How Television Ad Time Is Sold In India
Television ad time in India is sold in seconds, priced against ratings and negotiated mostly in large annual deals. The system looks simple on a rate card and works very differently in practice, which explains a good deal about who still pays what on Indian television.
The basic unit of sale is ten seconds.
How television ad time is measured and priced
Broadcasters sell commercial time, counted in seconds and usually quoted per ten seconds. The price depends on the channel, the programme, the time band and the ratings that programme delivers, which in India come from BARC, the industry's television measurement body.
Prime time on a leading general entertainment channel costs many times what a late night slot on a niche channel does, and a live cricket match sits in a category of its own.
Annual deals and spot buys
Most of the money moves in annual or long-term deals, negotiated between broadcasters and the largest advertisers or their media agencies. Committed volume buys a better effective rate, priority placement and sometimes bonus inventory.
Smaller brands buy spots nearer to air, at prices closer to the card, with less say over where they appear. That gap is one reason the biggest packaged goods companies have stayed on television while many challengers moved their money to digital.
A rate card is where the negotiation begins, not where it ends.
What the buyer is really paying for
Ratings delivered against a target audience, more than minutes on air. Plans are built to reach a chosen group a set number of times, and the negotiation is about the cost of each ratings point as much as the cost of each second.
There is also a regulatory cap on how many minutes of advertising a channel may carry in an hour, which has long been contested. Where it holds, breaks stay shorter and the best slots become scarcer, which keeps the price of prime time high.