Oracle, MultiChoice refute claims by Ornico

Oracle was not consulted on these findings before publication and has since contacted Ornico to urgently request source data in order to formulate a response to our agencies and client base. To date, despite repeated requests, we have not received a response from Ornico or Oresti Patricios who was quoted extensively in the release.

In our opinion, the fact that the bulk of our advertising on DStv is bought through packages (at a high discount off our programme specific rates) has not been considered in the Ornico research. Package conditions state that individual spots may be moved to prevent clashing of various product categories and to optimise advertiser position during the campaign. While the final spot placement may differ from the scheduled time on the initial schedule supplied, the final exposure delivered will at least match, if not improve upon the original campaign plan. This is fully understood and accepted within the industry.

Ornico mentions that these results were obtained from the findings on the monitoring of 9213 commercials. This is then extrapolated over the entire advertising industry to arrive out at a rand value of incorrect flightings - however 9213 is only 0.77% of the total number of adverts flighted on DStv (1 198 211 spots according to Telmar period April 2008 to March 2009). In Oracle's view it is extremely dangerous to make these kind of assumptions off such a small base.

Oracle does reconciliations on every channel every working day and are rectifying potential problems on an ongoing basis. We are not saying that we never make any errors - obviously errors occur from time to time due to the nature of live television, late changes etc.

Both MultiChoice and Oracle totally refute the Ornico claims that errors are being made on the enormous scale as claimed within the release.

Multichoice and Oracle also take great offense to the Ornico claims that these alleged errors are costing advertisers large sums of money. Given the perceived negative perceptions and the potential damage to our business and reputation, MultiChoice and Oracle have demanded an immediate retraction of this release and a public apology from Ornico.