Opportunities for brands to co-fund TV shows are expanding, as rising production costs opens up access to new channels and timeslots for potential collaboration.

Broadcasters in India for example traditionally preferred developing formats themselves, while bringing brands on board later in the process, limiting the scope of advertiser involvement.

More recently however, timeslots are easier to come by, sometimes in primetime for middle-tier channels if the content is strong enough, with programming costs outpacing ad revenues as broadcasters strive to win over audiences with bigger tentpole shows.

“They realize this can’t go on forever,” says CVL Srinivas, Asia-Pacific managing director of LiquidThread, a branded entertainment unit aligned with media agency Starcom MediaVest. “Somewhere, sanity needs to set in.”

Srinivas adds: “As long as they get their basic costs covered and a minor incremental, they’re pretty happy giving up a timeslot for production. The economics of the business will dictate this. We see this in other markets as well. Wherever things get overheated, the channels realize this and play the game a bit differently.”

From hands-off to hands-on

Attitudes are also changing in more mature markets such as Australia, where brand-funded programming is starting to move out of less popular dayparts, where the networks tended to adopt a relatively hands-off approach, to more premium parts of the schedule where broadcasters are more interested in collaboration.

The success in recent years of MasterChef, which invited simpler product placement opportunities, has helped reassure broadcasters that brand involvement and ratings success can go hand-in-hand, says Justin Ricketts, managing director for the Australian arm of Ensemble, a specialist content unit within IPG Mediabrands.

Now brands, with a fresh perspective on consumer trends and stories to tell, are starting to see co-production opportunities that go beyond product placement.

“For the first time in five years of trying to get these discussions happening, brands and programmers and broadcasters are open to that dialog,” Ricketts says.

“It’s a natural thing that’s going to happen, because you’ve got brands that need to talk to people, because people aren’t watching advertising or switch off too easily, and you’ve got broadcasters and networks with more channels to fill and less money. It’s a common sense play.”

Local support

Localizing formats also helps Australian networks wean themselves off costly imports from Europe and the US while ramping up the ratio of domestic content in return.

These ventures remain costly undertakings for advertisers, who sometimes seek to maximize the impact of their investment by activating it across other outlets, particularly for properties with a cultural resonance such as reality programs or talent shows.

New co-funding models between brands and broadcasters are in flux, sometimes involving airtime commitments across the channel as a whole as well as ad buys and sponsorships around a particular property.

However it is TV, with the reach big brands are after, that remains the core medium of choice, even in markets where online penetration is relatively high.

“We’re close to a tipping point where digital and other platforms will come in,” Ricketts says. “But at the moment brands want to create or be integrated into content that sits on television.”