Against a backdrop of almost three quarter of a million jobs being lost during the pandemic, it’s not surprising that TV advertising has seen its spending plummet by £500 million from March to June this year. With a decent national TV campaign requiring an annual minimum budget of around £1 million, recent events have only helped to accelerate the departure from mainstream media to the low-cost attractions of digital.

Whilst TV channels can try and make themselves leaner, as illustrated by Channel 4 moving 300 jobs to Leeds and creating new commissioning hubs in Bristol and Glasgow, it’s still the equivalent to sticking their finger in the dam.

Consequently, there are currently some great schemes for attracting new advertisers and it’s a good time for SMEs, for whom TV may have previously been too costly, to consider experimenting for the first time.

ITV’s Backing Business scheme is based around three pillars – marketing support, consumer insight and incentives and rewards. These aim to support businesses of all sizes to stay informed via insight, trends and discussions and help them navigate through the crisis and plan for the future This is underpinned by subsidised creative production services and enhanced booking and deferment arrangements.

Channel 4 meanwhile has a £3 million Greenhouse Fund, whereby SMEs who have never advertised on TV before can have match-funded commercial airtime across Channel 4’s portfolio. In order to qualify, brands must commit to their campaigns being exclusive to Channel 4 for six months.

In the current economic climate, you may argue that people are buying fewer products and services and therefore it’s not the best time to be advertising. On the flip side however, you are getting to put your brand in the consumer eye at a time when there is far less competition for their attention. And people are watching more TV – Ofcom reported that the public service broadcasters hit a peak of 59% of broadcast TV viewing in March this year, primarily driven by a demand for trusted news programmes. Even with lockdown easing, broadcast TV viewing was still 11% higher in August than the same time last year and who knows what the coming months hold, in terms of a return back to more stringent lockdown measures.

If you would be interested in exploring making the step change to TV advertising, we’d be pleased to chat to you about the opportunities currently available – as Warren Buffet said “Price is what you pay, value is what you get. Whether you are talking about stocks or socks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.”