Geo-Targeting on TV

TV was the only medium which has a massive reach but sadly not targeted. It is seen as an expensive medium, digital’s traditional reach-based older sibling, so to speak, and, more importantly, a privilege available only to the industry big boys.

The total number of advertisers on TV stands close to 11,000, whereas advertising interest on print is approximately 150,000. This is despite the huge gap between the penetration of TV vs print. To put things in perspective, while the number of TV viewers is around 800 million, print receives a readership of only about 150 million. That pegs televised reach at five times that of print media, however the number of advertisers on TV is far less than print or radio. A major detractor that prohibits TV for small and medium advertisers, is cost. Secondly, India is a diverse heterogeneous buying market with varied regional preferences, and TV was unable to singularly address this diversity. There was no option for brands to target a specific market using TV.

The statements above corroborate the gap between TV as an advertising medium and small & medium business owners as advertisers. Amagi proactively identified this gap and pursued relevant technological solutions to solve the same. In doing so, Amagi pioneered the concept of targeted advertising on TV. Amagi’s geo-targeted TV ad network completely re-designed and re-engineered the Advertiser-Broadcaster-Viewer-Ecosystem by making TV ads much more effective and affordable.

The technology behind this is Amagi’s Patented Content Watermarking technology, which brings advanced targeting options- Geographic, Personalized (device based/demographic) and Contextual.

How does this work?

Amagi buys national ad inventory from broadcasters and sells this inventory to advertisers with region specific requirements. Number of channels who have partnered with Amagi to provide geo-targeted advertising solution to their advertisers has now increased to close to 25 National channels

Benefits to Broadcasters

Broadcasters are able to monetise their inventory in a specific market by reaching out to first time TV advertisers (long tail of advertisers) in that market which otherwise was not possible. Amagi brings to them those long tail of advertisers. For a TV channel traditionally the problem has been that unlike newspapers, who can print more pages to increase their revenue, they only have 24 hours and can have 10-12 minutes of advertising in one hour. So how can they grow? There are two or three ways, one is to increase their price. But the viewership on TV and amount of time spent on TV is already under threat from Digital and OTT and there are multiple platforms and more channels to choose from. So the pressure is to keep the price competitive. Second, is to launch a big show with large marketing and production budgets. This may increase losses but will increase viewership and will hopefully create a halo effect on viewers to watch other shows aired on the channel. Third is to increase distribution. But today everybody is saturated in distribution so there is not much they can do. Hence, there are very few avenues for a TV channel to increase their revenue and  Amagi provides one of those unique avenues to them.

Secondly, broadcasters are also able to provide better advertising option to Big brands who were already heavily advertising on TV, as they now have access to better media efficiencies. Geo-targeting also opens end less possibilities for big brands to effectively use it for a specific business need;  such as priority market targeting, product testing, regional launches, local consumer promotions, ad versioning, (different brand ads for different markets) etc in order to boost sales in markets of their choice.

Benefits to advertisers

Tons of advertisers who have worked with us have seen growth in terms of sales in the specific markets that they have advertised. This is because, traditional TV is a crude tool. Certain channels do well in certain markets and not so well in others. Companies were unable to match their share of market requirements with their spending, also called as their share of voice. So we have given them a tool that allows them to do targeting so they can decide which market they want to target and how much they want to spend based on their desired market share. Secondly, some companies have brand variants specific to certain markets. So our tool not only allows them to target the right amount of advertisements to the right market but also helps target the right product to the right market. Thirdly, they can use our technology for consumer promotions. Earlier, this was not possible on TV as TV advertising could not be isolated to certain markets.

TV incidentally from a cost per reach perspective is the cheapest media because of volume but also the most expensive because of the volume. The reach was far more than required. By eliminating the spillage and wastage, we are making it truly cost effective

Future of Targeting on TV

Future of targeting on TV is indeed interesting with more advanced targeting options coming to the fore front. As television viewing changes from being linear to more on OTT and hand held devices – options like device based targeting, demographic targeting and contextual targeting will soon become a reality in India.

Amagi’s data scientists have created a data-centric model for TV advertising, which allows programmatic buying via AmagiMix, a media e-commerce site to buy media inventory online. It aspires to become a comprehensive media buying and planning tool for small advertisers who are often constrained by cost, ease and transparency of buying TV spots online.