Massive breakthrough: Top news channels earn huge revenue from LIVE feeds on Counting Day

For the first time in the history of election coverage, top news channels encashed in a big way the massive viewership on their live feeds on digital on Sunday.

On the counting day for the Assembly elections in four states, the top three news channels – Aaj Tak, ABP News and India TV – sold L-bands on the live feeds on Sunday.

Aaj Tak took the lead with 36 advertisers who bought over 1,000 L-bands on the channel on the back of its dominance in live concurrency during big events.

The channel recorded a peak of 8 lakh concurrent viewers across all its live feeds running on YouTube at 9.13 am and maintained an average of over 5 lakh concurrent viewers during most parts of the day.

Most of the advertisers were also spotted on Aaj Tak’s sister channel India Today TV.

Almost all of the categories, that advertise on the news genre, were present on Aaj Tak and a few of them were: Honda Motors, Catch Masale, Hindware, MP Birla Cements, Duraguard Cements, MDH, Goldie Masale, Dixy Scott, Vimal, Nirma.

On the other hand, ABP News and India TV, the other two traditional leaders on counting day, sold between 200-270 L-bands each on their live streams.

Big breakthrough

This development is being seen as an industry-defining moment for the news genre which has witnessed huge traction on their digital feeds over the past few years with concurrent viewership running in lakhs during breaking news events.

Counting Day has always been an important day for top news channels, each earning between Rs 1.5 crore to Rs 3 crore from advertising on television.

Traditionally, Aaj Tak has been pocketing single-day revenue between Rs 2.5 crore to Rs 3 crore on counting day. ABP News and India TV have been earning in the range of Rs 1.5 crore to Rs 2 crore.

This time around, marketers tapped the huge traction the top news channels were witnessing on their digital feeds.

In order to facilitate the advertisers with the data, India Today Group has created a dashboard which shows live consumption data to the advertisers.

The dashboard was displayed during India Today’s live coverage of election results on Sunday by India Today Group Managing Editor Rahul Kanwal.

India Today Group has successfully installed the dashboard with its clients and media agencies.

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