In India, there are 140 million-plus smart phones, likely to grow to 500 million by 2020. There are 300 million Internet users, estimated to grow to 600 million by 2020. Digital advertising conversion rates are 40 per cent higher than non-digitally influenced shoppers. All this augurs well for geo-targeted mobile advertising. It influences the customers on the go. There are online buyers, who can also buy offline. Such omni-channel customers have redefined digital buyer journey. A retailer can track nearby consumers through geo-tracking and these customers can be directed to the closest retail location. Marketers can create brand awareness by associating their messages with physical locations nearby, say, by geo-fencing the gyms, parks and basket-ball courts. A luggage brand can geo-fence airports. Here display units are used. Coupons sent on mobile motivate buyers to visit a nearby store. Location-based marketing is pursued either independently or through co-marketing with the partners to connect with the consumers. Location tools also facilitate marketing research. Location specific advertising works best in spontaneous categories, e.g. coffee shops. Retailers can provides real time offers, to customers when they are in the shop’s proximity. Some ads allow customers to play a video. Here, you are taking the store to the customer. The whole ideal of location-based marketing is to attract footfalls to the stores. The offers are contextual. Social media have integrated location-based services. The precondition is a data-enabled set, which is not switched off . Thus offering a free WiFi at a store can be useful for the marketers.
Month: August 2015
Netflix : Online TV Network
Netflix network of online TV is expanding by leaps and bounds. In the last five years, it has entered Australia, Canada, Europe and Latin America. It is a streaming service. Its 65 per cent subscribers are in the US. Another 19 per cent subscribers are from Brazil, Canada and the UK. It would like to cover another 150 countries across America, Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East by 2016. It intends to enter Japan in September, 2015. Japan is a challenging market. It has broadband access and people routinely watch videos on their mobile phones. Yes, they have different tastes than the rest of the world. Let us see how Netflix here as online TV.
Out-of-Home : New Trends
Out-of-home ( OOH ) is no longer just a complementary medium. It has moved to the centre of all advertising. Some outdoor messages go viral on social media. That shows its effectiveness. There are more people on the go . The rest of the media has fragmented. That makes outdoor important. The size of the OOH business world wide is $ 45 billion. Kinetic Worldwide is an OOH company under WPP umbrella. It has 10 per cent share in the worldwide out-of-home business. New things are coming in OOH. There is drone advertising, and Drone Cast, a Philadelphia-based company, specializes in it. Billboards images make sounds, and music comes through your phone. In air ports, there is dynamic placing by combining the ad with aviation data. If the flight is coming from China, the ads are in Chinese. There is going to be an explosion in digital OOH. Digital agencies can partner with real estate agencies to monetize a place.
Recommendation Engine
In big data analytics, recommendation engine is used. A recommendation engine uses transaction data — how do customers actually behave. Its strength lies in using the actual data, and then layering it with social data.
Before using a recommendation engine, it is necessary to understand a business problem. Then we have to understand a client’s data, and how the data can be leveraged to solve the data problem. Lastly, right model is used to solve the problem. Though algorithms can solve a mathematical problem, they do not solve always a business problem. We have to use creativity to understand the problem the recommendation engine is solving. Recommendation engine is content based. Then there is collaborative filtering which is a general name used for algorithms which recommends ‘ if you like that you may like this too.’ It is more of retargeting. In Indian context, recommendation engines can be used to reduce churn, improve engagement, and in cases where products are not selling in spite of being good. Many companies do not have much transaction data. The result will refine over a period of time. A company should do a proof-of-concept study, and commit investment in recommendation engines after seeing the business outcome.
Ad Blockers
Advertising sustains the content you enjoy on the web. At the same time these ads have to depend on tracking and profiling you routinely. Web users avoid ads by installing an ad blocker. It makes your browser faster. No bandwidth is lost in downloading ads. It becomes less irritating. Though ad blocking was available since long, its adoption is now rising. There are murmurs that by using ad blocker you are harming free Internet which presupposes an array of ads. Ad blockers in the long run may benefit. The ads of future could be simpler, less intrusive and transparent about the way the personal data is handled. Ads must be acceptable to users.
Ad blocking is now possible for desk tops, but will soon extend to mobile operating systems. There is an attempt to overcome ad blockers by developing a suitable software. In spite of the ad blocker, if you see ads, it is expected that the ads thus seen will simpler, better and more transparent. It will be a return of sanity in the ad business.
There is a plug in that lets online users block the tracking tools. These trackers delay the loading of a page too.
As Internet these days is full of overly intrusive ads that often make web pages take far longer to load, users are increasingly turning to ad blockers. But this may be attract punishment by a site like YouTube. If the Google-owned video site detects that a Google Chrome web browser is using also AdBlock Plus or any other ad blocking software, it removes the option to skip the pre-roll ads preceding some YouTube videos. While normal viewers get to skip a pre-roll ad after a few seconds, Chrome users with ad blockers are forced to sit through the entire thing. Ad blocking software poses a threat to the tech community. Vast swathes of the Internet are supported at least in part by ad revenue. Ad blockers are a real threat to companies that create sites and apps, and the people they employ.
Editing Genetic Information
Reading genetic sequences have now become routine. Genetic information can be edited by a new technology quickly and economically. It is called CRISPR-Cas9 or just CRISPR. Here a piece of RNA is taken to target a section of DNA. An enzyme called a nuclease, can cut out unwanted genes, and paste new ones. There are already other methods of editing genes, but CRISPR is the simplest, speediest and precise. It can be used therapeutically and to make designer babies, if genomes of human embryos are edited. Scientists for ethical reasons want to restrict the editing of ‘germ line’ cells. It may take a generation to ensure that the technology is safe.
Developing Grey Matter in Lab
Dr. Rene Anand who led a team of scientists at Ohio State University claimed to have made a big breakthrough by developing the human brain of the size of a five-week fetus — the size of a pencil erasure, or about 4 x 6 mm. It is an organoid for which human skin cells were collected from an adult which were converted into stem cells ( pluripotent cells ) which can develop into any tissue. A specialized environment was provided to these stem cells to let them be the brain cells of different types. The differentiation is a matter of IPR. The whole process took 15 weeks.
To grow further, the cells would require a network of blood vessels sophisticated enough and an artificial heart. Such brain models enable scientists to study the functioning of the system and to serve as replacements to defective organs. Already in 2013, Vienna scientists at Institute of Molecular Biotechnology had used stem cells to grow a brain larger than the Ohio experiment. But it had much more immature structures. The Ohio brain, though small, resembles a full-sized brain in complexity; and carries 99 percent of the diverse cell types found in an adult brain. Dr. Anand is hopeful of developing the remaining 1 per cent of cells by continuing the experiment.
The organoid has no awareness. It is not connected to any sensory input organs. The ethical issues of consciousness and cognition are thus bypassed.
The brain would be used to study stresses caused by war. In future, neurological diseases and conditions can be studied. If backed by circulatory system, conditions such as stroke can be studied. The environmental toxins affecting the foetal development can be studied. In diagnostics, an organoid can be developed by taking skin cells of a patient and a personalized diagnosis can be made.
Ohio experiment has not so far been peer-reviewed and data has not been released for other scientists on account of patent issues.
Branded Content
Indian advertising too is embracing branded content. To some, online videos over three minutes long are branded content. The rest is plain vanilla content. To many, branded content is advertiser funded programming. To some, the official content on social media pages qualify for being called branded content.
Branded content does not tell the product stories. It should tell people stories. Products are cleverly integrated into them. But this may not be liked by the consumers who prefer a strong brand presence in the narrative. There should human stories which can bring the brand out. It should be a win-win both for the advertiser and consumer.
It is important to understand the significance of branded content in these times of ad ad avoidance. Branded content fosters connections between brands and consumers. Content plays an immense role for emotional connections and loyalty. Content should be rooted in the brand’s values. An agency can tie up with channels or production houses with significant downtime. It will reduce content cost.
Flipkart’s Zero Commission Plan
Flipkart charges a market place fee — a percentage of the selling price of a product inclusive of a selling commission, a closing fee and shipping charges. The selling commission can be as low as 4 per cent to as much as 25 per cent, depending on the product. Flipkart proposes to do away with the commission it charges its merchants so as to enlist more of them. The company aims at having 1 lac merchants by the end of 2015, up from 30,000 now. It will instead urge sellers to advertise on the platform. It will make Flipkart more sustainable in the long run. Snapdeal owned Shopo too has become a zero commission platfor. It is mobile-only market place.
Re-defining News
Smartphone has redefined the news industry. First, news is consumed differently. Secondly, news is reported differently. Thirdly, the existing models of news are being challenged. There has to be an up to a minute news. WhatsApp and WeChat do require content that appeals to audiences on these platforms. The audience is curating their own news and in some instances actually reporting it. Younger audiences are turning towards mobile, online video and new visual formats. Older people and rural population will continue to read the paper or watch TV. News consumption is now in terms of bite size chunks — there is less text — there is less text and more video. Though the numbers of news providers have increased, audiences rely on a few trusted ones Journalists use their phones to film, edit and file from the field. A new golden age of news has dawned.