Prime Time is where all the money is spent. Right ? According to some estimates close to 80% of the advertising money is spent during the Prime Time and it would be fair to say that at least 70% of that money is spent on the top 3 channels. As an advertiser if you target the female audience, which normally is the case with a large number of advertisers, then the afternoon band offers great value.

The afternoon time band would have high viewer ship from 3 categories: house wifes, teaching women and kids. If we look at the TVR numbers, the afternoon time band delivers on an average 1/3rd of the TRPs delivered during the prime time band. In terms of reach though the afternoon band covers almost 90% of the market covered during prime time. The reach is good since India has a lower proportion of working women especially if we look at the Hindi Speaking markets.

Audience composition
If one were to look at the chart above the age wise audience composition remains more or less the same across all channels during both time bands. But what is worth note is that Sony has a higher proportion of 15-24 yr females glued on to the channel as compared with the other two.

When one looks at the Sec wise composition of audience surprisingly in case of Sony there is an increase in Sec CDE audience during Prime Time. Lesser number women in Sec CDE watch Sony during afternoons as compared with prime time. This is against what one would expect. One would expect an increase in Sec A women audience during Prime Time since they are the ones who are more likely to work and can catch the channels only in the evening. Star and Zee see an expected rise in Sec A women viewer ship during prime time. What is also worth noting here is that almost 50% of the audience in the case of Star and Sony come from Sec CDE as compared with Zee, which has only 40%. So is the quality of women audience on Zee better ? The numbers suggest so. Given the fact that afternoon viewing generates just 1/3rd of prime time TRPs one would expect a similar pattern in the advertising rates. But according to sources rates during afternoon vary between 1/8th to 1/10th of the prime time rates. Advertisers surely are getting their money's worth during afternoon and going by the ad duration consumed they surely are there in hordes. Given the attractive nature of the prime time band one would expect lesser amount of advertising during afternoons but a look at the chart below reveals that the duration during afternoon is as much as prime time. Apart from the attractive rate vis a vis the GRPs another reason for this could be the bonus spots which are played during afternoon. In fact advertisers like P&G, which target women have been using this band even more than the prime time band to shore up GRPs.