StepFront

GEO, ARY, AAJ, DAWN NEWS, TV ONE, CNBC PAKISAN, INDUST TV, HUM TV and more… today we have no less than 60 private TV channels in Pakistan. I am no expert on the television industry however coming from a marketing background and an enthusiast of TV programming; I do understand the business proposition and working dynamics of TV channels. Out of interest, I was recently going through the Pakistan Television Industry overview and stats, published by Aurora Magazine (Dawn Media Group) and was pleasantly amazed by the pace at which electronic media especially the TV channels and FM radio channels have sprung up in Pakistan. I was also amazed to find out that the television industry alone is a 10 billion rupees industry and now more than 60 channels are competing to get the largest share of the 10 billion rupees pie. These led to me think and compare the television industry in Pakistan to that of the search engine market globally which is roughly 30 billion dollars where no less than 100 minor and 5 major players are competing for their share. The similarity between the search engine market and the TV channel market is that of the advertising revenue. Both businesses almost solely rely on searchers / viewers to whom advertisers are willing to communicate.

Looking at the search market industry, we see a player, Google, who came slightly later but made its way to be number one and today enjoys more than 60% of the market share globally. Despite being a university project, it was in soon in competition with the big boys like Yahoo and Microsoft who had strong market dominance with their respective search portals.

What made Google a success? Can we use those strategies and apply to the television industry in Pakistan? I think so! I have listed some of the factors that made google what it is today. TV channels can try and translate these ideas to their version of business and I am sure it will make complete sense. Don’t be everything to everyone. Finding a niche in an already saturated market is very important. When Yahoo and MSN were trying to be everything to everyone by offering content from anything in between horoscopes to email accounts, google initially only came with a plain yet powerful search engine. Care About your Viewers not Advertisers From the early days Google accepted no banner advertising, paid inclusion in search results, pop-up, or pop-under ads etcetera while its counter parts Yahoo and MSN served them generously on the search results page. This resulted in improved user experience and hence more and more searchers switched to the clean and simple layout where ads were only presented in text based units and were clearly marked as sponsored links. Make Advertising relevant and helpful Google went to the extent of stopping advertisers from writing false advertising copy in their ads. For example, if you are not offering a free sample, you can write it in your ad Rewards for Relevant Advertisers Since google ad system works a pay per click model, every advertiser has to pay for a click. To achieve higher positions in the ad placements, you can expect to pay more, in a standard bidding model. Google however changed this and started charging less money from ads which were clicked more and improved their rankings, hence providing users with more and more relevant advertising.

Advertiser Website Quality?
Moving away from its own domain, google made sure that websites of advertisers too did not show any pop-up and pop-under ads.

More Ideas and Suggestions? Please send them through the comments section.

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