Sponsorship will ensure that TV keeps providing bumper returns.

Marketing Week, December, 2004

As it becomes easier to skip breaks, advertisers and owners need to find new routes to viewers. Sponsorship is set for a starring role, says Adam Bishop

Television sponsorship is set to become even more important, as viewers continue to change the way they engage with the medium. More than half the population (63 per cent) has access to multi-channel TV, surfs the Net, interacts, sends e-mails, plays games, pays to view or even pays bills using the black box in the corner of the room.

Believe it or not, in 1999, 150 individual transmissions on commercial TV attracted more than 15 million viewers: in 2004, there have been just four (three of which were Coronation Street). Fragmentation and technological development has made it more difficult for...