TELEVISION AIRTIME

Buying television airtime for your business is not out of reach. Although there are many factors to consider, the results of television advertising can be powerful and profitable. Whether you choose to dive into buying airtime yourself, or hiring a professional to do it for you. Most traditional advertising agencies will tell you that television is the most powerful marketing vehicle for reaching large numbers of people.
There are two types of stations that will sell you airtime: Broadcast stations and Cable channels. Both broadcast stations and cable channels appear on your local cable system, but you have to buy airtime on the broadcast stations from that station’s local rep. In general, the broadcast stations programs have larger audiences, but the cable channels will sell you airtime for the entire market or for individual cable systems (just one area of the market).
Television rate cards are set up with pricing for buying a :30 second commercial in a particular television program. They will also sell you “rotators”. These are commercials that will fall somewhere in a specified period of time (like 6am to 9am) on a particular day. If they have a lot of inventory left, the price can go down. If they have very little inventory left in the program the price goes up. Remember that TV airtime is “perishable”. Once the program airs, the inventory is gone and cannot be sold.
The size of a program’s audience is surveyed by companies like MEDIA LOGIC. They give the program a rating. The rating is based on their estimates of the size of the audience from their survey. For example, if you are looking at how many Adults 25 to 54 are watching a particular show, a one rating means that the show has one percent of the total population of Adults 25 to 54. (it’s one percent of the TOTAL population of Adults 25 to 54, NOT one percent of the people watching television. The percentage of people watching this show versus all of the people watching television is called “share”. Share is not used much in pricing airtime.
For small businesses with a limited ad budget, it’s especially important to choose the right time at the right price at which to air their ad. It’s not just about how often the ad is shown — it’s about getting as many eyeballs on the ad as possible each time it airs.