What Idiot Box Can’t Do For Commercials But Online Can?

This paper looks at exploring digital medium for the same commercials we see on TV.  Video is the hottest new format for online advertising. Thanks to emphasize on infrastructural development, no of high speed connections are increasing day by day. According to TRAI, no of people of using broadband connections were 5.65 million by end of JAN 09. TRAI defines a broadband connection a connection with a minimum speed of 256Kbps. This makes consumption of online video rather easy. That’s why the consumption of online videos has consistently going up. That’s why YouTube is such a success today.  Following table shows the last year video views and expected video views in this year.

  

 

Content Category	Views Per Year 2008	Views Per Year 2009
User Generated Video Content	2000 Million	5000 Million
Premium Branded Video Content	1200 Million	3300 Million
Non Premium Branded Video Content	600 Million	1000 Million
Total VIEWS	3800 Million	9300 Million

Source: Vdopia*

 

I have put a all possible points of comparison for everyone’s reference. And here is what they look like.

 

Comparison Between Commercial On TV Vs Commercial On Online Medium
Parameter	TV	Online
Reach	High Reach.	Moderate Reach but increasing steadily. Currently 40 Million people.
Frequency	Can’t be defined with before the start of a campaign with precision. Frequency is generally an average frequency.	Can be defined with precision before the start of the campaign. Frequency is highly controllable here.
Assurance of Ad Exposure	Audience may or may not see the ad.	Exposure is guaranteed.
Targeting	Channel mix is chosen with higher affinity of user with the channel but spill over can’t be completely ruled out.	Demographic targeting possible which ensures zero spillover.
Audience Involvement	Passive	Active
Scope Of Innovation	High with higher cost but zero interactivity.	High with relatively lower cost with high scope of Interactivity.
Primetime Concept	Cost for running commercials varies with Prime Time & Non-Prime Time.	There is no such concept of Prime Time. Internet is always prime time.
Who’s Watching Your Commercial	Your TG or your TG with the family. Thus, spill over.	Consumption is individualistic.
How Are Advertiser’s Charged	You get charged on no of spots you run irrespective of who saw & who didn’t see your ad.	Online give throw up an ad only when you request a webpage. Hence, more accountable. Online give you an option wherein you pay only when user sees your ad 100%. You don’t pay anything if someone leaves your ad in between.

 

These are some of the quantitative differences between the two mediums. There are qualitative differences also like most of the young working professional are in office most of their time. Hence makes complete sense to run your commercial on online medium.

 

Though this comparison is not to de-sell or to sell any medium, the purpose of this comparison is to throw some light on advantages on each medium to achieve the client’s objectives. With the growth of Internet, media fragmentation, slower rate of growth of TV(if not stagnation) and changing media consumption patterns of people, advantages of internet cant be ignored even though it’s might not be able to offer reach(in Indian scenario) as compared to TV.