Traditionally there has been a Television service provider who buys content and airs that over its network. In return the television channels sell ad slots during the programmes and get their revenues. Over the years, advertising has become an essential element for the companies. In India, they spent crores (Million) of rupees on advertisements per annum. With the increase in television viewership, the proportion of advertising budget for this medium also increased and companies preferred to spend for ads over television rather print or radio.

If we look at the advertising scenario of India, there are few heavy advertisers like Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Airtel, Hero Honda, etc. They buy spots in all the major shows where they see the maximum viewership. But, it does not give them a competitive edge. Their competitors can also place an ad during the same period. Or the channel can and does show advertisements of competing products.

Even though the people see their products, they also see the competitor product – which is good as well as bad. I personally feel, an advertiser must sponsor a show that is not also sponsored by its competitor. It is because of several things like brand, positioning, image, etc. that it could easily integrate with the contents of a particular show. If the competitor also places an ad with the same show, these things become industry specific rather than a brand specific.

The key in advertising is what one is advertising on – in case of television it is the content. So for a long term competitive advertising, advertisers must own the content rights. For instance, with respect to India, a product for female must own the content rights of say any K series programme so that only its ads are shown during that show. This can only be done through one strategy and that is if the advertisers launch their own channels. Rather than spending through others, they could buy the content for their channels. This would not only give an assured channel for advertising their products only but it would also save on the spending as many intermediaries are eliminated.

This way we could see channels owned by P&G, Unilever, Tata, etc. and they could just promote their products through these channels. All the content they would buy, would be theirs and they would have the exclusive rights of showing it. This is surely going to make advertising competitive and not only advertisements but the content of the channel would play an important role. For instance, Kingfisher is a premium brand, so having a channel that would have content pertaining to elite would be describing it.