With the increased market spend Cadbury is raising the stakes in the UK's chocolate bar wars.
Dairy Milk is the UK's biggest selling confectionery brand. The brand had annual sales of £317 million in 2005, a fall of almost one per cent from the previous year.
Cadbury's two-year renewal of the TV deal is worth in the region of £10 million a year. The campaign consists of short adverts at both the beginning and the end of the programme as well as during its breaks.
The confectioner uses the sponsorship arrangement, ongoing since 1996, to raise brand and product awareness on Britain's longest running TV drama. The programme has an audience of about 10 million.
Cadbury spokesperson Tony Bilsborough told ConfectioneryNews.com that the advertising spot offered the company flexibility.
"Our arrangement with Coronation Street allows for tailored promotion of brands and enables the company to feature particular products at certain times of the year, for instance, Cream Eggs in the run up to Easter," he said.
The Dairy Milk brand is considerably ahead of its nearest rival, Mars' Galaxy, in the chocolate confectionery category. Galaxy registered sales of £137 million, a 8.9 per cent increase.
Elsewhere the highest climbing brands were Cadbury's Flake and Aero whilst KitKat and Cream Egg suffered from poor sales, according to a ranking by ACNielson.
The Flake brand experienced impressive year on year growth of 24.5 per cent, with sales of £70 million, only to be beaten by Aero, which with £63 million grew 28.4 per cent.
Nestle's KitKat brand fell only one place in overall rankings despite a year on year 24 per cent reduction in sales to £69 million. Cadbury's Creme Egg dropped 6 places on the ranking to nineteenth overall with annual sales of £46 million after dropping 13.6 per cent on the previous year.