We are witnessing a world of which is getting increasingly fragmented. We have moved from an era of mass marketing where Henry Ford could sell as many black Model Ts as he wanted, to an era where mass customization and micro-segmentation where every marketer wants to be able to address needs of individual customers. Though not many have been able to reach the magic formula of being able to serve the individual customer profitably. If we were to look at one area where there has been a tremendous fragmentation, it is the traditional mass media, specially TV channels. Close to a decade back we just had one channel Doordarshan, and as a marketer if you wanted to reach the consumers across the country and you had put your ad in Chitrahaar then your job is done, you would have reached your target customers and media planning was a very nice and an easy job.
But today...........to quote from a recent news item "An astounding 200 channels have hit the air since 2000, taking the total number to 326. (There were only six in 1991, when the satellite TV had entered India’s orbit, and 48 till 1996.)" This proliferation of channels has added an estimated 48,000 minutes of new advertising time every day converting this into 10-second spots, that’s 288,000 new spots a day. Now lets imagine the life of a media planner in this situation, with each of these channels attracting a smaller and smaller group of consumers, making reaching them more complex and costly. Though if one were able to get the exact data on the viewer ship maybe we could manage to reach them more effectively. Some time back I had read that Google wanted to integrate its google maps, Wi-fi and ads. It wanted to target individual consumers who were browsing the net
in a given area, to be targeted with specific ads for that locality and link it to their search. For example if one were browsing the internet sitting in a CCD in MG Road in Bangalore then through google would be able to target ads of the nearest shopping mall or announce the special price menu in a nearby restaurant or announce the happy hours of the nearest pub....
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ReplyDeleteHi Rajesh,
ReplyDeleteRead your post, must say interesting… just wanted to add a few points / comments
Firstly there are 340+ channels in India today... so your point on confusion starts here. Let me add to it there are about 20 more major launches scheduled in the next year.
Does it make sense, the first thought would say absurd, considering an average guy is spending only about two hours on television any sane person would not view more than 30 channels in a week… is the expectation that people will consume more television because there are more channels or will they start to switch from their normal staple television diet to the new channels. If you as me as a person who as observed the space for sometime now its will certainly lie between the two… the pie is set to growth but the growth wont be directly proportional to the growth in number of channels. And yes there would be more switching and fragmentation will grow. The point that would drive any noetic media profession would be growth in advertising dollars. The Indian economy has been growing at 9% and Indian television advertising is growing at 24%. And this growth is only slated to grow further with more and more sectors turning to advertising and more specifically television advertising. While we talk about growth in number of channels in the last decade would one have imagined a decade ago that a saria brand/ a small parag sari/ some jeweler/ inverter brands would come on to television. Now think of everything that is not on television educational institutes, big local retailers, big eatery joints, all these have the money soon they will have the will as well. And I am only talking about organic growth from sectors/ categories which are not on television. There would certainly players in existing sectors which will require advertising support.
This is the business part of the story which will drive growth and confusion lets look at the viewer part of the story, we have had channels but little entertainment yes we have had some success with Saas bahu serials (no matter how much we were to hate them they still are the biggest growth drivers for TV), but we still have to go further and have different genre of content. Where do we have good comedies/ talk shows/ thrillers on our TV. Look internationally you would find friends, Monty python, sienfeld, CSI etc whose line is it anyways… all superbly scripted products we are yet to find something which comes closer to such content. So the viewer is still hungry for more content sorry let me correct my self good content. This possibly is the one reason why television consumption in India is less than half of that in matured markets of US
So just to sum up… there is some method to the madness :)