t know what hocus-pocus they used to try and justify this latest erroneous assertion,” Gutierrez told The Standard in a text message.