Television Advertising

How to Approach Cable and Broadcast Television Advertising

Differentiating between broadcast and cable television is an important part of making your on-air ad campaigns more effective.

Broadcast television typically covers large regions and equally large audiences where viewers will only be exposed to your messaging at specific times. Broadcast is also more isolated to major network channels such as ABC and NBC, whereas cable offers a broader selection of networks to advertise on such as ESPN and AMC.

Cable television allows advertising to be directed in a more focused manner. While placement can still be made for similar broad regions as broadcast offers, cable allows you to purchase ad placement by more specific zones for a targeted audience.

"Typically, decisions are based on budget," Melanie Querry, President and Founder of Beyond Spots & Dots, said. "And it's based on the audience you want to reach. A news viewer on broadcast is very different from a viewer watching a more niche network on cable."

Both platforms offer more opportunity for advertisers to target audiences by demographic. Primetime and content fluctuate across times and days by different demographic sets more likely to engage with it. When media buys are placed for air time, it's important to have a targeted audience in mind so that dollars are spent at effective times and your ad can have a message that communicates most effectively with the audience watching at that time.

"You may want to target a broad audience and benefit from utilizing both platforms for your advertising," Querry said. "But it's still important that if you're going to be advertising across both of these spaces, that you're doing so with different messaging that better speaks to those individual audiences."