Direct-to-home (DTH) players are betting big on advertising as a new revenue stream to increase profits. With Tata Sky piloting an interactive advertising model, Dish TV is also looking at introducing a revenue-sharing model with channels for selling an airtime to advertisers on its platform.
“Ads will become a crucial revenue stream. We are working on a model where a channel can give us clean feed and we will sell the airtime ourselves on a revenue sharing basis,” said Dish TV managing director Jawahar Goel.
“Dish TV will let its consumers respond to these ads with a click of a button. They will be able to get additional information on their television screens immediately,” he said.
Tata Sky is running pilot test on interactive advertising for some time now. According to a Tata Sky insider, initially the DTH players were following a model where an advertiser could pay a flat fee. Tata Sky, in turn, will send text messages to all its customers on their television sets and the consumers could press a button to check out the details.
All the DTH players have started charging carriage fees or placement fees. “We charge Rs 3.5 crore a year per channel, while Tata Sky and DD Direct Plus take Rs 4 crore and Rs 60 lakh respectively”, Goel said. “For DTH, the distributors charge ad rates separately and that is very nominal as the connectivity of DTH is less than cable.”
Tata Sky has taken initiatives on the newer avenues of advertising on its platform with advertisers.
Goel, however, says the CAS (Conditional Access System) areas are losing cable consumers gradually and installing DTH. “Look, consumers spend over Rs 16,000 crore on cable. About Rs 1800 crore goes to broadcasters and Rs 1400 is spent as carriage fees. So, the rest goes to the cable operators. Now they are facing a tough time,” Goel said.