06 Jan Cable Cutting: The Way of the Future?

There are thousands of television channels available at the push of a button. 5 years ago, not having access to all of these was not only unheard of, but was genuinely annoying. If ESPN 8 was a channel, we needed it immediately – not to watch necessarily, but just to have.

Today, we realize that although there are countless viewing options, we pretty much watch the same 15 things in rotation. We just don’t need the thousands of other channels we were so excited to have in 2010. We mostly watch everything online anyway.

Introduce Sling TV, DISH’s new alternative to standard cable packages. Sling TV offers customers a $20 a month option for access to a limited grouping of channels. It’s the first online, streamable TV experience available without a cable experience and it’s bringing forth a whole new way to connect to users.

From an advertising perspective, Sling TV presents an interesting opportunity. Advertising on television in a major market (New York or Los Angeles) costs anywhere from $5,000 – $10,000 a month per ad. That’s a hefty price tag for something that doesn’t guarantee direct ROI. So, in lieu of TV ads, many advertisers choose to bring their ad budgets online, hoping for a greater concentration of impressions for a fraction of the costs. However, hitting an audience like the one that will be purchasing Sling TV costs major dollars. Hulu in-stream ads are on the cheaper end and still cost $30 CPM. Yikes.

Advertising through something as new and unexplored as Sling TV is high-risk high reward. Essentially, an advertiser gets two ad placements for the price of one: TV and online. Those who get in early may see immediate returns, as cable cutting seems to be the way of the future.