Pay TV works hard to attract young viewers Jason Harty
The youth audience is a key demographic for pay television—not only does it contain some of the most avid and brand-loyal consumers of media, it also represents a future subscriber base for pay television carriers and advertisers as its members get older and establish their own place in society and the world in general.
However, being a media-smart audience means there is wariness towards hard-sell messages, and as a result, agencies and advertisers are constantly looking for new ways to tap into what that target audience is currently watching.
There is little doubt of the size of the youth audience watching pay television.
According to chief executive officer of pay TV advertising sales company MCN, Leigh Monti, pay TV commands a 28% audience share among 18–24 year-olds, and it is also a quality audience.
“These people spend in excess of 50% of their television-watching time watching pay TV, so on those numbers alone it is over and above what is possible on FTA (free-to-air television),” Monti says.
“And when you look at the demographic and psychographic of that consumer—they are more into technology, they index higher, they are willing to pay more for goods, and they buy over the Internet—it gets even better.”
Monti says the uncluttered environment of pay television also make it easy to get messages across to a young audience despite the fact they are used to being bombarded by promotional offers from all different angles.
“We have less than half the commercial content of the free-to-airs so brand recall is enormous and gives advertisers an opportunity to own a part of the environment—there is more access to a pure audience.”
The segmentation and niche focus of pay TV also allows advertisers to drill down into a particular youth demographic, he adds.
“Channels are pretty straight-forward at younger age groups—there is Nickelodeon and Fox Kids—but then there are ways to reach different youth areas depending on what sector you want—music, sports or through the more general channels such as TV1 and Fox 8.”
Music channels are one of the most direct ways for advertisers to reach a strong and diverse youth market. These channels directly cater to a younger audience through the music that they already like and want to hear.
MTV, on Optus Television, is one of the most successful global youth brands, specifically tailored to the “musical tastes, lifestyles and sensibilities of 12–34 year-olds”, according to MTV’s marketing material.
Channel manager Helen Ryan says that about 80% of the channel’s audience fits into the 16–24 year-old demographic.
“It all boils down to programming and giving [the audience] access to the artists they want to see,” Ryan says.
“At the moment that might be Britney Spears, Eminem or Westlife. We really have to keep focused on the music as far as genres go.”
The majority of programs are either locally-produced or programmed, and include MTV’s Most Wanted, Australian Top 30 and Veruschka’s Closet.
Advertisers can be involved in MTV through spots and sponsorships, which largely take the form of endorsements or product placement, according to Ryan.
“We had Lily, an animated virtual VJ, who was sponsored by Ericsson.
“People could ring up and speak to her,” Ryan says.
The channel has also done product placement for Red Bull, where it may be placed on set or held for the camera by interview talent on location.
Live programming is unlikely to play a signficant part in MTV’s plans for the immediate future, except for its regular Friday program Most Wanted, Ryan says.
“Live is very expensive in this climate and we want to make the best television we can for the least cost.
“We don’t have 10 cameras outside broadcast vans covering concerts because we know from our research that people like to see video clips rather than live broadcasts.
However, for another music brand, Channel V, carried on Foxtel and Austar, live programming is one way the channel has managed to establish itself as a solid youth brand in a relatively short space of time. The channel has successfully targeted the youth demographic with a blend of pop, rock and modern music.
Marketing manager Lisa Spunner says the high awareness of the V brand is largely due to getting out into the marketplace, branding concerts and creating youth-oriented events.
“Getting out there has worked to our advantage because we’ve seen peaks in our registrations and audience involvement when we do it,” says Spunner.
“It is a very targeted demographic for us, so it is not so much about the ratings as about the environment.
“A lot of advertisers haveadvertised because it is a good brand to be associated with.”
The channel sponsored the Big Day Out and other music festivals this year and toured the Channel V Music Bus around 40 locations in both urban and rural areas attracting up to 4,500 kids at a time.
Sponsorship offers are now being sought for the Music Bus winter tour to the ski fields and north Queensland.
Channel V has also been very active in the area of interacting with its audience, most recently through Rover, a program led by an animated dog and sponsored by Coca-Cola.
Audience members register their top five favourite artists and then are sent an SMS or email when that artist is due to appear on the channel.
Spunner says the focus is on one-to-one communications with audience members.
“We have about 50,000 SMS registrants and about 150,000 registered users online.
“The request show receives about 20,000 online requests per month and around 1,000 phone calls a day.
“The Web site is important—chat rooms go off—and we’ve just started SMS chat, which is like a chat room but can be done by phone.”
For its involvement, Coke gets promo spots across the channel and is part of the SMS message, once cleared by the audience member.
The secondary database created is also a valuable tool.
“For record companies it is great to be able to promote to a database of interested kids,” Spunner says.
The 24-hour comedy programming of The Comedy Channel makes hitting the 16–39 year-old male-skewed audience a straightforward task.
However, being on the Foxtel platform where subscribers must pay extra can limit audience numbers, according to sales and marketing manager Christian Murphy. (The Foxtel channel is part of the basic service on Austar).
“The main focus for us is to advertise in environments that are 100% subscriber saturated. It would be very rare for us to run ads in Ralph or FHM magazines—although they would be perfect for us—because the wastage is too great and we don’t have the resources to do that,” Murphy says.
Potential advertisers apply a similar yardstick to advertising on the channel, with many finding the cost per thousand figures unattractive.
Instead, Murphy has sought advertisers who are willing to integrate their advertising into the very specific look and feel of the channel.
One way The Comedy Channel is doing this is by producing special series of ads for particular clients, the most recent brand names being Soothers cough lozenges and Tooheys beer.
“Our approach, basiccally, is that if a client is prepared to put a certain amount of money into the channel, then we will [incorporate the ad package] as part of their spend,” Murphy says.
“They get the experience of the people who build the environment, and the audience don’t recognise they are ads until they see the pack shot at the end,” he says.
For a television channel such as TV1, the timeless appeal of high-quality shows on the channel help attract and retain the youth demographic, according to chief executive officer Peter Hudson.
“It’s a very successful mix of good writing, production and performance that makes these shows appealing.”
Hudson says the on-air look of TV1 is another attraction to the channel’s core audience of 16 –35 year olds.
“The on-air look is very contemporary and the promos themselves become an extension of the entertainment.”
Packaged blocks of programming such as Comedy With Bite, Sci Fi and On the Range, featuring western programs, have also proved successful in reaching young audiences, Hudson says.
While movie networks have more difficulty targeting specific demographics, The Movie Network marketing manager Kylie Pascoe says the Movie One channel, which carries blockbuster titles on Optus, is more likely to bring in a younger audience.
“When we do any external marketing we tend to give it an 18–24 year-old skew because it gives us a bit of an edge,” she says.
Pascoe says the Friday Family Theatre is another way the network plans to reach younger viewing audiences.
The package offers three films—one shown at 4.30pm for a young audience, one at 6.30pm to attract a teen audience, and one at 8.30pm that can be viewed by the whole family.
“Our research shows it offers parents a safety zone where they can watch with their kids or let their kids watch.”
Fox 8 is another channel that has been very successful in attracting a solid youth audience, largely through strength of programs such as The Simpsons, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, The Jerry Springer Show and WWF Smackdown.
The channel has also commissioned the locally-produced drama series Crash Palace, firmly targeted at a younger youth market.
Other special-event programming initiatives such as marathons have served Fox 8 well, with events such as Slayerfest and A Simpsons Christmas increasing both average audience and overall shares especially in the 18–39 year-old demographic.
PAY TV AT WORK: V, a perfect energy fix for Frucor
Channel V, the youth-oriented music channel carried on Foxtel and Austar, has developed a fully-integrated partnership with Frucor for the V Energy Drink, to help promote sales of the drink over the summer period.
A new on-air look for the popular Sunday night program The V Hitlist incorporates elements from V Energy Drink’s current campaign, which was created by the Channel V graphics team.
These elements included cows and minis, which were worked into the existing opening titles and supers, as well as posted on the Channel V Web site.
Each show starts and finishes with a billboard segment and at various stages during the show, the animated cow appears with information about a song or an artist.
The channel also runs approximately five songs a week, screened about seven times a day, including another billboard identifier for V Energy Drink.
Channel V marketing manager Lisa Spunner says while Frucorsponsored the channel’s band competition last year, it wanted the campaign to be much more integrated this time.
“Some clients might be a bit worried about playing with their corporate identity but when you do well-integrated stuff like that it works very well.
“We had kids winning stuff on the show thanking the sponsor,” Spunner says.
Frucor brand marketing manager Eugene Culloty says integrating the product into the fabric of the programming added “another ‘credible layer’ into our communication mix”.
The promotion, which started in December, will wrap up on March 18.
Channel V, the youth-oriented music channel carried on Foxtel and Austar, has developed a fully-integrated partnership with Frucor for the V Energy Drink, to help promote sales of the drink over the summer period.
A new on-air look for the popular Sunday night program The V Hitlist incorporates elements from V Energy Drink’s current campaign, which was created by the Channel V graphics team.
These elements included cows and minis, which were worked into the existing opening titles and supers, as well as posted on the Channel V Web site.
Each show starts and finishes with a billboard segment and at various stages during the show, the animated cow appears with information about a song or an artist.
The channel also runs approximately five songs a week, screened about seven times a day, including another billboard identifier for V Energy Drink.
Channel V marketing manager Lisa Spunner says while Frucorsponsored the channel’s band competition last year, it wanted the campaign to be much more integrated this time.
“Some clients might be a bit worried about playing with their corporate identity but when you do well-integrated stuff like that it works very well.
“We had kids winning stuff on the show thanking the sponsor,” Spunner says.
Frucor brand marketing manager Eugene Culloty says integrating the product into the fabric of the programming added “another ‘credible layer’ into our communication mix”.
The promotion, which started in December, will wrap up on March 18.
