SET-listed Mono Technology aims to double advertising rates for its digital TV Mono 29 in January to reflect the actual audience share for the station, which ranks third in the country's viewership.
The new rate will be 300,000 baht per minute for the prime-time period, up from the current 150,000 baht.
The average ad rate will be 80,000 baht per minute, up from 35,000 baht.
Patompong Sirachairat, newly appointed chief executive of Mono Technology, said yesterday that the company began negotiating with companies and ad agencies two months ago about the new ad rates and that they understood the situation.
"Advertising rates for Mono 29 have been unfair for years," Mr Patompong said, citing the gap between the rates applied to Mono 29 and those for other leading TV channels.
According to a Nielsen report, Channel 7 is expected to have the biggest audience share with 22.7% this year, followed by Channel 3 with 15.4% and Mono 29 with 10.5%.
This means revenue based on audience share would be 15.1 billion baht, 10.3 billion baht and 7 billion baht, respectively.
Mr Patompong said Mono 29 now receives just 33% of expected revenue.
"It can be said that Mono 29 gets revenue of less than what it should have received by 67%, based on its audience share," he said.
The newly adjusted ad rate is meant to be close to the rates applied to other leading channels.
According to the chief executive, Mono 29's viewership rate keeps increasing, with a 20% jump from the second quarter to the third quarter this year.
Mr Patompong, 39, was promoted on Nov 6, replacing Pete Bodharamik. He has worked at Jasmine International Group, the parent company of Mono Tech, for 17 years.
One of the four missions under his focus is to pursue cross-screen engagement, including use of the over-the-top (OTT) platform and holding events.
The others are pushing Mono 29 to become one of the pro-league channels with raised ad rates, strengthening branding of all content and reaching 5 billion baht in revenue by 2020.
The projected 5 billion baht would be mainly contributed by Mono 29 TV channel, OTT platform Monomax and 3BB TV.
Mono 29 expects to get a 12-15% audience share by 2022.
The channel currently generates 80% of total revenue of Mono Technology, followed by sponsorship and events (7.5%), Monomax (6%), TV shopping (3.5%) and movies (2.2%).
Last year, Mono Technology booked total revenue of 2.5 billion baht. It reported nine months' performance this year of 1.7 billion baht in revenue.
In September, Mono partnered with Jasmine International and KT Corporation from South Korea to launch an IPTV (internet protocol TV) business.
Mr Patompong said IPTV is set to launch in the second quarter of 2020. The service is expected to have 150,000 subscribers the first year and 1 million subscribers the next.