WatBlog Newsletter Archive: WATBlog Update There are 4 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

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@IAMAI 5th Panel: Mobile Marketing: When are we going to walk the talk?
@IAMAI 4th Panel - What Value Do Ad Networks Bring?
@IAMAI 3rd Panel: How Seriously Should We Take Online Video Ads?
@IAMAI Panel 2 - Performance Based Marketing VS Brand Building - “Indian Marketers are still stuck in Clicks”
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There are 4 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

@IAMAI 5th Panel: Mobile Marketing: When are we going to walk the talk?

After session 1,2, 3 and 4 came the last session on mobile marketing. Given than India has over 300 million mobile phones this session should be of prime importance to digital marketer purely because of its reach. This session had some nice insights by the panelists on how to approach mobile marketing.

Rathi Gangappa National Account Manager, Onmobile stated that consumers are trying to get to content and the advertising agencies and advertisers come in between the content and that is the basic ad serving business. There is immense opportunity in voice based business on mobile. Then there is response based advertising on text media and then wap banner servicing, etc. and finally video advertising with the roll out of 3G hence there are no dearth of ideas.

Hence there is no dearth of ideas but the fear is of consumer backlash to intrusive advertising. Question is how can we use the mobile medium without annoying customer and vice versa for advertisers?
Customer acceptance becomes the vehicle for innovation and therefore customer acceptance is key.

atanu mandal acl wireless Atanu Mandal President & COO ACL Wireless made the following points:
-    Mobile advertising has been around for sometime with short codes and sms and voice coupons etc.
-    Mobile is better because it is versatile and interactive with highest penetratin and rapidly growing and sharp profiling and ppc model.
Why is mobile advtg in its infancy still?
o    Mainly sms and wap based campaigns.
o    Low level of network integration and high customer access cost.
o    Weak targeting and segmentation.
o    Low customer tolerance for incoming sms and voice.

What will lead to a shift?

Mobile advertising by on deck publishers will lead to a paradigm shift
o Contextual, Interactive, Multi-modal and Non-intrusive is the future of mobile ads
o Operator as a media publisher is capable of delivering relevant, targeted and nonintrusive ads

o Also gratification based opt-in is something the operator is best placed to execute.
o Operators can provide advertisers customer profiling and targeting mechanisms

Saurabh Vartikar Head Mobile Marketing, Mauj spoke about harnessing opportunities in mobile be its reach, richness, engaging ability, measurability, viral effect, cost effectiveness, targeted audience and personalization.

He also spoke on the difficulty faced by an advertiser in understanding the media, knowing the 300mn subscribers as well as jargon and measuring cross media effectiveness. He said another problem for advertisers is segmentation of users as according to Admob there are only only 2 lakh is premium subscribers out of 300 mn.
He also pointed out some other concerns like only 10-15 million usersuse mobile internet and how many respond to advertising? Sms has reached full universe of mobile users but is it hitting my target audience? Users are willing to receive ads but can they be compensated for it?

Vishal Maheshwari Director - Mobile, Yahoo! India said that Yahoo thinks the mobile is BIG and its here to stay. He stated that mobile is a constant source of information and connection in general media consumption. He also felt that mobile was very personal and the statistic that proves it is the one where lost wallet is reported in 24 hours but a lost mobile is reported in 60 minutes.
He outlined 5 must do’s while pursuing mobile advertising:
o    Keep it simple
o    Embrace the medium
o    Remember the audience
o    Learn and optimize
o    Have realistic expectations

Naveen Tewari, Chief Executive Officer, mKhoj spoke about the following three points:

Largest reach
Precision and Exceptional ROI
Advertiser will flock the medium

Large reach
o    Early days but mobile subscribers is already crossed 300 million
o    Mobile has shown extreme growth in past 9 months
o    Estimated gprs users at 50 -60 million and active at 10 million.
o    Mobile internet has grown at 300-400%
Precision and Exceptional ROI
o    Mobile has reasonable targeting ability
o    Mobile advertising has great ROI
o    Advertiser can also get information about the consumer who interacted wth his ad so that he can make an informed decision
Advertiser will flock to the medium
o    Brand advertisers are typically cautious to sign up for a new medium, but once they do they have stuck on
o    It takes a few trial campaigns to sign up for long term
o    There are specific segments of advertisers for which the medium has started to give consistent value like mobile content players, applications portals, entertainment, automobile segments, youth, handsets and accessories.

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@IAMAI 4th Panel - What Value Do Ad Networks Bring?

After Panel 1,2 and 3 the 4th panel was on “What value do ad networks bring?” And IAMAI had roped in 4 of the India’s ad networks on the podium obviously talking about why one needs to hop onto the ad network platform and how its is more performance driven. For me it would have been interesting if some clients who had used adnetworks would be on the podium as well as it would have given a clearer picture as to which direction do ad networks need to improve. Also most of the speakers spoke of the lower cost of advertising on an ad network while none spoke about any USP besides for that. Nonetheless the panel came us with some very interesting numbers in support of the ad network space.

Anurag Gupta Managing Director, DGM India gave a good round up on the kind of ad networks that are around.
-    Kinds of networks
o    Representation Network (Rep) – Represent publications in their portfolio
o    Blind (low pricing through bulk buy of remnant inventory) - Advertisers dont know the sites on which they are advertisiing.
o    Targeted - focus on specific niche

Amar Goel Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Komli gave some insightful statistics on the long tail of the web.
-    98% visit outside top 20 sites
-    97% outside of top 50 sites (Conclusion - Long tail is sizeable mass)
-    Page views outside top 20 websites is 54% and top 50 is 45%
-    Time spent outside top 20 websites is 59%
Given the statistics above Amar felt that the goal of adnetworks is to target outside top 20 websites i.e. the Long Tail.

He stated that internet is not a small medium and then compared the reach of English newspapers and online users which are both 30 million each. He felt that there was a need to work with the traditional agency to promote the richness, interacivity and measurability.

Aditya Khanna - Co founder & Business Head, Tyroo Media spoke about how content and ad sales require different skill sets and thats what ad networks bring in for the innumerable small websites out there who have decent content but little ad sales ability.

He also gave some insights into the Indian adnetwork market.
o    Demand is less than supply
o    5 to 6% of current media spend on ad networks will be going to 15 to 20 percent
o    Ad networks are currently competing with search engine marketers and horizontals
o    As ad networks provide a cheaper/cost effective solution they will have demand during recession as well.
o    Though there are too many ad networks its a sign that there is money in the business. But only top three players will survive in the long run.

Ratish Nair CEO of Interactive Avenues stated that ad networks add value by monetizing
unsold inventory which is typically inventory for which advertisers do not pay premium price and hence wont buy from individual sites. In effect ad networks play the role of an aggregator if ad inventory which bring additional revenue to publishers.

Why would advertiser use ad networks?
-    High reach among quality environments
-    ROI based cpa model
-    Total pg in india is 32 bn
-    Top 10 offer 16 .8 bn
-    Top 100 is 20.5 billion which leaves out around 11 billion impressions on the outside of top 100 sites.

He stated that It is not about targeting once but repeat targetting that can bring better results for an advertiser. So even if your audience is on top 10 sites, they would be elsewhere as well and repeat targetting at a lower cost can increase conversions.

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@IAMAI 3rd Panel: How Seriously Should We Take Online Video Ads?

After the 1st session on standards and norms and 2nd session on performance vs branding the third session was centred around video adverising online and whether it needs to be taken seriously. Again most of the speakers came from a video advertising background and hence most of the session was pro video advertising. Would have enjoyed a contrary point of view on the panel. Nonetheless the panelist did make some key points during the session and thats what we are covering in this post.

suman Suman Srivastava – CEO Euro RSCG who was the moderator of the panel outlined some key concerns for discussion at the start of the panel itself so that the speakers could delve deeper on these concerns.

He questioned “How do we handle..”
1) Bandwidth - Video as everyone knows requires time to load and is quite a strain on your servers. Are there enough broadband users for downloading such stuff?

2) Creativity - What kind of stuff can be done on online video vis a vis television ads.

3) Measurement- How do we measure? Are views enough?

4) Distribution - How we reach out to more users for video viewing?

R Rajnish – Director- Ad & Publisher Solutions, Microsoft India answers the concerns by pointing the audience towards the recent big bang theory and its implications towards the internet bandwidth comcerns. He stated that a new technology call grid technology would be coming soon (6-8 months) which would revolutionize internet speeds the world over and users will be able to download Full Disney movies in 5 seconds.

He said that besides for grid technology 3G is here and will be available on phones in a few months and hence videos will be watched on phone as well. Besides for 3G there is also IPTV which he felt will solve the bandwidth issues for web videos.
On the concern about measurement he stated a statistic that Laughter Challenge is seen more on youtube than on Star One but they hardly earn anything out of the online video views and this is where online video ads come in.

Naren Nachiappan - Managing Director, Jivox stated the following interesting statistics in support of popularity of video online.

1) Video is not tomorrow’s story but a today’s story.

2) No of Video Impressions to surpass no of searches in Q1 2009 Comscore (North America)
3) 80% of onlne video users don't mind watching ads (double click)
4) Youtube is the 6th most trafficked site in India (alexa)
5) 8% of video viewers interact will the video ads (expand/contract)
6) In click2 play environment one sees 25% CTR post completion of video click.

Surya Mantha – Web 18 CEO stated that Bandwidth is not a tech issue its more of a policy, incentive issue. He felt that even though Broadband hadn't taken off vis a vis mobiles, on the whole in smaller towns/cities people are still watching videos. He questioned the video ad format and asked “How long should a video ad be? 5sec? 8 sec?” He felt there was no answer still as the answer was still evolving.
He then questioned as to what is relevance in context of video? How do you have relevant ads in video? He felt this aspect was also still evolving.
He concluded saying that Online video viewing was a solitary activity and attracted complete focussed attention from a viewer and hence was very effective for advertising.

Sunil Nair Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, Nautanki TV claimed that Nautanki.tv does about 10 million video views a day and the Video consumption is happening from smaller towns NOT from metro's. He gave the example of Channel V get gorgeous channel on nautanki which got 1.5 million video views a day
He felt the way to reach out to the advertisers was to partner TV and video content providers who anyways have access to these advertisers.

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@IAMAI Panel 2 - Performance Based Marketing VS Brand Building - “Indian Marketers are still stuck in Clicks”

We were at the IAMAI Digital Marketing Summit and after the first session on Standards and norms we attended the second panel which was on Performance VS Branding. It was clear from the profiles of the panelists that they would push for branding as the required step vs performance as there was no Search engine marketing guru or Adnetwork in the panel.

But there were still some interesting points highlighted in this second session:

Neville Taraporewalla - CEO & Online Media Director, Publicitas Digital shared the example of the US election campaigning and stated that according to a comscore report Mccain and Obama were both campaigning online but the difference between their campaigns was Obama was brand building while Mccain strategy was issue based like a performance based campaign. Obama has apparently built his personal brand within households through this strategy. He felt just like Mccain Indian marketeers are still stuck in clicks.
He felt that the web offers excellent opportunity to build awareness and engagements and he showcased some campaigns to illustrate the same.

kashyap vaddapalli Kashyap Vadapalli - Director – Marketing & Operations, eBay India stated the following points.

Yes one can build brands online
When one has numbers to meet would you invest in branding or transactions .i.e performance is a queston all marketeers ask across mediums.
Based on the business goals one takes a short term decision

Kashyap gave a framework which could be used to decide on performance vs branding. The framework is as follows:
o    Where is the product in its life cycle
o    By industry maturity
o    Consumer purchase involvement and the point of consumption

With regards to each point there are many options like
-    Product life cycle – new-in season-end of life- vintage/used
-    Industry maturity – nascent - growth stage – established
-    Point of consumption - online - offline - home - while travelling

Once a marketer considers the options above then only that he/she decide on branding vs performance.

Krishna Prasad Executive Producer, MSN India stated the following:
-    It's a case of both branding and performance
-    How much does a manager spend on an online campaign and then how much time does he allocate to analyze the best branding options.
-    Where are Prasoon Joshi’s (Creative Guru’s) of online world
-    Even performance goes back and asks whats being communicated in that ad.

upen Upen Roop Rai Director, Times Internet stated the following:
-    Unless we move out of performance the branding money will never come into it
-    What exactly constitutesbranding
o    Any exposure
o    ROI is pure branding success metric
-    Do clicks matter in the world of branding
o    It does for certain objective like awareness and association but not while focusing on intent to purchase
o    It is detrimental to judge by clicks because it overlooks branding while drawing conclusion from a sub set of audience who wouldn't be your target
o    Heavy clickers vary a lot from typical internet user and hence clicks might be a wrong way to measure whom you are reaching.

Offline and online partnerships benefit everyone:
-    For media content is everything, offliners give cool content that online hasn’t produced.
-    In promotional space audience is everything.
-    Our audience is hyper connected, they are online and offline so you need a 360 degree approach.
-    Most brands integrate offline and online and improve customer experience
-    Online marketing can make performance of branding measured come true.

Vikram Sakhuja Chief Operating Officer - South Asia, Group M asked some interesting questions:
-    Is computer a businesss machine or a multimedia gizmo?
-    Is performance only ecommerce/transaction?
-    CPA and CPL are performance metrics while engagement and awareness are brand metrics
-    Why do consumers consume media?

He felt the following needed to be done to change the scenario from performance to branding:
-    Stop lamenting about reach as there are 40 million people who can generate business
-    Start getting competitive with other media
-    Say put x percent of your tv and media campaign on digital and then prove which works better.
-    Lift iamai status and work with industry campaign instead of lving in our own exhaust.
-    Pin point – Where are the advertisers who don't understand digital and lets bring them to such conferences and sky is the limit then.

Though the session was interesting overall it was still one sided i.e. only branding support but no performance based marketing evangelists. Which actually made most of the discussion only pro branding.

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