More than 55 percent of Kathmanduites are in no-light zone during the prime time for television viewership -- 7-8 a.m. and 8-10 p.m. -- on any given day during the dry season. [break]
This means advertisers´ investment on television commercials (TVCs) decreases on these days as they do not want to invest much on TVCs when half of the people are not watching television.
Thanks to prolonged power cuts, some advertisers have already started curtailing their investment on TVCs and switching to other forms of advertisements.
"Our small clients, who do not have much budget for advertising, totally stop their TVCs, whereas bigger clients decrease their investment on TVC by 30 to 40 percent," Nabin Lal Joshi, director of media operation at Thompson Nepal, said, adding, "Only about 20 to 30 percent of investment in TVC is diverted to other mediums of advertising, mostly print."
Sachin Gupta, owner of Shree Balaji Diamond Jeweler, echoed Joshi. He said his firm runs TVCs for only six months a year because of load shedding.
As advertisers shift their focus due to prolonged power cuts, advertising agencies, on the whole, are losing business. TVC is one of the most costly forms of advertisements. A 30-second TVC spot in prime time costs anywhere between Rs 50,000 to Rs 250,000 per spot, according to the advertisers.
"In an average, our clients are reducing investment on TVCs by 50 to 75 percent because of load shedding," said Reena Balani, media executive at Outreach Advertising.
To compensate for the loss, Joshi said TV channels in the past used to give bonus of up to 30 to 40 percent in the form of free spot, which can be used at a later date, to the advertisers.
Load-shedding also causes reduction in the performance of advertising agencies and increases their operations costs as they have to depend on alternative energy sources like generations, which are not always reliable.
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