NEW DELHI: Covid2019 impacted brands across the board and as a result, ad volumes on television also took a hit. At that point, businesses were forced to realign their advertising budgets with an eye on future projections. However, advertising is once again on a roll and there is a year-on-year growth in ad volumes across some product categories. 

In a session titled – ‘Advertising on News’ at Indiantelevision.com’s News Television Summit, co-powered by TVU Networks, eminent advertisers and agency heads conferred on the importance of news genre in a media plan for a CMO. They discussed why advertisers continue to reach out to their audiences via the news space. The panellists included FBB, Future Group CMO Prachi Mohapatra, Policy Bazaar head of brand marketing Samir Sethi, Wavemaker CEO – south Asia Ajay Gupte, Essence SVP & MD – India Anand Chakravarthy, ITV group CEO Varun Kohli. It was moderated by E&Y partner M&E Ashish Pherwani.

Pherwani started off by asking Mohapatra how the brand looks at news genre and why they advertise on it. “We have been actively using this platform for a long time. I think it’s not a new category for us. For our campaigns, we have given our due respect to this genre as one of the highest reach provider for us. We are a young brand and reach out to the right kind of customer segment and news has worked for us. We have seen results,” said Mohapatra.

She further added that the brand has been able to use both FCT and non-FCT space effectively. “It’s not about platform anymore but the content that you are associating with it. Of course it became a very pertinent place for us in the pre-Covid time but post-Covid it has definitely skewed a little more towards the digital platform but news is right up there for us,” explained Mohapatra.

Echoing the sentiment, Sethi stated that news is the anchor genre on which Policy Bazaar advertises throughout the year. “News takes approximately one third of our TV spends. During the slump of Covid, when most categories were pulling out of their advertising plan, we were extremely bullish because insurance was one of the categories that were positively impacted by the pandemic. So, during the slump as well when the overall ad volumes were down, our share of voice also increased without spending extra on that. And we will continue to be extremely bullish on news because insurance is an extremely male dominated category in terms of shoppers and the audiences we find there is very relevant.”

Next, Pherwani asked for the panellists’ take on the impact of the impending legislation on ad-cap in the news genre. Kohli shared his view that Covid2019 was a blessing for news channels in the sense that since people were not very clear whether the information in the digital space was right or not, they came back to the news channels.  Many channels also reinvented themselves during this period and that is why the reach of the genre went up considerably. “It is the cheapest way to reach out to the audience because it is FTA. I do not see the legislation happening for news cap on news channels in the next two-three years,” he added.

But what do agencies think about advertising on news genre? To answer this question, Pherwani turned to Gupte from Wavemaker and Chakravarthy from Essence.

Gupte shared that rates are effectively a function of viewership. “If you put more ads in a break, the viewership tends to drop in the middle of it, but if you shorten the break, the viewership is a lot higher, there is higher TVRs and eventually one gets better rates.”

Chakravarthy pointed out that three Cs – clutter, context and cost – determine whether the platform is going to do a good job for the client or not. “Today on FTA channels we see advertisers ranging from all kinds of products – from high end cars to the ones speaking to the last mile audiences. I believe that context will be important because there are advertisers who for the right value of the right audiences will be willing to pay a premium price,” he said.

He went on to add that people are not on news channels to watch advertising and a 15 minute ad-break will be too long because people will switch off and move to another genre; plus there is also the ever-present distraction of the smartphone. “So, I think it is important that our advertising environment becomes consumer friendly. Yes, consumers want ads but how much advertising and how you place it and what kind of breaks you have is very critical to give the right kind of experiences and value to the entire ecosystem,” concluded Chakravarthy.