MUMBAI: Just over a year old and Rishtey - Viacom18’s free-to-air (FTA) channel in the UK – has taken the bold step of hiking its ad rates. Since Diwali, the channel that airs re-runs of Colors’ shows, a Pakistani series called Humsafar and some amount of original programming, has upped ad rates to double what they were at the beginning of the year, courtesy high demand and increased ratings.
According to BARB ratings, Rishtey, which turned one this September, stood fifth in the Asian channels’ chart with 696000 while Colors came a close sixth with 624000.
Indiacast business head (UK and Europe) Govind Shahi, says, “In the last 12 months, Rishtey has been constantly growing in term of eyeballs and is currently in demand by all brands that want to be seen by an ethnic audience. We are facing a situation where the demand is far outpacing the supply. Given the performance of the channel, which has more than doubled in terms of ratings and the demand supply chain, we thought it was the right time to go for a price hike.”
While this is Rishtey’s first ad rate hike, the new rates will be applicable only to new customers with existing contracts remaining unaffected.
Shahi is confident of the channel remaining on the upper side of the highest ad revenues for the year and says: “We are by far the number one South Asian FTA channel in the UK. Even at an overall level (FTA +Pay), we will end the year among the top two in terms of ad revenues. In fact, just in the last week, it has challenged the market leader in prime time slots a couple of times, which is a testimony of the success.”
When it comes to the shows, Rishtey claims Parichay and Laagi Tujhse Lagan have been high performers in the past two weeks.
According to industry sources, a prime time 30 second slot on Rishtey could go up to ?600 (Rs 61,105) for a mainstream advertiser depending on the ratings, while it could go up to ?100 (Rs 10,165) for an ethnic advertiser. As it is, a 30 second slot on the Bigg Boss finale is seeing heights of ?250 (Rs 25,460) from ethnic advertisers.
With mainstream advertisers including Diagio, Cadbury, BT, Boots and Asda and ethnic ones such as Tilda Rice, Southall Travel, East End foods, Lycamobile, DBS Law and Westmill foods, Shahi exults: “We have the entire gamut- from FMCG to supermarkets to finance/banks to charities.”
