IPL 2023: JioCinema aims at making advertisers understand where TV and digital stand individually

With an aim to expand the advertiser base during the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023, JioCinema has planned exclusive offerings for brands and advertisers this season including 'Media Planner' and 'Reporting Dashboard'.

Viacom18, the digital rights holder of the IPL, opened the JioCinema CricStream Showcase giving a glimpse of what consumers and advertisers will experience for the upcoming season. The exhibition, spread across multiple zones, gave brands and industry leaders a sneak peek into the innovations on offer on JioCinema for both advertisers and consumers.

Brands You Love

JioCinema will offer a dedicated zone for brands and advertisers that will demonstrate a feature called 'Brands You Love', which will give advertisers additional exposure even after their ad is served. A viewer can double-tap a particular ad during a live IPL match and save it to view later. This feature also allows the viewer to maybe directly install the app or visit the brand's website.

Even if the viewer, who has saved an ad, is coming the next day and not viewing any match, he/she can still view that ad on the JioCinema app. So, with this feature one is not just restricted to viewing a particular ad just for 10 to seconds in between the match, a Viacom18 spokesperson said.

Moving further, this feature will be enhanced so that, for example, if a viewer saves the video and later revisits it, he or she can also get certain discounts on that particular brand's service or product or similar options for consumers.

According to another Viacom18 executive, ads are now seen as pre-rolls and mid-rolls and you are not getting into the creative quality. The moment you have seen it, it becomes history but JioCinema is trying to figure out how it stays alive. Everything that has been seen on the consumer journey on content, eventually JioCinema would like to replicate it on ads as well. 

Another spokesperson stated that JioCinema does not want to build these features only for the top 300 or 400 advertisers.

"We are imagining having every advertiser from the largest to the local space," the spokesperson added.

Ad Assets 

In this dedicated zone, brands will also be able to see the ad assets available to leverage on JioCinema during the IPL. The ad assets include masthead, branded trays, frame ads, featured cards, fence ads, video ads and squeeze-ups. 

Media Planner

Finally, the JioCinema Media Planner, a gamification experience, will give advertisers the choice to pick their budget and will immediately showcase the benefits of picking digital. 

According to a Viacom18 spokesperson, this is not an exact planner but it lists out different scenarios to make the advertisers understand where TV and digital stand individually. 

This lists five options, for the advertisers, to choose from the advertiser profiles including national e-commerce brands, FMCG deodorant brands, tyre manufacturers, fintech apps and small retailers. Moving forward, it will give the option to choose a budget of up to Rs 50 crore.

Next, it will ask the advertiser to choose the targeting medium from linear TV and digital, including video and display. In the latter option, the advertisers will get options like geographic, affluence, demographic and cross tab, to choose from, unlike linear TV which does not provide these options. So, the advertiser has limited opportunities under linear TV. 

Lastly, it shows the advertiser’s actual read on both the mediums and it also shows that there is more wastage on TV. So, it helps advertisers make decisions when targeting comes into the picture, the spokesperson added. 

Reporting Dashboard

This feature, which is still a work in progress, allows individual advertisers to get an entire report of their campaigns, impressions, clicks and CTR throughout different matches held on different dates. Brands can compare their various reports through this dashboard feature.

Apart from this, JioCinema will be available in 10,000 colleges and it will also reach out to 20,000 restaurants, cafes and hotels, according to a Viacom18 spokesperson. It is planning to organise play and win contests in colleges and have over 100 fan parks ahead of the IPL 2023, which is set to begin on March 31, 2023.

JioCinema has planned to introduce these experiences to its viewers, brands and advertisers keeping in mind that content consumption in India is seeing a tectonic shift towards digital platforms as consumers are increasingly embracing the convenience and improved viewing experience on offer.

It is not just a shift in consumer behaviour but for brands, digital is fast becoming a key channel for customer acquisition, engagement, conversion, and retention.

This year’s battle between Star Sports and JioCinema to lure advertisers will set the stage for brands to take calls for the coming years.

JioCinema’s ad rates range between Rs 200-300 CPM (cost per thousand impressions). The ad rate for Connected TV is Rs 6 lakh per 10 seconds. Star Sport is asking for Rs 16-17 lakh for 10-second ads.

Coming to JioCinema’s offerings for its consumers, it has introduced various features including a chat option, multi-angle viewing experience, hype mode, 360-degree immersive button option on the app and Play Along feature.

Apart from these features, the media giant is also scheduled to launch various devices to elevate the IPL viewing experience for its consumers. These devices include Jio Media Cable, Jio Dive-360 degree VR device and Jio Glass.

Moreover, IPL will be available in 12 different languages this year, unlike before. The 12-language commentary will tentatively include English, Hindi, Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Tamil, Malayalam, and Marathi, along with other languages.

With this, IPL streaming coverage will be available to a larger audience, unlike before, claimed the Viacom18 spokesperson.

Last but not the least, JioCinema is set to offer a 4K viewing experience for IPL providing much better clarity and detail that is four times the resolution of HD.

Jio is banking on this feature as according to Viacom18 spokespersons, viewing on a TV with a 4K viewing experience has never happened before in the history of live sports events in India.

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