Today they are more like a Roman audience rooting for blood as the Gladiators (read the broadcasting companies) slug it out in front of them to keep them entertained and interested. And if they don’t like what they are seeing, they merely walk out of your stadium and go to someone else’s.
In this kind of atmosphere, every individual entity is stretched to the limit. The advertiser who finds that his previous levels of budgets are just not adequate enough… the broadcaster who has to fight for every last viewer as well as every last advertising rupee… and the agency which has to adapt to these changing times as well as manage their shrinking margins! There are obviously repercussions of this that we have been seeing in the past few months. Whether its clients changing agencies much more frequently or agencies shaking out their unprofitable businesses or broadcasters getting stricter and savvier to counter agencies and advertisers, fact is, its all happening out there! In this situation while there are some solutions that these entities have to figure out for themselves, some others are possible through systems and software.

One such software is the TV Optimiser. It can turn out to be a tool that each of these entities can put to great use. For instance, following are the different aspects on which Optimisers can help:-
However, in this country optimisers have been fairly under-utilized. It is only in recent days that the scene has been opening up to using these. Some of the most well known TV optimisers Worldwide are “SuperMidas” and “X*PERT”.

So what exactly is an Optimiser? Basic definition
The basic optimiser definition can be broken down into these key elements :
1. An Optimiser is a software algorithm which optimises the
reach of a TV schedule, based on a given GRP or budget
2. A media planner has to specify – the channels and the day
parts in which he could place his ads and enter the number
of GRPs or the budget or both
3. The Optimiser then designs the best schedule that gives
maximum reach at given cost levels (or minimum cost at
given reach levels).
4. The Optimisers could optimise the reach at any given
exposure level (frequency level)

Types of Optimisers
Different optimisers from a varied mix of agencies, have logic, look and feel as well as the final outputs, which might be somewhat different from each other. Even if we look at the steps involved while using an optimiser, we get to understand their different approaches. If Level 0 indicates start of plan making and 100 signifies completion of plan and schedules then, there are Spot Optimisers, which need to be taken from Level 0 to Level 25 by the planner and then go from 25 to 100 on their own (shown in chart 1). Then there are Daypart Optimisers, which take the planner from 25 to 75 and then let the planner navigate from 75 to 100 on his own in a way that reflects his buying realities.
Its been observed that Daypart Optimisers are better suited for Indian conditions. While Spot Optimisers look easier and would appeal more to planners they actually can throw at you fairly unrealistic schedules (for instance, spots like 3rd break, 7th spot out of 10), which in today’s scenario are completely impractical from a buying or scheduling angle. So a planner working on a spot optimiser could spend the same time in attuning the spot optimiser schedule to reality as converting a daypart optimiser scheduler into a realistic implementation plan.

Optimisers can help reduce media costs
The planner can specify either the reach target and ask for the cheapest cost plan, OR specify the budget/ GRPs and ask for the reach to be maximized. Both these options can also work at a frequency level again specified by the planner. But before we understand how optimisers work, its critical to understand and accept the following:-
In a complex scenario like ours with multiple channels, linguistic markets, metros and small towns, fragmentation, terrestrial and satellite homes, it is virtually impossible to arrive at a ‘best plan’ manually. The sheer volume of spots and the permutations-combinations possible ensures that manual plan building is an impossible task. Hence, a plan that is being made in that fashion will always be sub-optimal. What that means in simple terms is that plans being made today will have some spots that are not adding any reach. Expenditure on such spots is actually wasteful. This is evident in the manual plan versus optimiser plan shown in chart 1 below where it takes more money in the manual plan to reach a 60% reach level.