Sky has called on advertisers and media agencies not to look to renegotiate the £20m in ad deals, affected by the pulling of its channels from Virgin's service, until after its financial year ends in June.
Media agencies struck the deals with Sky for this year on behalf of their clients during the Christmas trading season - before the likes of Sky One and Sky News were pulled from 3.3m cable homes.
Sky Media's managing director Nick Milligan and his deputy Paul Curtis made the overture to media agencies during a whirlwind tour that started the day after Sky's basic channels were pulled from the Virgin service.
According to senior media agency executives the pair "called in favours" in urging agencies not to make any "knee jerk reactions" to the news by looking to immediately renegotiate deals, as MediaGuardian reported two weeks ago.
It is understood that Mr Milligan - who heads up Sky's annual ad sales negotiations - pushed for agencies to hold off until June to see how the situation plays out.
However, media agencies are threatening that holding off until July may not be possible.
"They have lobbied for us not to pull out or renegotiate our deals, they don't want any knee jerk reactions," said a director at one media agency.
"However while there is a lot of goodwill towards them (Milligan and Curtis) it is a lot of money for us and clients. They are effectively asking for our customers to pay for them restricting content in this country."
"Sky has taken a strategic business decision to land grab Virgin Media's customers and that has resulted in a loss of audience, which is unacceptable to us on behalf of our clients," said Starcom UK's trading director Chris Locke, in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph.
"For the second half of this year we will review where those viewers have gone and move our money accordingly."
Viewing figures show that the loss of the basic channels from the Virgin cable service will see around a 12% dip in audience, based on year-to-date viewing figures.
In terms of advertising revenue, the loss of the 3.3m homes is predicted to impact Sky's total sales by around 8%, according to media agency figures.
However, on a channel-by-channel basis this impact is more pronounced.
For example, Sky One has lost close to 30% of its share of advertising impacts; Sky News 18%; Sky Travel 30% and Sky Two 13%.
Sky is considering a range of strategies to bolster viewing figures - and appease media agencies and clients - including the possibility of airing live football and quality film premieres on Sky One.
Sky is also having to consider a range of sponsorship deals which are more difficult to cater for than a loss of TV ad airtime on cable TV.
Under discussion is around £1m worth of deals, including 118 118's sponsorship of Lost, Nissan's sponsorship of 24 and Domino's deal with the Simpsons.
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