In IPL 2023, brands are experimenting between digital and television broadcasts of the popular cricket league. More first-time advertisers have entered the fray due to wider and free digital accessibility, interactive viewing and commentary in many more regional languages. JioCinema, the official streaming partner of IPL, has added 26 big ticket sponsors for the tournament. This is the highest number of sponsors any sporting event that is streaming on digital has received. The platform is expected to add more advertisers as viewership goes northward. Furthermore, the digital viewership surge is fuelling the rise in Connected TV in India.
IPL’s official streamer JioCinema set a new record for being the most installed app in a single day with over 2.5 crore downloads on the opening day of IPL. The first IPL match between Gujarat Titans and Chennai Super Kings garnered over six crore unique viewers and a peak concurrency of over 1.6 crore on JioCinema, becoming one of the most-watched events on the platform. The total match views on Day 1 on JioCinema touched 50 crore. In IPL 2023, JioCinema aims to control approximately 70 percent of the total advertising expenditure.
The official broadcaster Disney Star also signed ad deals with as many as 13 brands, including many traditional advertisers such as Asian Paints, charged by Thums Up, Airtel, Cadbury Dairy Milk, Mountain Dew, Parle Biscuits, Kamala Pasand, Rupay, Britannia, Jindal Panther, and LIC, according to the network.
This year’s broadcast features expert panels and commentary spanning 12 languages including English, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, Punjabi and Bhojpuri. Snippets of Punjabi and Bhojpuri commentary went viral too. Viewers and IPL players took to social media to praise the diversity in commentary. Media executives think this is a welcome change and will increase the reach of the league across the country, giving advertisers more opportunities to target regional audiences.
Increase in association value
Media planners indicate that smaller brands are experimenting between TV and digital a lot more this year. The outlays may be smaller but marketers are seeing more value in associating with IPL. There are also several first-time advertisers.
For instance, legacy condom brand Kamasutra is leveraging IPL advertising for the first time through the “Make Love Last Longer” campaign on JioCinema. The move on being present in the league through digital platforms is an outcome of how consumers’ media consumption is evolving. (Last week, Godrej Consumer Products Limited (GCPL) acquired the assets of Raymond Consumer Care, Park Avenue and Kamasutra, in the Deodorants and Condoms categories, in a full cash buy out.)
Pooja Sahgal, chief marketing officer, Raymond Consumer Care Ltd (RCCL) notes that the brand’s media mix ratio has evolved from being television heavy (70-80 percent spends) to now digital taking 55 percent of the overall spends.
“Television advertising has restrictions for condom advertising (on GEC, brands can only advertise after 10 pm) but then we have OTT and YouTube and even IPL on JioCinema. Through that we could really reach the consumers any time,” she says.
Kamasutra’s digital strategy is video heavy where they leverage different formats of video on social media platforms. “Half of our digital media ad budget goes into video format then we have social media marketing (mostly Instagram as well as Facebook) and the remaining goes into influencer marketing (leveraging sexperts),” she explains. A big trend for Sahgal is meme marketing. Adding a touch of humour when talking about sex makes it more acceptable and comfortable for Indian audiences, it seems.
Advertising agencies observe that brands are looking at micro-advertising formats and going forward with digital slowly taking the centre stage; a 30-seconder will no longer be the brand’s master film. It will move to 15-seconders. Today, marketers are looking at IPL as a part of regular media plans. This is helping new brands to come on board even if their spending is not high.