Media Pulse with Govind Shahi: Asian TV in UK has a pricing problem, and it is driving ethnic advertisers away
A quiet structural shift in the UK Asian television market is pushing diaspora SMEs out of linear advertising. This is not happening because television has lost relevance, but because the price to value equation no longer reflects audience reality.
As the fiscal year draws to a close for most Asian broadcasters and revenue planning for the next cycle begins, one of the most noticeable changes has been the gradual retreat of the ethnic advertiser. This category has sustained Asian TV for more than two decades. While mainstream campaigns continue to run across the daypart schedule, many diaspora SMEs have reduced exposure or exited television entirely.
This timing matters. The fourth quarter planning window is when annual deals for the next fiscal year are negotiated, agency recommendations are reset, and broadcasters form revenue expectations. The absence of ethnic advertisers during this period is not anecdotal. It is visible and commercially material.
It is easy to assume that SMEs have simply moved to digital or that television has become too expensive. In my own conversations with diaspora advertisers across travel, education, retail and hospitality, the picture is more nuanced. They are not abandoning television because it is television. They are abandoning it because the value exchange has broken.
Several structural pressures have accelerated this shift over the past two years:
• Declining pay TV subscriptions among diaspora households
• Lower linear viewership driven by OTT and YouTube
• Changing household decision makers among younger generations
• A growing perception that digital is more accountable
• An absence of relevant local programming
• Ratings decline reinforcing the belief that TV no longer delivers
All of these reduce share of wallet. But beneath them lies a more fundamental issue: Asian linear TV operates on two different pricing systems, and the one applied to ethnic advertisers has not been recalibrated for the new audience reality.
The market trades on two metrics:
• CPT (cost per thousand) for mainstream advertisers
• CPS (cost per spot) for ethnic advertisers
When audiences were stable, the coexistence of these systems was manageable. In a declining ratings environment, they now produce opposite pricing outcomes.
Under CPT, lower audience delivery reduces the effective cost per spot. The trading mechanism deflates the inventory to match delivery. Under CPS, the price remains fixed per spot regardless of delivery.
Prime time tells a similar story. Many of the high perception formats that once delivered reliable ratings no longer do so.
The result is that as audiences erode:
• Mainstream advertisers pay less per viewer
• Ethnic advertisers pay more per viewer
This inversion is rarely discussed publicly, yet it now defines the economics of the category.
Mainstream buyers purchase CPT inventory across multiple dayparts. In off-prime periods where Hindi GEC viewing is weakest, CPT trading forces channels to top up inventory to meet impact commitments. In practice this often results in incremental spots delivered at negligible marginal cost, and in some cases with no commercial value attached to them at all.
Prime time tells a similar story. Many of the high perception formats that once delivered reliable ratings no longer do so. Under CPT, this yields a lower cost per thousand. Under CPS, ethnic advertisers continue to pay perception anchored card rates, sometimes at double or triple digit multiples of the mainstream equivalent.
As a result, mainstream CPTs decline in a falling audience environment, while ethnic CPTs, calculated as cost per spot divided by audience delivered, increase.
Related to this
Ethnic advertisers do not buy CPT. They buy spots. A tuition provider, clinic or travel operator paying between £20 and £150 per prime time spot may now be reaching a fraction of the audience that justified that rate five years ago. When post campaign assessment is conducted, if it is conducted at all, the effective cost per thousand and the cost per acquisition have deteriorated sharply.
These advertisers cannot request post buy adjustments, bonus weight or reconciliation. They simply pay more for less outcome. Under those conditions, digital begins to look rational. Not always because it is more effective, but because it feels more fair.
The uncomfortable truth is that ethnic advertisers are now effectively subsidising mainstream campaigns in a declining audience environment. The category with the smallest budgets, least negotiation leverage and least data transparency is paying the highest effective cost per thousand.
No party designed this outcome deliberately. It is the consequence of a pricing system built for a different era and retained out of habit, inertia and a lack of aligned incentives to reform it.
Asian linear television was not built on multinational FMCG budgets. It was built on diaspora SMEs that believed in the medium, renewed frequently, launched promotions and helped the channels feel culturally relevant. When ethnic advertisers withdraw, channels become disproportionately dependent on opportunistic mainstream bursts that are tactical, season driven and price sensitive. Most importantly, they are not controlled by the broadcasters themselves. Ethnic revenue is typically handled in house, while mainstream sales are handled by sales houses.
The erosion of ethnic advertisers also weakens the cultural integrity of the category. Without them, Asian TV becomes less of a diasporic marketplace and more of a distribution pipe for mainstream brands seeking incremental reach.
If Asian linear TV wants to retain its core advertiser base, three stakeholders need to adjust. Broadcasters should rebase CPS to reflect delivery rather than perception. Agencies should advocate for ethnic advertisers with the same value logic applied to mainstream clients. Ethnic advertisers should ask for transparency on what they are actually buying, expressed in CPT equivalents rather than isolated spot counts.
These are not radical interventions, but basic adjustments to prevent the businesses that built the category from being priced out of it. The alternative is already visible: category churn, lower renewal rates, reduced year round spend and an increasing shift of ethnic budgets into digital environments that offer clearer unit economics and attribution even when the creative canvas is weaker.
It is also worth emphasising that television continues to offer advantages that diaspora SMEs value and digital has not fully replicated. Television is trusted, viewed by real households and consumed in a lean back environment that creates emotional context and shared attention. It remains independently measured, Ofcom regulated, brand safe and one of the few environments where families watch together. These attributes matter. They are why television built this category in the first place and why it can continue to play a central role if its pricing logic evolves to reflect current audience reality.
The purpose of raising these mismatches is not to diminish Asian television, but to outline the adjustments required for it to thrive in a multi platform environment. Diaspora SMEs did not leave TV because it stopped mattering, but because the value exchange became harder to justify. Resolving that imbalance is how the category sustains itself into the next cycle.
About the author
Govind Shahi is a London based media and distribution consultant specialising in diaspora markets, international broadcast strategy and advertiser economics.
