Making money in digital is going to take some time. The trditional media companies are not just competing with other media companies but also with telecom, digital, e-commerce and even taxi services. Media companies have the unique strength of consumer loyalty on the back of product (content). OTT’s success depends on how rapidly the consumption grows, which is a factor of cost and access to robust broadband and Wi-Fi. In near future, there will not be any impact on TV. Digital and TV collide on entertainment. Only sports have to be watched live. In entertainment, drama looks fresh even after 5 years. The freedom of digital does dent TV, but currently it is not reflected in numbers. TV is so cheap that digital still find it difficult to compete.
Month: March 2018
Total Readership and AIR
IRS has been released in January, 2017. It emphasises total readership which is usually three-to-four times more than the average issue readership (yesterday), which was the standard used by advertisers. It introduces three-day and seven-day readership metrics, separate metrics for the main paper and its variants. It cover almost 0.32 million Indians.
Average Issue Readership (AIR) is the standard metric buyers have used for decades. However, planning is more dynamic, and not everybody is reading a newspaper everyday. There is an option of looking at whether you read the paper yesterday, in the last three days, seven days or the last month. IRS gives different dimensions to data. The user can decide which one to use. AIR (yesterday) is accurate and relevant for what advertisers can expect to reach on any given day. The two — AIR and total readership — serve different purposes. AIR uses memory from day after reporting, while total readership does a month-long memorability. Total readership is an indication of the maximum reach of the publication, while AIR is a measure of regular readers. Advertiser puts money based on probability of a regular habit and hence expected view of the ad on any given day.
OTT to be driven by Regional Content
OTT is growing by leaps and bounds. In future, the focus would be on regional content. According Deloitte report, vernacular users will be more than 2.5 times of the English Internet user base. Internet connectivity and mobile devices give a boost to such usage.
To begin with, OTT was about the TV on the go. Later original programmes were developed for the OTT platforms. Rural audience makes it necessary to develop programmes in multiple languagesfor multiple geographies. The medium may overtake TV as the preferred platform for movie premieres too. The time spent on mobile devices will increase too. It then becomes attractive as an advertising medium. There could be advertising-led model, as well as subscription supported model. There are hybrid models with a mix of free content and some content behind a pay-wall. Thre is growing preference for the medium among sports viewers. There will be a boost in fortunes of the live events industry.
Advertising Trends of Future
As mobile screen are going to be the primary screen to see the video, many brands will invest in augmented reality (AR) to connect with the consumers. AR will overtake the figures of virtual reality (VR) platform. Slowly, both these platforms will merge into a mixed reality future. Pokeman Go used AR hugely. There are going to be AR games based on Harry Potter.This technology may become mainstream.
Data and insights it provides enhance the targeting capability. There is AI and machine learning. It allows us to focus on human side of marketing. It can be predicted what life stage the consumers are at. The messages can be customised.There is going to a shift to moments-led marketing.
Brands can be alighned to consumers’ special moments. Coke tried this. It was made possible by automation of the marketing systems.
Advantages of Digital Advertising
Digital advertising enables advertisers to sculpt the advertising experiences. The ads can be individualised by using the big data and analytics.
Ideal marketing mix can be developed as digital works on pay per use model. Small amounts can be allocated to different digital campaigns out of the total budget. It is easier to analyse the success or otherwise of the campaign. Ideal mix of digital advertising tactics can be developed.
Distinguishing features in digital advertising which are easily identifiable. Digital efforts are audience-oriented marketing efforts.
Influencer marketing by using celebrities online and by using digital leaders.
Better targeting by using psychographic and behavioral targeting.
Granular analysis enables digital advertisers to have access to numerous tools and tests to measure the effectiveness of the digital campaigns. The testing could be across key words, digital ads and sponsored posts. The whole data is trackable, scannable, traceble and analysable.
Mobile Advertising
Of the total digital advertising in India of Rs.9490 crore in 2016, almost 50 percent is contributed by mobile advertising. In the years to come, mobile specific advertising will dominate the digital advertising space.
There are multiple ad formats of mobile advertising. Yahoo rolled out Tiles in 2016. InMobi launched video ad suit in 2016. mCanvas introduced recently Streambox.
Banner ads have been widely used since the introduction of online promotion. This is the horizontal ad you see at the top or bottom of the page. It promises visibility and high recall value. It is not intrusive too. It has minimal production cost. Users can interact with it by clicking.
Interstitial ads are the ads which cover the entire mobile screen. This is full-screen advertising after loading or closing an app. It is sponsored by advertisers. To contiue, either the user watches the ad or purchases the ad-free version of the app.
Rich media ad is expandable ad which could be seen as a combination of banner and interstitial ads. It seamlessly integrates call-to-action and other interactive measure to engage the viewer with the advertisement. It combines text, images and video.
Native advertising works seamlessly with the content of the website or app.
(In-app) Video ads uses HD videos targeted at a demography of users to gain maximum impact. It has been steadily gaining traction in India. With the advent of OTT and mobile gaming there is a remarkable growth in video ad spends by marketers.
Aprt from the format, what matters is the placement of the ad. Placement is a function of viewability of the ad, its ability to keep content consumption unhindered and the context of the content.
The challenge the marketers face here is the skip option. Another challenge is the standardisation of ad measurements across the platforms.
Though ad blocking is a bane in the longrun, it will improve the quality of online ads.
In measuring effectiveness, the metrics used were reach, impressions, time spent, frequency, video views. These days there are third party tools which provide insights beyond reach, CPMs, CPCs and CPIs.
Digital Medium Must Be Understood
Digital marketing emerged in India since 2004-05. During those days, there was no YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or any other social media platform. All the ads were Google search ads and display banners across web sites such as Yahoo and Rediff. Those were the early days for digital marketing.
As the industry and technology evolved, many new options arrived. In the last decade,we have seen rapid progress of this medium from text-heavy advertising to video-heavy advertising. Many new formats have appreared, but the challange is the creativity in messaging.
To begin with, print ads were adapted for digital advertising. That led to the creation of digital banners. TV ads were similarly adapted for YouTube. TV has a history of 35 years in India, and digital is evolving in the 15 years. Digital has thrown up a large number of options. That becomes confusing for ad creators.
TV ad brief was simple. Create a 60 seconds commercial, capable of being adaptable to 30 and 10 seconds. Print ads must have applealing visuals that could be recalled. In a digital campaign, a 480×60 banner looks very different from 250×250 banner. YouTube bumper ad is very different from a YouTube pre-roll ad. These minute details confuse the creator. They end up sticking key visuals, as they used to do in print. Therefore, digital specialist agencies are required, rather than the traditional agencies.
Companies spend more time with a mainline agency making a TV commercial. They spend comparatively very less time with a digital agency which has to design a month’s content for social media. Creative suffers from lack of time. Ultimately, the client complains that digital does not work for his or her brand
Clients must use the digital medium effectively. They should understand the medium. Great digital ideas can come in an instant, but great digital execution requires planning and meticulous production so that the message fits the medium.
Advertising Evolution
Advertising keeps the media alive. In an earlier era, print and TV survived on advertising. Of late, web sites and mobile apps survive on it.
Vance Packard’s book Hidden Persuaders in 1957 painted advertising in sinister light. He contended that psychology and sociology are used by advertising industry to persuade the average citizen to buy and get addicted to products that she did not really need. Some later books wondered whether advertising works at all. The End of Advertising as We Know It by Sergio Zyman in 2002 made a case that in this millennium advertising have become self-indulgent, and consequently the art and entertainment aspects have been overemphasised, rather than the ability to sell a product. Al Ries and Laura Ries wrote in 2002 The Fall of Advertising and The Rise of PR. Here they question the power of print ads and TVCs. They cite the examples Starbucks, The Body Shop, Walmart, Red Bull and Zara which have built up their brands without advertising. They conclude that marketers should relax on unpaid PR which persuade journalists to write favourably about their products and the values they stand for.
Advertising emerged in the US in the 1950s owing to a need for differentiation among several commodity type of products. In the 1970s, as the colour printing presses became cheap, there was a magazine boom, which capitvated both the readers and advertisers. Satelite TV through cable at our homes led to another stimulation to advertising and boosted regional advertising too. The earlier formats struggled to survive, as new formats replaced them during this journey, e.g. early magazine ads looked like newspaper ads and early TV commercials looked like cinema ads. When Internet came on the scene, it adopted the outdoor ad format for the first five years, and called it banner ads. Later search engines thought of putting up ads corresponding to those subjects which we were searching. The innovation brought in was the offer that pay only when someone clicks the ad. It copied the format of direct marketing ads of 1950s i.e. action-proneness. Advertising adopted the maxim that it has to be performance-driven. It is now time to seek a suitable format for mobile ads, which finds that some videos are too loud and intrusive for the privacy of this user, and for offering him personalisation.
Google and Ad Blocking
Google is now technically the Alphabet, which is the holding company that manages diverse business from smart phones to autonomous cars. Google has many irons in the fire. However, its main source of revenue is digital advertising which enables it to dabble elsewhere. Of its total revenue of $ 111 billion, digital advertising accounts 86 percent.
In February, 2018, Google decides to switch on a code on its web browser Chrome to block certain online advertisements. Online advertising becomes intrusive and there are third party ad blockers installed by around 27 percent US internet users. Web publishers may not like this, but annoying ads must be blocked. What is annoying is defined by Coalition for Better Ads, a group of advertisers and technology firms, of which Google is a member. Ad blocking makes the web safer and more enjoyable. However, if we curtail the ads, the web itself suffers — fewer websites.
Websites and block writers compete with each other. Sites try to detect the blockers and force users to disable them. Ad blockers try to dodge the detectors. Some sites use the computing power to mine the cyber currency. Google’s move is to protect online advertising from itself. It wants minimum standards to be complied with both by the advertisers and the sites. But its power to decide what is permissible and acceptable makes Google even more powerful.