Ad breaks betray News18 India, Aaj Tak remains numero uno

News18 India placed a front page advertisement in some newspapers including The Economic Times proclaiming itself as India’s numero uno Hindi news channel and declaring that Aaj Tak, the most popular Hindi news channel of India was not anywhere closer to it, based on some data source of which range from BARC  to Twitter handle DataBeing to Social blade, all of which don’t receive official data from YouTube.

Moreover, News18 India claimed in its print ad that it was 11% ahead of its closest rival Aaj Tak in terms of TV viewership. The latest ad war, however, highlights a key metric for decision-making.

Channel ratings have their inherent limitations. They do not guarantee uniform levels of viewership for every ad aired on the channel. Viewers may tune in for a specific show or content and then tune out during commercials, resulting in variation in ad viewership.

It is an established fact that Aaj Tak attracts more advertisers since it provides them value for money as it has a lower drop in viewership during ad breaks.

The latest BARC rating placed News18 India at the second spot behind Aaj Tak in Ad Break ratings.

News18 India was at No. 2 with 177.8 AMA ‘000s, as opposed to Aaj Tak’s commanding 203.0 AMA ‘000 (HSM, 15+ All, Wk 26-31’23, Alldays, 06:00-24:00 Hrs), which places it on the top.

During an ad break, the audience remains glued to Aaj Tak for various reasons including long-standing trust, especially during breaking news events.

Ad spot ratings are the heartbeat of every campaign. Simply put, it measures a channel's knack for retaining viewers during ad airtime and scheduling ads when advertisements are seen and not by cheating partners through ad scheduling in weak bands. Typically, viewers tend to flip channels when ads take over.

There is a catch in the claims of News18 India. It might have generated a little more viewership which is from the free viewership category. In comparison, Aaj Tak’s maximum viewership comes from the Pay category. In the realm of pay networks, viewer engagement time is higher compared to free networks, and within this landscape, Aaj Tak stands out as the leader by commanding a substantially high viewership. This difference is significant as it proves that Aaj Tak’s viewers have far greater spending capacity, which is what matters to the advertisers. 

Conversely, News18 India deploys landing pages on cable headends to boost statistics, thereby inflating figures within the pay market. By excluding the light viewers, and focusing on an audience that remains engaged for a continuous duration of 5 minutes or more, Aaj Tak's ranking experiences enhancement to No1. This places it at the top position among Hindi news channels according to the most recent reported week (Week 32, 2023).

Lately, certain channels have caught attention by utilizing a clever tactic. They stack their commercial inventories in low viewership slots while keeping high viewership slots ad-free. This strategy may artificially inflate the channel's overall ratings while delivering subpar results for advertisers' ad spots, even for RODP (Run of Day Part) spots. So it’s a trade-off between the channel’s vanity and the advertiser’s value.

This practice poses a challenge for advertisers who may innocuously rely on channel ratings to assess a platform's viability. It emphasises the importance of not just considering channel ratings in isolation but also closely monitoring the performance of ad spots within the chosen channel.

As the Hindi news channel viewership war hots up due to News18 India’s anxiety to beat Aaj Tak, it is abundantly clear that it is in a race with others to finish the second best while continuing to be far from Aaj Tak on value delivered to advertisers. Some contend that News18 also does a disservice to customers by forcing a channel that may not be their natural choice.

(This article is brought to you in association with Aaj Tak.)

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