Buying Cable TV Spots: The Pros and Cons
Target Your Audience with these Tips
Deciding which channel and what time of the day to place your TV ads can be quite a chess game. What is the best move? Do you pay hundreds of dollars for one, 30-second spot during a primetime show or do you pay a few bucks per spot and schedule it multiple times across several channels? (For the purposes of this blog, we are talking about local TV placement, not scheduling nationally.)
Cable television has become more competitive against broadcast TV for viewership. Cable stations now produce their own original series, popular reality shows and live sporting events and concerts. Plus, television still dominates the American family’s choice for entertainment with recent surveys indicating 99% of U.S. households have at least one television and the average American spends over four hours a day watching TV.
There are some basic pros and cons of advertising on cable TV.
Advantages of buying Cable TV:
- Choose specific programming and stations for your target your audience
- Original programming makes it more competitive versus broadcast TV
- Cable viewers tend to have higher disposable household incomes
- Prices per spot are more affordable than broadcast TV
- Cable viewers tend to watch more TV
Disadvantages of buying Cable TV:
- Lower-rated shows
- Broadcast television programming still dominates (especially local news)
- Smaller audience per channel
- Smaller audiences and segmented channels require a larger ad buy to reach more viewers
The best plan for buying cable TV is to select which channels and times match your targeted customer. If you are selling sporting equipment, don’t spend money on the cooking channel, focus on ESPN. If you own a tanning salon, buy airtime on the Fashion Network and skip SyFy. If your product is sold to professional women, don’t schedule your ads at 2:00 in the afternoon, target evening hours when they are home.
It’s great to see your spot on TV – that’s an ego boost for any business owner - but being a smart scheduler of your ads is also being a smart manager of your marketing money. The challenge is - which stations, programs and times during the day and night are best for your product or service. The solution is - think about who your audience is and then create a schedule around those demographics.
