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Tag: Sharad Alwe

  • Update Geotarget promotes Prabeer Patankar as head of national sales

    Update Geotarget promotes Prabeer Patankar as head of national sales

    NEW DELHI- Update Geotarget, India’s only regional-focused, narrowcasting TV advertising free-to-air platform, has promoted Prabeer Patankar as head of national sales.

    In his new role, Patankar will be responsible for overall national sales and will report to Update Geotarget MD Sharad Alwe. The announcement also emphasises the company’s objective to enable marketers with effective narrowcast services pan India with their 2500+ hyperlocal channels & set-top box solutions.

    Prior to this, he led the sales for the north and south region. Patankar was instrumental in building the business ground up in the last 10 years for Update, with his 24 years of experience in media sales and prior engagements in reputed media houses such as HT Media, Herald Publications, and Navabharat Press Pvt. Ltd

    Commenting on the appointment Alwe said, “As we look forward to festive & brighter future ahead, we are fast-tracking ‘transformation’ which is true to our DNA over the last 25 years. We are clear on our strategic priorities, strengthening our connections with a growing the universe of clients, agencies, brands, and partners in the marketing ecosystem. To be able to do so, we needed a passionate leader and strong structure within our organization to continue our path to greater success."

    On his advanced role, Patankar said, “I am delighted and grateful to Update Geotarget for giving me this opportunity. With brands adapting their strategy to the post COVID environment, they are focusing more than ever on Geo-targeting. NTO has not made their life easy either, shrinking the actual ‘on-ground channel availability’ of their mainstay channels. I think this is our window, our hyper-local channels are more relevant than ever for advertisers. We should see good traction before this financial year ends.”

  • Update Geotarget enables advertisers to target regionally-curated cable TV channels

    Update Geotarget enables advertisers to target regionally-curated cable TV channels

    NEW DELHI: In this globalised world, hyper-local targeting assumes greater significence for reaching out to the target audience. Contextual and hyper-local targeting of audience through advertising is a trend that no brand can afford to miss. While digital mediums serve this need for brands in the metros and tier I cities, the tier II and tier III regions still remain untouched. Television still remains a preferred medium there.

    We all know that it is not easy to hyper-personalise ads on television. However, Update Geotarget platform has come up with a unique solution with its “Ab Digital Ka Power TV Pe” campaign.

    Update Geotarget founder and managing director Sharad Alwe told Indiatelevision.com: “India is a diverse demographic with 90+ socio-cultural regions, 700+ dialects, and 66 different scripts. Historically, we broad-brush India into HSM and southern languages, but brands which want to communicate with audiences hyper-locally are best served with multilingual messaging for contextual targeting. It has already been accepted that vernacular is important, especially for tier II, there is nothing more powerful than communicating with your target audience in the language they think in.”

    He adds, “Through the strongest and most versatile cable TV channel distribution network in India, the Update Geotarget platform allows marketers to localise their messaging, even at an SCR and district level, so you can be truly hyperlocal.”

    Update Geotarget boasts of an inventory on 2500 free-to-air cable TV channels pan-India, which can allow media planners to slice and dice priority market clusters based on geolocation in all 29 states, 92 SCRs, 440 districts, and top 200 cities, with high availability deep and wide into Tier-2 cities.

    Alwe believes that their product is a perfect complement to TV as an advertising medium.

    He explains: “The challenges with TV advertising are the inability to micro-target, and of course, the costs. Moreover, with the changes post NTO, there has been a significant drop in the availability of satellite channels, as households pick and choose the pay channels they want. We believe that our product offering is a perfect complement to the TV medium, as we are able to use the same ad formats, with the layer of geo-targeting to sets of a highly engaged local audience on regional cable TV channels. A holistic plan with both mediums would drive brand awareness with targeted messaging, delivering excellent ROI for media planners.”

    What makes this proposition even stronger is that while satellite pay channel availability has dropped post-NTO, regionally-curated cable TV channels are mandatory in every cable TV household plan throughout India and Update Geotarget maintains 100 per cent availability in 120 million TV households.

    With the new campaign, created by Mirum, Update Geotarget is trying to reach out to marketing and advertising professionals, brands, media planners and agencies pan-India, and is using digital medium dominantly to promote it.

    “Most of our TG is on social media and other digital platforms, and decision-makers are located in metros/ tier-I cities. Digital was an obvious choice as the group is small but well engaged and connected digitally and socially,” Alwe concludes.

  • Ad agencies expect reallocation of budgets post TRAI tariff order implementation

    Ad agencies expect reallocation of budgets post TRAI tariff order implementation

    MUMBAI: Since the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has announced its new tariff order, making it mandatory for TV channels to keep a transparent display of the rates of its channels and bouquets and providing the viewers the liberty to pay only for those channels that they want to see, there has been quite a turmoil in the worlds of those associated with the industry.

    While channels, MSOs, and LCOs are busy ensuring a smooth transition to the new regime, the advertising world is looking at a cloudy sky that only offers a lot of uncertainty towards the impact of this order on their planning.

    Speaking about the same at a recent press meet, Mindshare chief operating officer, South Asia Amin Lakhani had said, “As an industry, we have seen a lot of volatility and uncertainty in the past 4-5 years. This is also an interesting one.” He added that the industry will have to follow a wait and watch approach to see the impact of the new order on the advertising world. But he was also certain that people will not change their habit of watching TV.

    Indiantelevision.com talked to some more industry insiders to understand what the new order will mean for TV, digital and the advertising world.

    Mindshare chief digital officer South Asia Vinod Thadani reflected same thoughts as Amin and said, “Any call on the way the TRAI order will impact TV viewership would be too early. The various scenarios are yet to play out and once there is clarity on the impact on TV distribution and viewership, we will be able to take any calls on its impact on digital.”

    Isobar group MD-South Asia Shamsuddin Jasani on the other hand was sure that this new order is going to help the advertisers as they will now have a better idea of which channels are popular and thus, where to invest.

    He said, “I don’t think it will impact the ad-spends on TV drastically but will lead to re-allocation of fund by the advertisers. Now, we have an even better data of premium channels and we can thus improve the way we spend.”

    Shamsuddin is of the view that OTT might gain because of the order, “With OTT, you can track the number of users from day one. So, if advertisers use the right science (to understand these numbers), it will definitely help OTT players.”

    Update Advertising MD Sharad Alwe affirmed that the new TRAI tariff order is definitely going to impact the viewership of pay channels. He said, “The TRAI ruling will perforce make the viewer carefully select his pay channels of choice (appointment viewing) and create or select his package so that his cable subscription does not go higher than what he was paying currently. On certain channels, where he watches programming based on specific events, be it sports or reality shows, he may buy these channels only during that specific period. FTA channels & MSO/LCO based cable channels with better and relatable content will attract higher viewership.”

    But he doesn’t see this affecting the ad spends made by the brands on any of these TV channels. “These changes will impact channel rates but we do not see any negative impact on ad spends,” he says adding, “OTT offerings of the various media networks like Hotstar, SonyLiv, ZEE5, Voot might see an uptake for their selective content.”

    Mobclixs Technologies founder and CEO Dushyant Jani was very positive about the new regime making the entire broadcast framework transparent and fair. He said, “I think 50 per cent of the viewers watch not more than 30 channels but they are sold a bundled pack of 300 channels, which cost roughly between Rs 250 and Rs 450 depending on whether it is a cable connection or DTH service. When consumers select their channels, the ones that don’t meet their expectations get dropped out in the process.”

    Talking about its impact on advertising, Dushyant contended, “The drop in channels will impact the advertising revenue. For advertisers, it is wise to bet on the popular channels and obviously, the lesser popular channels will lose big on advertising revenue. However, the impact on the advertisers due to this will still be much higher as they need to cater to and capitalise on the top-selling channels but may not have enough time to plan their advertising budget.”

    Bijoor Consults Inc founder and brand guru Harish Bijoor feels that the new tariff regime is definitely a ‘jolt’ point for TV as well as the advertising industry. According to him while there are differentiated views on what impact this whole scenario will have on TV ad spends, one thing is certain that OTT is surely going to benefit in the long run.