Feature | How TV ad spends are flowing from horizontal to vertical...

In early August this year, Reliance Broadcast Network Limited ("RBNL"), part of The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, and CBS Studios International, a division of CBS Corporation, announced their equally owned joint venture- BIG CBS. The venture has planned to launch three new channels out of which two are categorically niche in nature. The two upcoming niche channels are- BIG CBS Spark, India's first ever English youth channel and BIG CBS Love, India's first ever women's English entertainment channel.

The announcement though spoke prominently about the progressive Indian market, it also was pointing towards the ever growing niche channel category. Initially categories like travel, music, cookery, lifestyle etc were a part of the normal programming across channels. However, gradually the niche channels slowly came up and started broadcasting "categorized interests" for the niche viewers.

As the niche market slowly seems to have matured now with more players and a better segmented audience, niche channels look like the next big thing on television. Adgully spoke to industry experts and professionals associated with the niche channel category, to understand the market's size, recent technological elements that has proved conducive to its growth and how are advertisers looking at this category of channel.

Talking about the progressive chart for niche channels in India, Saurabh Yagnik, Sr VP& GM, English Clusters, STAR India, says, "The market potential is large because niche in some way is a surrogate of affluence. So as the country will garner growth, affluence will grow and hence, the consumption of niche content is going to grow."

Besides, Monica Tata, Vice President and Deputy General Manager ' Entertainment Networks, South Asia, Turner International India, adds, "Turner operates in the English entertainment genre in India that has about a 3% share and between the two Turner channels in the genre - HBO and WB ' we enjoy about 31% share of this genre."

On the other hand, the advertisers are also watching closely at the growing market for niche channels. Commenting on the market situation, Anita Kotwani, General Manager, Mindshare, feels that the product will appeal to more and smaller groups of people having varied interests, so even if today the market for this is small over a period of time it will evolve. "This will be led more by subscription as evolved audiences would not mind paying for content that appeal to their sensibilities", she points out.

Besides, with the DTH platform coming up, television and its many channels have reached to various small pockets across the country. Hence, the subscription mode has enabled the reach and the viewership to be enhanced, and at the same time has provided the viewers to "choose" a channel over another.

Talking about the advantages of the DTH platform for the niche channel category, Seema Mohapatra, Head- Advertising Sales (India), BBC World, says, "DTH has helped consumers stack up their choices and ask for their preferred channels, this gives targeted/specialty channels with engaging content better visibility. It's interesting to see how English News channels both domestic and international viewership goes up in DTH homes as per people meter. The time spent is higher again due to appointment viewing, for BBC World News we see a jump of over 30% in time spent in DTH homes compared to C&S homes. Today, media is measuring and evaluating this audience separately from regular TV viewers. With facilities like Tata Sky Plus, viewers are able to see programming they want to at their leisure. Good differentiated content then gets priority helping in increasing eyeballs to those channels."

Echoing similar views, Tata says that niche channels typically do better in DTH households as the consumers/viewers get to choose their favourite entertainment channels. "WB's relative share of the genre in the digital panel is about 80% higher than its share overall in C&S, again reflecting that targeted channels gets more traction," she adds.

On the other hand, Chetan Ahuja, Media Director, Media Direction, feels that the DTH platform will not make enough difference to the niche channel's market. He says, that even if DTH enables the viewers to have a choice, not all DTH players are targeting urban/ upscale audience and hence some of them may not target SEC A which typically is the TG for niche channel. However, he points out that the niche channels work as a reach builder further catering to the very specific "niche consumers".

The important thing that every channel strives on is content, viewership and advertising. So while the category seems to be up-and-coming in terms of demand for its content and demand from the audiences, it will be interesting to note the advertising space's reaction to this growing segment. On one hand, advertisers are able to reach their niche audiences in one go just by recognizing the fact the content is similar to the product's appeal, on the other hand the advertisements also act as added information for the "interested" audiences.

Tata agrees that specialized channels do attract a premium because of their targeted audience profile and branding environment. She further adds that it's also true that the marketers like to use targeted channels to advertise their higher-end or targeted products but niche channels may also lose out on the mass products.

Whereas, Kotwani feels that end of the day for advertisers it's about targeting the right mind. "An advertiser would rather speak to a travel buff on a channel that brings alive travel the best, as I am sure his likely source of information would be the travel channel / travel magazines rather then a general interest channel / magazine that covers the same," she adds.

While, Ahuja feels that including a niche channel in a media plan will only be after a planner has quantitatively and qualitatively analysed the niche channels reach with respect to the brand/ product's appeal and communication. "The planner will always look to provide more depth to the plan and will analyse very closely if the niche channel is similar to the client's profile and if the audiences reached are similar to the product's target group," he adds.

Niche channels seems to be in an uncertain spot in terms of being an obvious choice for advertisers trying to reach a specific category of audience, but it surely goes without saying that content innovation coupled with innovative advertising is an important feature of niche channels.

In the recent times, Turner has been able to create some path breaking client integrations like Ponds- Festival of Lights and ThumsUp- Nitro integrations, Garnier Biggg Ticket initiative, Samsung Fast FWD, TataSky Menu slates, Parle Milano Valentines Day- Cookies to name a few. Further providing visibility to the brand and helping the brand message to reach directly to the consumer.

Talking about this innovative content-branding platform, Tata, says, "Innovative, clutter breaking solutions are the order of the day. The clients want more bang for their buck and they want to stand out. Turner is known for its innovations and out of the box solutions across our bouquet of channels, exemplarily led by Cartoon Network and we recently set the ball rolling with WB as well."

The category allows advertisers not only to innovate with advertising but also enables them to blend content with the brand's communication to help engage the audiences better and at the same time reaches the consumers at the right psychographic level. Advertisers are increasingly using co-branded content, co-promotional contents, vignette etc to reach the target groups through use of niche channels.

However, Kotwani, points out that, "Content integration needs to be seamless and not force fitted, which ever the channel. If scripted well it works wonders for the brand."

The niche channels are slowly growing from the nascent stages where they were doubtful about their own developmental targets. Today these channels have a considerably consistent market share, have a steady viewership rate and also enjoy significant advertising investments. With the international players in the market, the competition was just seemingly cut-throat as some Indian names forayed into this space. However, with the joint venture between the two biggies in the international and domestic space, the competition has just got intensified. While niche channels are busy creating their own strong niche holding in the Indian Television industry, over to the score keeper to announce the scores in the months to come. | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com]