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The Power Profile Of Cyber Cafe Audience Revealed By Nielsen Survey

The perception which marketers had about cyber cafe audience was that of low purchasing power and less enthusiastic of online commerce but now that seems to have taken a backseat reveals Nielsen survey.

The survey was conducted across eight cities and 3,500 cafés.The Nielsen study was commissioned by Ideacts, the cyber cafe advertising solution provider.

According to the survey:

Age bracket:

Almost 90 per cent of the audience, is male and in the age bracket of 15 to 35 years.

This might hamper cyber cafe advertising targeted at women due to pesky numbers.

Designation:

52 per cent of cyber cafe goers are graduates and post-graduates, though over 50 per cent are students.

This should be a boost for companies targeting young market.

Purchase-decider?

More than 70 per cent of the visitors decide which electronic appliance to buy and nearly 60 per cent which household durables

This goes on to prove the worthuness of cybercafe visitors and their influence on buying decision.

Ownership:

While 61 per cent of them own a personal computer

This number tells that despite owning a pc majority of internet audience surf from cybercafe a point towards low broadband penetration.

Nearly 47 per cent have a debit card and 68 per cent have a savings bank account

This could be goldmine for online commerce and is also driving many sites to accept debit cards along with credit cards.

Benefits of marketing to cyber cafe audience?

The benefits ranges from higher influence on buying decision to lower age group bracket.
The cyber cafe audience also has higher purchasing power not anticipated earlier by marketers.
Lower cost of acquiring customers is also one reason for marketers to look at cyber cafe audience.
As cyber cafe is used more for researching products ,targeting this market could mean highest exposure to people who influence buying decision.
The increasing internet penetration and rise in online usage make it a attractive proposition.

Ways of targeting?

Desktop application solution provided by Ideacts or other companies provide marketers to put their advertisements on cyber cafe desktop. These ads ensure that it attracts higher impressions due to their stickiness on desktop.

Companies are also targeting through surveys,banner advertising and other means of offline advertising.

Affilate marketing by giving commission to cyber cafe owners for selling products is also in works.

The cyber cafe advertising is also attracting local businesses and as such allows geo targeting of advertising campaign.

This study would definitely help attract more advertisers and change their perception towards cyber cafe audience. The entry of Reliance–ADAG and companies like Ideacts would definitely make it a organized market

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IDG Ventures & Microsoft Come Together To Provide Early Stage Funding

In a bid to provide access to entrepreneurial, technology and financial resources to startups all at one go IDG Ventures India and Microsoft India have announced 'Early Stage Funding Program'. As per this partnership startups registering for Microsoft BizSpark which have the opportunity to get funded for up to 25 crore rupees by IDG Ventures.

One may remember that Microsoft Bizspark is a program by which startups get access to Microsoft suite including the latest tools and technologies at no cost.

Which companies can apply to this program?

The program is open to technology companies under three years old having annual revenues less than Rs 5 crore. Companies that meet these criterias will first have to enroll to Microsoft's BizSpark program and then asked to send their business plans to IDG Ventures for evaluation.

How can one apply?
Startup companies can apply for the Microsoft-IDG Ventures Early Stage Funding Program here by filling this form.

IDG Ventures has earlier funded the companies like Ozone Media (An Online Ad network), Kreeda Games (Online Gaming Company), Myntra.com (A Custom Merchandise Online Ecommerce Company) and iViz (A Data Security Company).

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BPL Mobile Gets in the Youth Loop - Rebrands Name - a Good Idea?

I swear on the digital gods that I intended no pun with the title of the post.

News has it that BPL Mobile as a brand has ceased to exist and will now be known as Loop mobile. The reason is to build a better brand image among the youth. "'Get in the Loop' was our way of refreshing the brand to make it contemporary for the youth," says Arif Ali, head, brand and communications, Loop Mobile. "As we wanted to transform BPL further to appeal to this segment, we chose a word from our own tagline, as it generated high recall and popularity, according to our research."

Get in the Loop was campaign launched by BPL back in 2007 and had spent quite a deal of effort and money into marketing the brand then among youth. It had even extended the campaign online with getintheloop.in a microsite with which users could get their photographs on city billboards. The site though defunct now did generate some amount of buzz then.

With newer entrants in the market like Virgin and Idea pushing hard with some innovative marketing and branding campaigns, perhaps BPL needed to review its positioning. From the experience shared by my friends who use BPL mobile, the pricing always seemed to be the biggest pull for them to choose BPL’s services. However, it seems the pressure exerted by the new market movers besides the heavyweights like Airtel and Vodafone was too much for the oldest and the only surviving mobile player of the 90s.

We also have talks of number portability doing rounds these days a lot, which is sure to bring all the mobile players in a level playing field. In such a scenario, it is perhaps obvious to expect price wars among the players leaving BPL with no special edge over its rivals as price was always its strong point. With the increased emphasis on Mobile VAS and a lot of such add ons gaining ground as mobile becomes a mainstream media, players like BPL had to look beyond the touch point of price in the changing market. This move certainly seems in line with the thought.

Till now the only Value Add that BPL has introduced is the local search service that they introduced first and then tied up with Yahoo for their Onesearch service later. Given the existing dynamics of the market, BPL perhaps need to pull things up further and have more features that users can associate to this new and improved brand image. On the other hand, it also seems a strategic shift away from what would have seemed its ideal users, the cost conscious middle class. Perhaps the thought that such a market can’t drive the VAS game as much the youth could have also played its part in this move.

For the sake of completion, the brand will hence be called Loop and is pakaged in four attractive young colours. They symbolise freshness, vibrancy, energy, excitement and a cool quotient.

An important point that I almost missed was that this change is only in the Mumbai spectrum. Which means any of the marketing methods planned to use will be restriced to local media and straightaway removes TV out of the media used. Given the precision of targeting that the web gives, perhaps BPL or Loop should engage the Internet and social media for some innovative and targeted brand building initiatives. In the meanwhile I just hope they don’t go about this change in the same way as Vodafone did after it took over Hutch.

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Facebook Becomes More Like Twitter In Layout As Well As Openness

In just months of its first revamp Facebook has gone ahead and revamped its look again. This time the revamp seems heavily inspired by social media rival Twitter. While twitter asks What are you doing now? Facebook’s new layout asks the question Whats on your mind?.

Check out the new facebook layout below:

Click to enlarge screenshot

The general feedback across the web (especially twitter) has been negative to the new layout. It also shows that facebook acknowlegdes twitters success even though the number of users for twitter is just 10 million as compared to facebook’s 200 million. There were rumours late last year that Facebook had pitched to buy twitter in a 500 Million all stock deal but was rebuffed by the micro blogging player.

Facebook seems to have taken that rejection to heart and looks like its all out to provide a twitter like interface to all of its 200 million users. It has also included an option of open profile to everyone. This again seems inspired by twitter as twitter feeds can be viewed by anyone via twitter.com/username Check watblog’s twitter feed and mine here.

All in all it does seem like facebook is trying to compete with twitter by offering the same value to its users. Given the current feedback it seems like the users aren’t too happy with the twitterized facebook look. Only time will tell though as to how this move by facebook pans out. If you ask me I think its just going to help garner more users for twitter as people would be more open to the idea of microblogging after they get a taste of the same at facebook. Whats your take?

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