No more negotiations, STAR India introduces fixed price menu

STAR India network is set to release new advertising rates for all its eight channels that will not be negotiable in normal conditions.

Kevin Vaaz, executive vice-president, STAR India, says, “We plan to make space selling on television very transparent.”

The network will release its new rate card, ‘STAR Advantage’, on its website on July 11. Anyone logging on to the STAR India website will get an access to the rate cards.

Vaaz, however, clarifies that it’s not strictly “no negotiations” as such, but this initiative will help in bringing down the range of negotiations. He explains, “Earlier, the rate cards were not taken too seriously as it was a common practice of giving discounts up to 75-80 per cent on the card rates. But now, we will restrict the discounts between 10-15 per cent.”

The new rate card of STAR is slightly above the market operational rate. For instance, as per the previous ad rates for a Kyunki, Kahani or Kasauti, a spot of 30 seconds used to cost around Rs 20 lakh. As per the new package, a similar slot on Kyunki will cost around Rs 8.16 lakh. Similarly on Kahani and Kasauti, it will be Rs 7.14 lakh and Rs 6.63 lakh, respectively.

Vaaz explains the reason why the new card rates are slightly higher than the market operational rate. “As per NRS 2005, the total base of C&S population has grown. This means advertisers can now reach out to a larger base of consumers. For instance, a show that delivered a TVR of 14 two years ago reached out to 7.6 million people. Now, with the same TVR rating, the show reaches out to around 10.9 million people.”

In addition, STAR India has centralised its ad sales team and divided it into two divisions – account team and channel team. The channel team will sell all the eight channels of the network now. Earlier, there were eight different teams for the channels of the bouquet.

Sameer Nair, chief operating officer, STAR India, says, “This will help us service our clients better. For instance, if a client wants to place an ad at a particular time across all channels on the STAR network, our team will make it a possibility now.”

The account team, on the other hand, has been formed to service the channel’s top 50 clients better. The team will function in the same way that an account or a client servicing department of an advertising agency does. As many as 27 people will be members of this account team, implying that each person will not service more than two clients.

Vaaz says, “The same ratio is also applicable for the channel teams, where one person will not handle more than eight clients.”

Apart from these developments, the ad sales team will also increase its representation across different markets in India. At present, STAR India’s ad sales department has executives only in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Bangalore. As per Vaaz, the team will shortly have executives in other smaller cities or sub-metros such as Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Chandigarh and Lucknow.

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