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

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

Brings “Digital Ka Power TV Pe” via hyper-targeting of ads

Sharad Alwe

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.