AND TV Advertising in India: Rates, Strategy, and Media Buying for Brand Campaigns in 2025–2026

Most brands writing their first Hindi GEC media plan immediately reach for Star Plus or Colors TV — which is understandable, but which also means they are consistently overpaying for reach they could be buying at a fraction of the cost on AND TV. The channel, which sits within the Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited (ZEEL) portfolio, has quietly built one of the most loyal mass-market audiences in the Hindi belt; and what surprises most media planners we speak to is how efficiently that audience can be accessed when the buying is done right.

What Is AND TV and Why Should Brands Advertise on It?

AND TV — styled as &TV — was launched by Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited in 2015, and it was positioned from the beginning as a general entertainment channel targeting the aspirational Hindi-speaking middle class. The channel's programming philosophy has always leaned toward family drama, mythological storytelling, and reality formats that resonate deeply with audiences in Tier-II cities and semi-urban markets across the Hindi belt — which is precisely what makes it so interesting from a media buying perspective. Most brands we advise tend to underestimate how much purchase intent lives in that audience segment; the truth is, this is exactly the demographic that FMCG companies, fintech startups, and D2C brands have been trying to crack for years.

What a lot of people miss is that AND TV is not trying to compete with Star Plus for the premium urban viewer — it is doing something far more strategically focused, which is owning the aspirational middle-market viewer in cities like Kanpur, Patna, Indore, and Bhopal, where television remains the dominant screen and primetime viewership figures are genuinely impressive. BARC India data has consistently shown AND TV performing solidly within the Hindi speaking markets (HSM) universe, particularly among female viewers in the SEC B and SEC C classifications; and for brands whose real growth is coming from these markets rather than from metro consumers, this positioning is actually a significant advantage. The channel's shows — which have included popular titles across mythological and family drama genres — command strong appointment viewing habits, which translates directly into the kind of attentive ad exposure that brand recall studies consistently reward.

At SmartAds, we always tell our clients that the question is never simply which channel has the highest TRP — the question is which channel delivers your specific audience at the most efficient cost per rating point. AND TV, in our experience, consistently punches above its weight on that metric, particularly for brands targeting women aged 25 to 45 in non-metro markets. The channel's position within the ZEEL ecosystem also means that advertising on AND TV often opens the door to bundled packages that extend reach across Zee TV, ZEE5, and other ZEEL properties — which is a planning advantage that pure-play competitors simply cannot offer.

How Much Does Advertising on AND TV Cost in India?

This is the question every brand manager asks first, and frankly speaking, the honest answer is that AND TV advertising rates vary considerably depending on the time slot, the programme, the duration of the spot, and the volume of FCT (free commercial time) being purchased. That said, we can give you meaningful benchmarks. A 10-second spot during non-primetime on AND TV works out to somewhere in the ballpark of ₹15,000 to ₹35,000, which is substantially more accessible than the equivalent slot on Star Plus or Colors TV where the same duration can cost three to five times as much depending on the programme. These are indicative figures; actual rates are negotiated and will shift based on market conditions, festive season demand, and inventory availability.

Primetime is a different conversation entirely. A 10-second spot during AND TV's primetime window — which typically runs from around 8 PM to 11 PM — can range from roughly ₹40,000 to ₹1.2 lakh per 10 seconds depending on the specific programme's TRP performance and the time of year. During the festive season advertising period, particularly around Diwali and Navratri, ad inventory on AND TV tightens significantly and rates can spike by 30 to 50 percent above the base card rate; which is why we always advise clients who have confirmed budgets to book their festive season slots at least six to eight weeks in advance. The cost per spot for a 30-second ad is typically calculated as three times the 10-second rate, though volume discounts and package negotiations can bring this down meaningfully when you are committing to a sustained campaign rather than a one-off burst.

One thing that genuinely surprises first-time AND TV advertisers is how the GRP-based buying model works in practice. Rather than buying individual spots in isolation, most serious campaigns are structured around a target GRP delivery — which means you are essentially buying a guaranteed audience exposure rather than a fixed number of spots. The cost per GRP on AND TV, which works out to roughly ₹8,000 to ₹18,000 depending on the target demographic and daypart, is considerably more efficient than what you would pay on the top-three Hindi GEC channels; and for mid-market brands working with ad spend in the ₹25 lakh to ₹2 crore range for a campaign flight, this efficiency difference can be the deciding factor in whether the campaign delivers measurable brand awareness lift or simply burns through budget.

What Ad Formats Are Available on AND TV?

Television advertising on AND TV is considerably more varied than most brands realise when they first approach the medium. The most familiar format is the standard TVC — the 10-second, 20-second, or 30-second ad spot that runs during commercial breaks — and this remains the workhorse of most AND TV ad campaigns; but limiting yourself to spots alone means leaving significant value on the table. Show sponsorship, which involves associating your brand with a specific programme through opening and closing billboards, mid-programme mentions, and branded lower-thirds, delivers a qualitatively different kind of brand integration that pure spot buying simply cannot replicate.

Brand integration — sometimes called in-programme integration or IPI — is where things get genuinely interesting for categories that benefit from contextual association. An FMCG brand integrating into a family drama on AND TV, for instance, can have its product woven into the narrative itself; which creates a form of brand recall that is far more durable than a 10-second spot sandwiched between competitors. Product placement within AND TV's programming is handled through the ZEEL content team and requires advance planning, but the results we have seen for clients who have invested in this format have been consistently strong. A personal care brand we worked with ran a combination of spots and in-programme product placement across a popular AND TV family drama over a 12-week period; the brand recall scores measured at the end of that campaign were roughly 40 percent higher than what the same brand had achieved on a comparable spot-only campaign the previous year.

Beyond these formats, AND TV also offers roadblocks — where a single advertiser buys all the commercial time in a specific break, eliminating competitor clutter entirely — and aston bands, which are branded overlays that appear at the bottom of the screen during programming. Telecast certificates, which are issued for each spot that airs and serve as proof of delivery, are standard practice and should always be requested as part of your campaign documentation. The TV commercial production itself is the advertiser's responsibility; AND TV and ZEEL have specific technical guidelines around aspect ratio, audio levels, and content standards that must be met before a TVC is cleared for broadcast, and we always walk our clients through these requirements to avoid last-minute rejections.

How Does AND TV Compare to Star Plus, Colors, and Zee TV for Advertisers?

To be fair, this comparison requires some nuance, because the channels are not really competing for the same advertiser in every situation. Star Plus and Colors TV command the highest ad rates in the Hindi GEC space — a 10-second primetime spot on Star Plus during a flagship show can cost anywhere from ₹3 lakh to ₹8 lakh or more, which puts it firmly out of reach for most mid-market brands without substantial television budgets. Zee TV sits in the middle tier, with primetime rates that are somewhat lower than Star Plus but still significantly above AND TV; and Sony Entertainment Television occupies a broadly similar position to Zee TV, with a slightly more urban-skewed audience profile.

AND TV's real competitive advantage is cost efficiency for the Hindi belt audience, which is a point that TAM AdEx data has reinforced consistently — the channel delivers strong ad volumes in the FMCG, education, and healthcare categories, which tells you something about the purchasing profile of its viewers. What we tell our clients is that if your brand's growth story is being written in Tier-II cities and the Hindi heartland rather than in Mumbai and Delhi, then paying a premium for Star Plus reach that skews heavily urban is actually a strategic misallocation of ad spend. The television rating point economics on AND TV simply work better for that geography; and the viewership demographics — which lean toward women in the 25-to-44 age bracket, SEC B and C households, and markets outside the top six metros — align well with the actual purchase decision-makers for most mass-market consumer categories.

That said, AND TV is not the right choice for every campaign, and we are honest about that with our clients. A luxury brand, a premium fintech product, or a B2B technology company would likely find better audience alignment on other channels or in digital advertising India. The media planning discipline here is matching the channel's audience profile to your brand's actual target consumer — which sounds obvious but is surprisingly often ignored when brands simply chase the highest-TRP channel without interrogating whether that audience is actually their buyer. Our experience shows that a well-planned AND TV ad campaign with the right creative and the right slot selection can outperform a larger-budget campaign on a higher-rated channel simply because the audience fit is tighter.

How Do TRP Ratings Affect AND TV Advertising Rates?

TRP — the television rating point — is the currency that drives almost every pricing conversation in TV advertising India, and understanding how it works specifically for AND TV is essential before you commit budget. BARC India measures viewership using a panel of households equipped with BAR-O-Meters, which track what is being watched in real time; the resulting data, published weekly, determines the TRP of every programme on every channel. For AND TV, weekly TRP performance varies by programme and season — the channel's top-performing shows have historically delivered TRPs in the range of 0.8 to 2.2 in the Hindi speaking markets universe, which is meaningfully lower than the top shows on Star Plus or Colors TV but which also directly explains the more accessible advertising rates.

The relationship between TRP and ad rates is not perfectly linear, which is something that catches a lot of first-time TV buyers off guard. When a show's TRP rises, the demand for ad inventory in that show increases; which drives rates up, sometimes quite sharply. Conversely, when TRP dips — as can happen with any show mid-run — the channel may offer inventory at negotiated rates to maintain advertiser confidence. This creates genuine opportunities for smart media buyers who are watching BARC data closely; a show that has just broken into strong TRP territory but whose rate card has not yet been revised upward represents excellent value, and we have exploited this window for clients on multiple occasions. One edtech brand we worked with secured primetime slots on an AND TV show that had just seen a significant TRP jump — the rates were still at pre-spike levels because the revision had not yet been applied — and the resulting GRP delivery was nearly 25 percent above what the budget would normally have bought.

Gross Rating Points (GRP), which represent the sum of all TRPs delivered across a campaign's spots, are the standard metric for evaluating whether a TV ad campaign has delivered its planned audience exposure. For AND TV ad campaigns, we typically plan for a minimum GRP delivery of 200 to 400 for a four-week brand awareness campaign targeting women in the Hindi belt — which, at AND TV's cost per GRP, works out to a budget that most mid-market brands can manage without requiring the kind of eight-figure TV spends that the top GEC channels demand. The BARC data also allows us to do post-campaign analysis comparing planned versus delivered GRPs, which is an essential part of the ROI measurement process and which we always include in our campaign reporting.

What Is the Best Time Slot to Advertise on AND TV?

Primetime on AND TV runs roughly from 8 PM to 11 PM, and this is where the channel concentrates its highest-rated programming — family dramas, mythological serials, and reality formats that draw the largest share of its audience. The 9 PM to 10 PM window is typically the strongest hour in terms of viewership concentration; which means that a primetime slot in this window will deliver the highest reach per spot but also commands the highest cost per spot. For brands with brand awareness as the primary objective and sufficient budget to absorb primetime rates, this window is the obvious choice.

Non-primetime, however, deserves far more strategic consideration than most brands give it. The morning band — roughly 7 AM to 9 AM — and the afternoon band from 1 PM to 4 PM on AND TV deliver a disproportionately high concentration of homemaker viewers, which is precisely the target audience for FMCG advertising, household products, and personal care categories. The cost per spot in these bands is significantly lower than primetime — sometimes by a factor of three to five — which means that a brand targeting homemakers can actually achieve higher frequency within the same budget by shifting weight toward non-primetime; and frequency, as any experienced media planner will tell you, is often more important than raw reach for driving purchase behaviour. We have seen this approach work extremely well for a mid-sized packaged foods brand we planned for — by concentrating their AND TV ad campaign in the afternoon band rather than primetime, they achieved nearly double the frequency against their core audience at the same total ad spend.

The festive season advertising window — Navratri through Diwali, which typically falls between September and November — is the most competitive period for ad inventory on AND TV and across all Hindi GEC channels. During this period, the channel's programming schedule often includes special content and increased viewership, which drives both TRP performance and advertiser demand simultaneously. IPL advertising, while primarily a sports property, also affects the broader TV advertising India market during its season by pulling significant ad spend away from GEC channels — which paradoxically can create buying opportunities on AND TV during the IPL months for brands willing to maintain their television presence when competitors are distracted by cricket.

Can You Integrate AND TV Advertising with Digital and OTT Campaigns?

This is where AND TV advertising becomes genuinely powerful for brands that are thinking beyond a single-channel strategy, and frankly speaking, it is the integration opportunity that most agencies underutilise. The most direct path is through the ZEEL ecosystem itself — AND TV content is available on ZEE5, ZEEL's OTT platform, which means that a brand running a TVC on AND TV can extend that same creative to ZEE5's digital inventory, reaching viewers who are watching the same content on connected TV or mobile. This kind of cross-platform campaign creates what we call a surround-sound effect for the brand; the consumer encounters the message on linear television in the evening and then again on ZEE5 the next morning during their commute, which compounds brand recall in a way that either channel alone cannot achieve.

CTV advertising — which refers to advertising delivered through internet-connected television sets, including smart TVs running ZEE5 or other streaming apps — is growing rapidly in India, and the audience overlap with AND TV's linear viewers is substantial. Connected TV households in India, which are estimated to number in the tens of millions and growing, represent a premium advertising environment where addressable advertising becomes possible; which means you can target specific audience segments within the AND TV/ZEE5 universe rather than buying undifferentiated reach. INVIDI Technologies and similar addressable TV infrastructure providers are enabling this capability within the Indian DTH ecosystem, including through Tata Play, which carries AND TV as part of its channel lineup. The ability to run addressable advertising against AND TV's audience profile — targeting, say, women aged 28 to 40 in Tier-II cities who have shown interest in personal care products — represents a genuinely significant evolution from traditional GEC buying.

On top of that, digital integration with AND TV advertising can extend to programmatic advertising on social and display platforms, where the same audience that watches AND TV can be retargeted with digital creatives after they have been exposed to the TVC. This cross-platform campaign approach, which combines the mass reach of AND TV with the precision targeting of digital advertising India, is something we have built into several client campaigns with measurable results. A D2C brand we worked with ran a 30-second ad on AND TV during primetime alongside a programmatic retargeting campaign on YouTube and Meta targeting users in the same geographic markets — the combined campaign delivered a brand search uplift of roughly 35 percent compared to the brand's previous television-only campaign, which is a number that makes the digital integration investment look very sensible indeed.

Which Brands and Categories Advertise Most on AND TV?

FMCG advertising dominates AND TV's ad inventory, which is consistent with the channel's audience profile and with the broader pattern of TV advertising India. TAM AdEx data shows that categories including personal care, household products, packaged foods, and beverages collectively account for the largest share of ad volume on Hindi GEC channels; and AND TV, with its strong penetration among homemakers and SEC B households, is a natural fit for these categories. Hindustan Unilever (HUL) and other large FMCG advertisers are consistently present on AND TV's ad inventory, which is itself a signal worth noting — these companies have sophisticated media planning operations and they are not buying AND TV out of sentiment.

Beyond FMCG, the channel has seen growing presence from categories including healthcare and pharmaceuticals, education (particularly edtech advertising from brands targeting aspirational middle-class families), financial services, and increasingly D2C brands that have discovered television as a tool for building brand credibility in markets where digital advertising India alone does not fully penetrate. The edtech advertising category, which grew dramatically during and after the pandemic period, found AND TV's audience — parents of school-age children in Tier-II cities — to be highly responsive; and several edtech brands used AND TV ad campaigns as a cost-efficient way to build brand awareness in markets where their digital spend was delivering diminishing returns. We have also seen increasing interest from fintech and insurance brands, which are recognising that the trust-building power of television brand credibility is particularly valuable in categories where consumers are making significant financial decisions.

Regional advertising India is another dimension worth considering here. While AND TV is a national Hindi GEC channel with pan-India reach, its audience concentration in specific states — Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Jharkhand — means that brands with particular strength in these markets can think of AND TV advertising as a form of targeted regional reach within the national buy. This is a nuance that pure national planners sometimes miss; the channel's geographic skew is actually a feature, not a limitation, for brands whose distribution and sales infrastructure is concentrated in the Hindi belt.

How to Plan and Buy Ad Spots on AND TV: A Step-by-Step Guide

The booking process for advertising on AND TV runs through two primary channels — direct through the ZEEL sales team, or through an accredited media buying agency. Direct buying is technically possible for large advertisers, but in practice, the negotiating leverage, the access to package deals, and the ability to compare AND TV rates against competing inventory across other channels all favour the agency route; which is why most experienced brand managers work through agencies for their television media buying. The ZEEL sales team handles AND TV ad inventory as part of the broader ZEEL portfolio, which means that a conversation about AND TV advertising will often naturally expand into a discussion of bundled packages across Zee TV, ZEE5, and other ZEEL properties.

The planning process begins with defining the campaign objective — brand awareness, product launch, festive season push, or sustained presence — and then working backward to determine the required GRP delivery, the target audience, and the daypart mix. Once these parameters are set, the agency requests an indicative rate card from ZEEL, which will show cost per 10-second spot across programmes and time bands; this is then used to build a media plan that optimises the GRP delivery against the available budget. The media plan is reviewed and revised, often through two or three rounds of negotiation, before a final plan is confirmed and the booking is placed. Telecast certificates are issued after each spot airs, and these are reconciled against the booked plan at the end of the campaign flight to confirm delivery.

One practical point that saves a lot of pain later: always confirm the technical specifications for your TVC before production begins. AND TV, as a ZEEL property, follows standard broadcast technical guidelines — but the content approval process through the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (MIB) and internal ZEEL compliance review can add lead time that brands sometimes do not account for. We generally advise clients to have their final TVC ready at least three weeks before the campaign start date to allow for clearances, which sounds conservative but has saved several of our clients from scrambling at the last minute. At SmartAds, our media planning team manages this entire process end-to-end for clients, which means the brand manager is not chasing telecast certificates or navigating compliance paperwork — they are focused on the campaign strategy while we handle the mechanics.

How to Measure ROI from AND TV Advertising Campaigns

ROI measurement for AND TV advertising — and for TV advertising India more broadly — has historically been the weakest link in the television media planning chain, and to be honest, this is an area where the industry still has room to improve. The most immediate metric is GRP delivery versus plan, which confirms whether the campaign reached its intended audience exposure target; but GRP delivery alone does not tell you whether the campaign moved the needle on brand awareness, purchase intent, or actual sales. For that, you need a more structured measurement framework, and the good news is that the tools available to do this have improved significantly.

Brand lift studies, which measure the change in brand awareness and purchase intent among exposed versus unexposed audiences, are the gold standard for evaluating AND TV ad campaign effectiveness. These studies can be commissioned through research agencies and, when structured properly, can isolate the television contribution from other marketing activity happening simultaneously. On top of that, sales correlation analysis — comparing sales velocity in markets with strong AND TV advertising presence against markets where the channel has lower penetration — can provide a rough but useful proxy for revenue impact. A retail brand we worked with used this methodology after a 10-week AND TV campaign focused on the Hindi belt markets; the sales data showed a statistically meaningful uplift in the UP and Bihar markets that were most heavily covered by the campaign, compared to a flat trend in the control markets where the brand had not increased its television presence.

Digital signals also provide increasingly useful indirect measures of AND TV advertising effectiveness. Brand search volume on Google, which tends to spike during and immediately after television advertising bursts, can be tracked in near real-time; and when you overlay this data against the AND TV campaign schedule, the correlation is often quite clear. We have found that brands running AND TV ad campaigns with strong creative consistently see a 15 to 30 percent uplift in branded search volume during campaign periods, which is a number that resonates with digital-first brand managers who are accustomed to thinking in terms of digital advertising India metrics. The combination of GRP delivery data from BARC, brand lift measurement, and digital signal tracking gives a reasonably complete picture of campaign ROI — which is the kind of evidence that justifies continued AND TV advertising investment to management.

FAQ: AND TV Advertising — Questions Brand Managers Actually Ask

Q: What is AND TV and which company owns it?

AND TV, stylised as &TV, is a Hindi general entertainment channel launched in 2015 and owned by Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited (ZEEL), one of India's largest media conglomerates. The channel was conceived as a mass-market GEC targeting aspirational middle-class viewers in the Hindi speaking markets, with programming that spans family drama, mythological serials, and reality formats. ZEEL's ownership means that AND TV sits within a broader portfolio that includes Zee TV, ZEE5, and several regional channels — which is commercially significant for advertisers because it enables cross-channel and cross-platform package deals that a standalone channel could not offer.

Q: How much does advertising on AND TV cost per 10-second spot?

The cost per 10-second spot on AND TV varies by time band and programme, but as a working benchmark, non-primetime spots work out to somewhere between ₹15,000 and ₹35,000, while primetime spots — particularly during high-TRP programmes in the 9 PM to 10 PM window — can range from roughly ₹40,000 to ₹1.2 lakh. These are indicative figures; actual rates are negotiated through the ZEEL sales team or through a media buying agency, and volume commitments, package deals, and seasonal demand all affect the final rate. The festive season advertising period typically pushes rates 30 to 50 percent above base card levels, which is why advance booking is strongly recommended.

Q: What are the primetime hours on AND TV for maximum ad reach?

AND TV's primetime window runs approximately from 8 PM to 11 PM, with the 9 PM to 10 PM hour typically delivering the highest viewership concentration. This is when the channel airs its flagship family dramas and serialised content, which commands appointment viewing from its core audience of women aged 25 to 45 in Hindi belt markets. For brands prioritising reach, this is the window to target; for brands prioritising frequency and cost efficiency against a homemaker audience, the morning band (7 AM to 9 AM) and afternoon band (1 PM to 4 PM) offer strong audience concentration at substantially lower ad spot costs.

Q: How do I book an advertisement on AND TV in India?

Advertising on AND TV can be booked either directly through the ZEEL sales team or through an accredited media buying agency. The agency route is generally preferred because it provides negotiating leverage, access to comparative rate data across channels, and end-to-end campaign management including media plan preparation, booking, TVC clearance coordination, and post-campaign telecast certificate reconciliation. The process involves defining campaign objectives and budget, receiving an indicative rate card, building a media plan around target GRP delivery, negotiating final rates, and confirming the booking — after which your TVC must be submitted and cleared through ZEEL's compliance process before the campaign start date.

Q: What types of ad formats are available on AND TV — spots, sponsorships, or integrations?

AND TV offers a range of ad formats beyond the standard TVC spot. Show sponsorship, which includes opening and closing billboards and mid-programme brand mentions, provides stronger brand association with specific content. Brand integration and product placement involve weaving the brand into the programme narrative itself, which delivers significantly higher brand recall than spots alone. Roadblocks, where a single advertiser buys all commercial time in a specific break, eliminate competitor clutter entirely. Aston bands — branded overlays at the bottom of the screen during programming — offer a lower-cost visibility option. The right format mix depends on campaign objectives, budget, and the specific programme being targeted.

Q: How does AND TV's TRP rating compare to other Hindi GEC channels like Colors TV and Zee TV?

AND TV's TRP ratings are generally lower than the top-tier Hindi GEC channels — Star Plus, Colors TV, Zee TV, and Sony Entertainment Television — which is reflected directly in its more accessible advertising rates. AND TV's top shows have historically delivered TRPs in the range of 0.8 to 2.2 in the HSM universe, compared to the 2.5 to 5+ range that flagship shows on Star Plus or Colors TV can achieve. However, TRP comparison in isolation is misleading — the relevant metric is cost per GRP, and AND TV's lower rates mean that the cost efficiency of reaching the Hindi belt audience through AND TV is often superior to buying the same audience at a premium on higher-rated channels.

Q: Can small businesses or startups afford to advertise on AND TV?

This is a question we get asked often, and the honest answer is: it depends on what you mean by a campaign. A meaningful AND TV ad campaign — one that delivers sufficient GRP to actually move brand awareness metrics — requires a minimum budget of roughly ₹15 to ₹25 lakh for a four-week flight in non-primetime, which is accessible for many mid-market brands and well-funded startups but is genuinely out of reach for very small businesses. D2C brands and edtech companies have found AND TV advertising viable at this budget level, particularly when the campaign is concentrated in specific dayparts that align with their audience. Below this threshold, digital advertising India typically offers better ROI for small businesses; television makes most sense when you have sufficient budget to achieve the frequency needed to drive brand recall.

Q: What product categories perform best when advertised on AND TV?

FMCG advertising — personal care, household products, packaged foods, and beverages — performs consistently well on AND TV given the channel's strong homemaker audience in SEC B and C households. Healthcare and pharmaceuticals, education (particularly edtech advertising targeting parents), financial services, and increasingly D2C brands have all found strong audience alignment on the channel. Categories that depend on aspirational messaging for middle-class consumers in Hindi belt markets tend to see the strongest response, while premium luxury categories and B2B products are generally a poor fit for AND TV's audience profile.

Q: How can I combine AND TV advertising with digital or OTT campaigns for better ROI?

The most direct integration path is through the ZEEL ecosystem — AND TV content is available on ZEE5, enabling the same creative to reach viewers across linear television and OTT advertising in a single package. Beyond this, programmatic advertising on social and display platforms can be used to retarget audiences in the same geographic markets where AND TV is running, creating a cross-platform campaign that compounds brand recall. CTV advertising through connected TV households watching ZEE5 on smart TVs adds another layer of addressable reach. Digital signals — particularly branded search volume — can be used to measure the halo effect of AND TV advertising on digital brand engagement, which helps justify the television investment to digital-first stakeholders.

Q: What is the minimum budget required to run a TV ad campaign on AND TV?

As a working benchmark, a four-week non-primetime AND TV ad campaign delivering meaningful reach in the Hindi belt markets requires a minimum ad spend of roughly ₹15 to ₹25 lakh, which covers media buying costs; TVC production is additional and can range from ₹2 lakh for a simple adaptation to ₹20 lakh or more for a full production. Primetime campaigns with meaningful GRP delivery typically require a minimum of ₹50 lakh to ₹1 crore for a four-week flight. These figures are indicative and will vary based on programme selection, season, and negotiated rates; but they give a realistic sense of the entry point for AND TV advertising as a serious brand-building exercise.

Q: How is the effectiveness of an AND TV advertising campaign measured?

Campaign effectiveness is measured through a combination of GRP delivery verification against plan (using BARC data), brand lift studies that measure changes in awareness and purchase intent among exposed audiences, sales correlation analysis comparing markets with high AND TV advertising presence against control markets, and digital signal tracking including branded search volume uplift and social media brand mention trends. Telecast certificates confirm that each booked spot actually aired, which is the baseline accountability measure. For a complete ROI measurement picture, we recommend combining at least two of these methods — GRP delivery plus brand lift, or GRP delivery plus sales correlation — rather than relying on any single metric.

Q: Does AND TV offer regional or city-specific advertising targeting?

AND TV is a national Hindi GEC channel with pan-India reach, so standard AND TV advertising buys are national in nature. However, the channel's audience is heavily concentrated in the Hindi belt states — Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Jharkhand — which means a national buy on AND TV functions effectively as a targeted regional advertising India buy for these markets. For more granular city-specific targeting, the emerging addressable advertising capabilities through DTH platforms like Tata Play, which is exploring geo-targeted ad delivery, offer a path toward more precise geographic segmentation within the AND TV audience. This technology is still maturing in the Indian market, but it represents a meaningful evolution in how regional advertising India will work on linear television over the next few years.

Planning Your AND TV Campaign: A Final Word from SmartAds

AND TV occupies a genuinely interesting strategic position in the Hindi GEC landscape — it is not the highest-rated channel, and it does not pretend to be; but for brands whose real growth opportunity lies in the aspirational middle class of the Hindi belt, it delivers an audience that is both highly relevant and meaningfully underpriced relative to the alternatives. What we have seen repeatedly in our work at SmartAds is that brands which approach AND TV advertising with a clear audience hypothesis and a disciplined media plan consistently outperform brands that simply buy the highest-TRP channel available and hope for the best.

The media planning discipline here is not complicated, but it does require honest thinking about who your actual buyer is, where they live, and what media environment they inhabit. If the answer to those questions points toward a 32-year-old homemaker in Lucknow or a first-generation entrepreneur in Bhopal, then AND TV advertising deserves serious consideration in your media mix — not as a secondary afterthought, but as a primary vehicle for building the kind of brand awareness and brand credibility that drives real purchase behaviour. The channel's integration with the ZEEL ecosystem, including ZEE5 and the emerging CTV advertising opportunity through connected TV households, means that an AND TV ad campaign today can be the foundation of a genuinely cross-platform brand presence that reaches the same consumer across multiple screens and contexts.

The brands that will win in the Hindi belt markets over the next three to five years are the ones investing in television brand credibility now, while the cost per GRP on channels like AND TV remains accessible; and the brands that will lose are the ones waiting until AND TV's rates have caught up with its audience value before they start buying. If you are working through your media plan for 2025 or 2026 and want a clear-eyed view of how AND TV advertising fits into your overall strategy, the SmartAds media planning team is available at SmartAds.in to help you build a campaign that is grounded in real data, honest about trade-offs, and designed to deliver measurable results rather than just impressive-sounding reach numbers.