Viacom18 announced the launch of multiple innovations for advertisers around the upcoming IPL season, including unique offerings that are a first for the Indian broadcasting ecosystem. After digital ad revenues surpassed that of linear TV’s last IPL, reinforcing digital as advertisers’ preferred platform, JioCinema has now expanded the breadth of its offerings to aid advertisers irrespective of their marketing goals or the scale of the business. Each proposition being unveiled this year has been carefully curated to enhance the brand’s proposition and increase the potential of scale and targeting possibilities they can extract on digital.
Every proposition from JioCinema this season has been developed to address a specific use case, such as creating better brand impact, sharper brand integration, friction-free lead generation, and drive better engagement through innovation. Here is a snapshot of JioCinema’s offerings for IPL 2024 with their exciting use cases for advertisers:
Impact
JioCinema has launched its newest high-impact feature, Brand Spotlight that latches on the IPL’s ability to aggregate India in an unrivalled way, especially on opening day. It elevates brand visibility by providing an industry-first opportunity during the first game for five select brands to unveil their IPL campaigns in the opening moments of the first match. This offering will facilitate a marketer’s moment without the conventional boundaries of a mass media campaign. Having a priority spot to launch their engaging IPL opening day blitz will help these five brands play on the audience minds that are on the lookout for the most fun ad campaigns of the season. Brands will be able to even tell the story behind their IPL campaigns through the JioCinema app.
In addition to Brand Spotlight, JioCinema’s Masthead will also support video from this season, making it the go-to destination for brands to launch new products, announce sales, unveil new creatives, and more. Another impact property entering the scene this year is Scorecard Branding, which will allow advertisers to build salience among an audience set displaying sticky behaviour by allowing, the advertiser to own a scorecard, stats, and match analytics.
Innovation
After piloting more than a dozen feeds last IPL, now JioCinema is offering advertisers a chance to own an entire feed. Custom Feeds can be tailored to a brand’s brief to offer them a way to drive the deepest visibility, storytelling, and consideration possible. JioCinema’s innovation for this season has also stretched itself to include Vertical Highlights, packaging match highlights in a shorter vertical orientation akin to trending social media short-form videos.
Engagement
India’s largest live fan engagement opportunity, Jeeto Dhan Dhana Dhan, saw over 50 million participants last season, with over a billion game plays. This season, JioCinema is opening up the high engagement avenue for brands to partner with them offering salience, special brand message integration, deeper engagements on rewards, and an opportunity to gamify their communication at scale.
Ads for Business
An entire set from JioCinema’s advertiser proposition this season is designed to aid seamless lead generation for advertisers without intruding on the fan’s viewing experience. One such feature is Click to WhatsApp which takes the viewer to a brand’s WhatsApp business chat through a click, while the ad plays on the screen. By overhauling the process of redirecting consumers, JioCinema will help brands talk to their audience one to one on WhatsApp while they watch the IPL in PIP mode. On the other hand, Auto-fill Ads is devised to simplify consumer data collection by removing several layers of friction in this process. These hard-working midrolls reflect already captured data, leaving the user with just one field to fill, no matter what the product, service, or experience they are signing up for.
Integration
One leg of JioCinema’s proposition also focuses on better integration through which brands will now be able to create their own stories and campaigns to reach a wider audience by accessing Cricket’s biggest social media influencer pool, comprising 100+ cricketing legends/influencers and celebs for their social media activations.
“The launch of our array of offerings around IPL 2024 showcase the degree to which customisations are possible in digital advertising along with bringing great value to the table,” said Viacom18 Sports Head of Revenue, Anup Govindan. “For the consumer, we continue removing barriers to accessibility, affordability, and language, while for the advertiser, we continue innovating, democratising the process, and setting new industry benchmarks. Brand Spotlight, in particular, will become an anchor offering in the years to come for its compelling proposition.”
After clocking a record-breaking reach of 450 million during IPL 2023, JioCinema is targeting over 650 million throughout the 2024 season, thus making the launch of JioCinema’s plethora of ad innovations a high stakes game for advertisers. With the advent of soaring CTV sales and Ultra HD 4K devices commanding a 35% market share within the CTV category, JioCinema will offer advertisers to target the premium universe on IPL for the very first time with the innovative formats available this season.
The JioPhone and JioBharat 4G enabled feature phones from Reliance have democratized internet access, connecting blue-collar workers, farmers, and artisans across urban & rural India. With IPL streaming on these devices, an incremental 35-40 Mn users are expected to be enthralled in their regional language of choice, making the tournament bigger than ever before.