While it is important to know what is happening in the country, it is more important for many to know what is happening locally. And especially in the COVID-19 times, people are looking for more hyper-local news.
This is why Deepika Shinde, a Pune resident, tunes into Pune+ News to know what is happening in her city.
On cable TV channels, hyper-local news is running 24x7.
“Hyperlocal news channels, around 270 plus, with their own production and reporting teams, are providing a great service to local districts and communities, especially during these uncertain times where on-the-spot information is key. The content is locally relevant, and in many cases available in the local language,” said Sharad Alwe, CEO and Co-founder of Update GeoTarget, a cable advertising agency, told Moneycontrol.
But there is more than news that these cable TV channels are offering.
“The cable movies channels are offering newer content, with 50 percent movies that are 2018 release or later. On broadcast movie channels, content gets split due to the fight for exclusive movie broadcast rights. Meanwhile, cable movie channels have access to all the latest movies, both national and regional, which are officially procured from data content providers,” he explained.
A recent study by Enormous Brands noted that 43 percent Indians see cable TV as their primary source of entertainment.
"Cable movie channels have always been among the top-rated movie channels, and this includes satellite movie channels. Also, for many years, top tier brands have always had cable channels as part of their media plans, as there is strong distribution, certified monitoring processes, hyperlocal audiences, which deliver strong response to campaign goals,” he added.
This is why brands even now are spending on news, movie cable TV channels.
“Cable movie channels run all latest movies. As for news channels, they run hyper locally curated content. And this means that in the current times too, cable TV has a lot of fresh content to offer and this is keeping the advertiser upbeat along with the reasonable pricing of ad slots on cable TV channels, explained Samarjeet Reen, Chief Strategy officer, Update Geotarget.
He added that ad rates on cable TV channels are 1/10th or 1/20th of a national channel. Plus, there is enough advertising inventory available on cable TV currently, he said.
Over the past five years, the cable advertising industry has been growing at 30 to 35 percent and does around Rs 100 crore in revenue annually. “Yet, this is just 10 percent of the available inventory,” pointed out Alwe.
But with brands now looking for targeted messaging with better ROI, more advertisers could take up slots on cable TV channels.
“In the last six weeks, essential goods and services, and no-contact businesses have continued advertising to try and retain share-of-mind,” said Alwe.
He further said, “We are also seeing that FMCG, hygiene and e-commerce/ online services are bouncing back quicker. Apart from this, we believe that there will be a surge in new brands and categories due to increased domestic production and consumption, as a result of lower cross-border trade of physical goods.”
While brands are now slowly and steadily spending on ads especially on cable TV, coronavirus did result in significant drop in ad volumes last month on cable TV.
Nonetheless, Alwe thinks that “cable advertising offers a true bang for the buck, which is why most of the top 200 brands always keep cable as part of their media plan.”
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