Hasta La Creative!

In between waiting in line at Carnegie Hall and Radio City Music Hall to see glitzy presentations from major media conglomerates, ad buyers attending TV’s annual upfronts must also slog through more intimate pitches from smaller channels, many of which most consumers have never even watched. Like their bigger brethren, these smaller channels will also show off original programming and tout audiences who they say fill a certain niche or demographic not reached elsewhere on the dial. When buyers leave the room, they usually roll their eyes.

But as audience buying becomes the soup du jour in TV, these smaller channels are angling to serve a new purpose for marketers: finding additional consumers that meet very specific criteria, well beyond traditional targets like age and gender. And a troupe of independent channels is working together to compete for audience-based TV budgets by trying to create some scale and streamline the buying process.

They may face as much skepticism from buyers as before. It’s no secret that so-called long-tail cable channels are a harder sell than their much larger peers. That’s only been amplified as digital video identifies targetable audiences who are perhaps not heavy TV users, a trend that’s not going away, and as skinny bundles threaten niche networks’ very existence.

Continue reading at AdAge.com