How Startups can use Programmatic Television Advertising

Marketing and Promotion is all about taking your product or service to the right target audience at the pre-decided time, and in an efficient way. How cool it would be if this bang-on strategy could work as well for startup companies like it does for the established ones. The big positive differentiator for the large and well-known brands is that they are already empowered with huge resources and can strike gold relatively faster and far more easily than their smaller counterparts.

On the other hand, it’s really a roughhouse for the startups as they scramble to arrive at the right strategy and media plan because they are restricted by limited resources in terms of effort, finance and time. Things are changing now, by new technology called Programmatic TV (PTV), which is the automation of TV advertisement buying/selling process, based on audience preferences. Now we have a data driven media buying process already accepted in the digital media – that brings buyers and sellers on to an automated marketplace, making the experience simpler and more efficient. PTV ads are placed intelligently based on audience data to help you reach your target audiences.

This technology based platform empowers the media planners and buyers by automating the optimization and execution process for traditional TV Advertising. The traditional TV buying process, like all long-established ones, is well institutionalized in the industry, but over time, has gotten into a lapse and so and now has its challenges. In addition, it offers only an approximate plan to reach the desired target audience, which means the ad may or may find the bull's eye before considerable money has already been spent. This is particularly painful for startups as they struggle to find their feet in a crowded and competitive market and have to smarten up.

Currently, media buying professionals are using their precious time and energy in manual work and processes such as request for proposals, order for ad insertions and waiting for confirmations. This is usually done through scores of emails, faxes and spreadsheets. With the entry of PTV, media buyers will have access to the convenience of a scientific approach that helps do away with the time-consuming, laborious and often less-efficient ways of the manual TV advertising buying model.

So, when they opt for programmatic buying, it helps create a customized dashboard for each product/service that their marketers want to promote and enables them to track the campaign’s performance for the desired target audience and other performance metrics that are relevant to the marketer. It’s all about getting the right inventory in a way that ensures optimization of the ROI from the advertisement.

Traditional TV advertising involves shifting through huge and complex number of choices of channels and programs. PTV comes with the technology to filter the massive data mining and analytics and aids strategic decision making. With an automated buying and scheduling, marketers/advertisers can effectively target their existing and potential customers while also saving a lot of time and effort. PTV creates a marketplace where media buyers and sellers interact in an open and transparent manner.

Getting the right inventory through PTV is not just a boon for startups or small companies, but also for established brands. Given the large quantum of ads that big players are releasing to promote their products/services, it’s important to assess which ads are effective in influencing the target customers rather than running those which do not help in moving the needle. Today, most small companies, including startups, start reaching out their target customers through the digital advertising medium across social media, websites and online ads.

Smart phones have made this easy, enabling easy reach to new customers and this explains the rise in interest for digital advertising, especially among small businesses. As Business grows, companies feel the need to shift to the television medium. This is where PTV attempts to make a difference. It brings the sophistication and convenience of digital advertising to the popularity and reach of the TV medium.

PTV promises to change the dynamics of TV advertising as it works on making the processes simpler and cost-effective. The platform gives advertisers a range of options in audience buying, thereby maximizing the value of TV ad spots. With such time-consuming, chaotic processes out of their way, marketers can focus more and better on reaching the target customers. If a startup can learn the ropes of effective advertising on television through programmatic TV, they will be better positioned to speed up their scale up process even after they make it big.

IPL 2016 Revenue Stream

The Indian Premier League has amassed about Rs. 2500 crore in overall revenue in its recently concluded ninth season, growing at a double digit pace over the year before. The figure includes revenue that TV and digital channels made from advertisements, as well as teams from sponsorship, ticket sales and merchandising, and BCCI from on-ground sponsorship.

The biggest chunk of revenue came from TVs as advertisers vied to grab ad spots when matches were telecast during the nearly two-month long tournament, which with its fast paced short format has become very popular in this cricket crazy nation. Official broadcaster Sony Pictures Networks India (SPN) made just under Rs 1100 crore while the eight IPL franchises together earned Rs 200-230 crore from Sponsors.

The Board of control for Cricket in India generated Rs 220-250 crore from on-ground sponsorships, whereas Hotstar the digital rights holder got around Rs 40 crore. This season IPL made ticketing revenue of Rs 150-160 crore. India is a market where a lot of new brands are launching. This need to chase salience and eyeballs and IPL viewership has remained rock. IPL is celebrated like a festival that unites once a year and brings families, friends and colleagues together to enjoy the spirit of cricketainment.

IPL has developed many unique skill sets and generated lot of job opportunities that are making a difference to the larger sports and events industry in India. In terms of ticketing revenue, Royal Challengers Bangalore (Rs 25-26 crore), Mumbai Indians (Rs 24-26 crore) and Delhi Daredevils (Rs 22-24 crore) topped the charts, followed by Rising Pune Supergiants (Rs 18-20 crore), Kolkata Knight Riders (Rs 16-18 crore), Sunrisers Hyderabad (Rs 15-16 crore), Gujarat Lions (Rs 14-15 crore) and Kings XI Punjab (Rs 13-14 crore). The BCCI ended up with almost Rs 10 crore in its kitty from ticketing revenue.

IPL is progressively growing at a 10-12% rate year on year. It may not be galloping, but it is definitely not sinking either. It is going in the right direction. Another small revenue stream for the franchises was merchandising, which is estimated to have generated Rs 17-20 crore for the teams put together. While it is hard to put a definite number to it, there is substantial revenue to the broadcaster from the TV channels that are subscription based.

SPN may allocate this revenue, estimated to be anywhere from Rs 250 crore to Rs 400 crore to the three channels – Sony Max, Sony Six, and Sony ESPN, which air IPL. SPN payout to the BCCI of Rs 820 crore per year (the 10 year deal is worth Rs 8200 crore) as well as Franchises fee has not been considered for the estimates. A major chunk of this goes into a central revenue pool, from where it is distributed among the Franchises.

Native Advertising

Advertisers and publishers are not new to ad blocking. It has been in existence since the time of desktop publishing. Over the last couple of years they have rushed to native advertising primarily because of the sharp rise in ad blocking. It works with the theory that if an ad is harder to identify as an ad, it would perform better against ad blockers.

Take fashion brand Lifestyle promotional campaign that highlighted its end of season sale. For the announcement ad, the company tied up with popular content site, and created a fun and engaging article on the types of people on average shopper would meet during a sale. The good thing is publishers are actively handholding advertisers to get around entry hurdles.

Twitter India, for instance offers brands the know to how to leverage native advertising through a host of products such as Promoted Tweet, Promoted Trend, and Native Video, that surface in the form of content that the user is familiar with. Brands need to be where their customers are, but that is increasingly a challenge as consumer’s consumption of content today takes place across multiple platforms from TV to online to mobile apps.

There are few things to remember while using native ads. Always add value for users. If users find the branded content informative and in line with their interests they’ll read and share it. Native content that is identified as sponsored and has a clear call to action performs the best. Being transparent is important to retaining the user trust and leading to engagement. Since native ads look and behave like the content around it, strive for quality content that’s good as the editorial content.

While consumers transition between devices they expect the content to be consistent whether on desktop or mobile and that goes for advertising too. Native ads are especially effective for cross platform campaigns, from PC to mobile. The look and feel of the native ad should be in line with the content on the page. Native ads flow in with the user content experience. With digital video consumption is on rise, and the user love for short snacky content, brands need to explore native video as well as stretch the creative boundaries on content genres.

IPL: Super Bowl for Advertisers

Cricket is most watched game in India. It may be because of famous cricketers like Sachin, Kapil Dev, MS Dhoni and others or it is due to back to back cricketing action. Despite five months of regular cricket, the hype around the sport is far from waning. Advertiser’s interest in the Indian Premier League (IPL) is proof of this. There were many successful campaigns launched between these time periods including the most successful #MaukaMauka campaign in India. 

IPL tournament is similar to Super Bowl in US, the annual championship of the National Football League (NFL), which is known for Brands showcasing of their biggest campaigns of the season. There are some of the big spenders in on advertising in the popular cricketing league this year. Amazon India latest campaign and its biggest so far have managed to capture the attention of audiences with its catchy jingle and tag line: ‘aur dikhao’ (show more). The advertisement has been created by Orchard Advertising.

Hector Beverages Pvt. Ltd has rolled out its first television and multimedia campaign for its range of Indian ethnic beverages under the Paper Boat Brand. Vodafone India has chosen to lead its biggest campaign so far this year by highlighting the speed and efficiency of its 3G network. The mobile commerce firm Paytm continues with its advertising spree on television and other mediums. The company has said it is setting aside Rs 50 Crore just for this season of IPL out of total advertising budget this year.

The cola brand has taken to crowdsourcing for its latest campaign for IPL crash the Pepsi IPL. As part of the global Pepsi Challenge Program, the company is asking consumers to make a 30 second advertisement showing their love for brand. Winners will get exciting prizes. Snapdeal has roped in Hindi movie actor Aamir Khan for its latest campaign, with the tagline, ‘Dil ki Deal’. These advertisers are spending Crore in outreaching customers and compete with their competitors.

There are other advertisers who are not spending in TV ad but are spending in getting their names placed on Players jerseys and caps. Mankind, Rupa, Nokia, Aircel, Hero Honda, Royal Challenge, Videocon, UltraTech, WHSmith, Spice Jet, Just Dial are among the ones. In my opinion it is a tournament where advertisers are spending around 1000 crore this year. This is a good symbol for Indian Economy and other leagues in different sports will make companies to spend more money on advertisement.