IPL and TV Advertising

When IPL had just started, I heard about this new advertising technique where advertising really broke into the game of cricket harder than ever.
At the end of every 10 overs of IPL, there would be a longer break for commercials, of around 8 – 10 minutes. And this information was given out clearly in all the media. The first question that came to my mind was – if the viewers already know this information, then will anyone actually bother watching 10 minutes of commercials waiting for play to resume? Would this not, instead, entice the user to change the channel when he knows exactly how long it is going to take before play resumes? This is fairly obvious. And if it is obvious indeed, can’t the advertisers predict this much? If people are not watching their advertisements for those long breaks, then are they really having any return on investment from putting up their ads during IPL?

On further probing on the topic, I realized where the flaw lay. When you use TV as a medium of advertising, it is very difficult to actually predict how many people saw your advertisement, and whether they actually observed it, or whether they actually made an attempt at analyzing the purpose of the ad, and finally whether that analysis converted to purchase. The only data that an advertiser gets is the popularity of the channel where ads are being shown, and the TRP ratings of the programme in between which the ads are being shown. And it is just on the basis of this that advertisers decide whether to invest in this channel / programme for displaying ads. In fact, it isn’t even the advertiser who looks at it.

Say you are Bru Cappuccino. To make your product famous you want to advertise on TV. So what happens is that you contact one agency for making your ad, and then another agency which acts like an exchange in between advertisers like you and TV channels. So the advertiser never actually “bargains” with the publisher of the ad. It’s all done by this intermediary exchange. Thus, you have no idea when your ad is going to show up, and more often than not, it is not effective. In fact, you might actually see the same Bru Cappuccino ad 3 times during the same programme broadcast on MTV (for example). So you pay for each of those 3 times, whereas you would have probably preferred if it had come 1 time each for 3 programmes. And the whole process is so much of a black box that ultimately what you do is just sign a cheque and give it to the advertising exchange.

So what happened in case of IPL? IPL obviously has better viewer stats than most other running serials on TV. So advertisers must have bid more in the advertising exchange for putting up their ads during IPL. Also, more advertisers would have signed up for putting up their ads on IPL. As a result, a whole lot of ad inventory was built up for IPL. Now, Mr. Lalit Modi must have done this calculation and realized that he cannot satisfy (or rather extract the last penny out) all the advertisers and their total view demands with just 59 matches (breaking it down to approximately 50-60 (20 + 20 over breaks + 20 wickets) advertising opportunities). He had more ad inventory to look at publishing. So what does he do now? He actually introduces a change in the game called “Strategy breakout” where each team can take a break to think back on how they should plan their next 10 overs. Looking at it from the perspective of cricket, this definitely adds a new dimension to the game – making batsmen resettle into their game – making the resettling period quite a wicket taking opportunity for the bowling team (as Sachin Tendulkar figured in his match against Deccan Chargers on 25th April. He was playing beautifully till the break, and when he came, he was completely unsettled, and lost his wicket in no time, and eventually his team lost).

TV advertising is definitely an effective technique of reaching your potential and existing customers. However, the way it is done can be really improved to ensure that advertisers can better calculate their ROI of advertising on TV. No prizes for guessing which form of advertising offers the best estimate for Return on Investment for the advertiser.