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Yours is a cable TV channel restricted to a city or town. How will you attract big advertisers who go by viewership numbers? And how can these advertisers ensure their message is not missing some targets, especially as tier 1, 2 and 3 towns are the emerging markets now? The solution is to aggregate audiences across TV channels, and this is what the geotargeting technology developed by digital media company SureWaves does, says its Co-founder, Chairman and Managing Director Rajendra Khare.
SureWaves works with over 300 small and regional cable channels to sell inventory to the advertiser. The channels are connected to a common grid. The cloud-based technology — called SureWaves Spot TV — allows advertisers the freedom to choose their audience based not on TRPs alone but also on market and customer profiles. Advertisers can pick their target audience, restrict advertising to a specific region and monitor whether the ad has been aired, which is not directly possible on a cable channel. This way, it is more cost-effective, says Khare.
He estimates there are about 400 “quality” cable TV channels across the country. This number will rise after digitisation and enhanced carriage capacity of the digital cable.
Television Audience Measurement (TAM) estimates that cable TV reaches 42 per cent of the total TV households. But cable TV viewership varies from State to State and has remained an unorganised network. The audience is widely dispersed and viewership measurement has been a big challenge. Unlike satellite TV channels, which can be received and viewed from a central location by media monitoring agencies, local cable TV channels are broadcast only in certain regions, making it difficult to monitor from a central location.
According to TAM, the channel share — percentage of the overall viewing time of the entire universe of viewers — of the cable regional category is amongst the top five general entertainment channels.
About 250 brands are advertising through SureWaves, says Khare. It suits FMCG, telecom or any other industry which needs to reach large audiences deeper in the country.
Khare says the unduplicated reach for advertisers grows by 5-10 per cent after changing the media mix, and GRPs (gross rating points) rise by 20-25 per cent.
SureWaves Spot TV is patented in the US and India. It is useful for countries with a diverse population, such as India, says Khare. Forty per cent of the advertising in the US is geotargeted, he says, adding that this is the only technology of its kind in India.
SureWaves has another product called Digistream to distribute TV ads to a large number of channels. The firm, supported by a team of innovators in the fields of digital video, networking and mobile technology, has filed for 30 patents. It is supported by Accel Partners and India Innovation Fund.
A Bangalore-based company called Amagi Media Networks has a similar mission. Its technology aims to make “national TV local”. It helps advertisers, especially small ones, buy spots on big TV channels and air them only in the regions of their choice. Small advertisers avoid national TV channels as they find them expensive, and national advertisers earlier did not have the technology to air regional versions of ads in a targeted area.
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