Cable Television Advertising is an Essential Advertising Investment

Gone are the days when consumers patiently listened to every radio jingle or watched every moment of their television commercial break in order to resume their regularly scheduled programming. The iPhone generation now has dozens of different mediums available to provide them with exactly what content they want, whenever they want. With the Internet connecting homes to online forms of media that can be viewed without advertisements, it only takes a second for viewers to stop watching brand messages and direct their attention elsewhere. Advertisers now face the growing challenge of consumer multitasking and often struggle with how to retain the attention of their target audiences.

For a brand message to be most effective, it needs to be represented across media that is effective at reaching a particular audience target. Cable advertising represents an advertising vehicle, which meets specific, niche markets. In this article, we will demonstrate how cable television advertising provides the most effective vehicle for your investment through effective messaging, niche targeting and cost efficiency.

Effective Messaging
Today's target audience is demanding. They want content relevant to specific interests, and they want it on their terms. If the medium they are using fails to provide, they will simply divert their attention elsewhere - effectively sabotaging any advertising message attempting to reach them. Cable advertising provides the greatest number of impressions for your media dollar because it is the most effective media vehicle available. The recent Nielsen-funded Video Consumer Mapping Study showed that the average consumer spends five hours and nine minutes of his or her day paying attention to television—meaning it's not just playing in the background.

But how is cable different from broadcast? While broadcast offers a large and easily accessible audience, it suffers from decreased viewership, and doesn't allow for the specific geographic targeting that cable can provide—at a lower cost than broadcast.

Niche Targeting
The Video Consumer Mapping study also showed that multitasking during the commercial breaks during those five hours and nine minutes of attentive television viewership is on the rise. However, the Cable Television Advertising Bureau has shown that consumers feel ads on cable are more relevant to their interests—and are therefore more likely to pay attention.

This is because cable is targeted to a wide variety of niche markets. Consumers watching cable can have an entire channel of programming—including commercials—relevant to a specific interest at any time of day. This means cable-aired messages can cut right through the oversaturation of radio and the clutter of the Internet and deliver your advertising message right to the interested consumer.

Cost Efficiency
Audiences are decreasing their usage of major advertising mediums. Each has their own difficulties with delivering and maintaining their desired audience. Thus, resulting in an increase in cost per impression. Cable provides the most effective impressions for your advertising dollar. Because cable allows for effective niche and geographic targeting, it provides the most powerful value for those who want to advertise only to a specific target audience or specific regional market. Cable advertising targets individual consumer interests, offering advertising investors a better way to avoid wasteful spending due to mass advertising.

Newspapers, radio, outdoor and direct mail marketing are all effective in unique ways. Depending on your goals, your target audience and your targeted geographic area, any combination of traditional media may be suitable for maximum effective coverage of your message. But one thing is clear: cable television advertising achieves maximum results with specific targets for the dollars invested. Insight Media's Power of Cable website offers more in-depth, comparative descriptions of how cable measures up to your other media options and how cable can work for you.