If Halmark's Fast Break will work, NBC Universal will surely use it for its other TV stations

NBC Universal‘s Hallmark, one of the niched channels you might have noticed in your cable network’s offer, will introduce a new ad break format with only one advertiser. What does that mean? 40 seconds of advertising for each program (TV series or TV show or whatever). The first 10 seconds will run in the beggining of the show as the program’s sponsor ad and other 30 seconds as a TV ad in the commercial break.

What does this mean for the advertiser?

The good part: the advertiser won’t have to worry about competitors’ ad right after his. And it won’t have to worry about people forgetting his message because of some other commercials that might be better than his, even though the others are not on his niche. That means one brand exposure, better chances for his products to sell better. If Pepsi pays for a Fast Break and the viewer will leave the program because he’s thirsty, chances are he’ll most likely buy Pepsi instead of Coke.

What does this mean for the TV station?

Well, here’s where we should ask what happens. First of all, the ad break will most definetly be shorter. That means less advertising quantity. That might mean less money. Selling time for ten ads means more money than selling for only one. But Fast Break might mean bigger costs for the advertiser.

And I believe that introducting Fast Break on Hallmark is just an experiment for NBC. If sales will grow for the advertiser, or at least the advertiser will have a better known brand based on this kind of deal, then Fast Break will definetly cost as much as seven ads “in the old days”. Or at least as much as five.

It’s a crisis measure

I believe NBC would rather have one advertiser to pay than an uncertain number of ten advertisers. It’s some sort of “Let me be sure I sell the ad space and get some money” rather than “We love to give our advertisers the best offers“. We live in times of financial crisis, advertising budgets grow negative for the TV market, so unless you are really big and everybody needs you, you have to get a minimum revenue.

Because of the crisis, not only the budgets grow negative, but the number of advertisers just as well. So it’s a sure thing that if in the good times, TV stations had – let’s say – ten ads in a commercial break, they might only have 3 for tomorrow. So why give away 90 seconds of your ad time for 30 bucks (saying, for example, that one ad costs the advertiser 10 bucks) when you can sell 40 seconds with 70 dollars?

What you should follow

You should pay attention to what is going to happen from now on. I’m not sure Fast Break will be really productive, but I’m sure it’s going to be interesting for the advertisers. And I’m really sure that if this works, there’s going to be a Fast Break on each and every NBC channel.
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