Category: Media

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.

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.

Creative messages have opportunities in programmatic to enable the use of technology to target the right person at the righttime. Formerly, the equation was media plus creativity. It has changed now to media plus creativity plus data. The data is the vital part of the process. It is about how one engages with the customer in this world of millions of messages.

Advertisers now do not rely heavily on external agencies for programmatic buying. Brands have been increasingly using in-house capabilities of programmatic buying.

Return Path Data (RPD) service is used to generate passive data. In India, it has been used by Tata Sky. There are no meters installed and people watch TV as they normally would. It allows a large sample size, and drills down into data and map that data to the subscriber base. They are able to look at viewing data by subscription packages, core subscribers etc. It s useful in subscriber management and marketing. It helps carriage negotiations, content acquisition, selling of ads, revenue generation from platforms.

A new meter is attached to broadband wifi routers in homes. It tracks the content that passes through the router. The meter identifies the content being viewed, and tracks it. There is virtual meter that could be deployed on smart phones, tablets and other devices. It is useful to track viewing and for sampling.

It is also necessary to employ data scientists to create and combine a robust data set for the industry to use.

There are watermarking technologies which are embedded in the broadcast signal and meters to pick up viewing.

It began as a viral content generating and sharing website. It then developed as a news portal, and a channel for sharing social concerns. To begin with, they offered listicles and video curation. They created fun content. Later after receiving funding, they built a small news team. They started creating content, rather than aggregating it. The number of visitors increased — 30 million visitors a month and 80-90 million video views a month. They are investing heavily in technology and distribution.

Initially, ScoopWhoop was a Buzzfeed clone. It is easy to create content but difficult to build business.

They are producing 300 videos in short format, long fprmat, fiction and non-fiction. They do documentaries. They are looking at food show, travel show and crime show on the Internet.

The revenue split is about 75 p.c. native content and 25 p.c. display. They are getting into programmatic.

Half or more than half the traffic come from Facebook. They are trying to improve direct traffic.

We have referred to Sandesh Bhandare’s book ‘ Tamasha: E K Rangadi Gammat.‘ It has left out the Songadya tamasha of Khandesh (the districts of Jalgaon and Dhulia). In West Khandesh which is adjacent to Gujarat, there tamasha in the Bhil language. Elsewhere in Khandesh, they use Gujarati, Himdi, Marathi and Ahirani language. The Bhika Mama tamasha and Raysingh Mama Songadya are very famous tamasha troupes. Between Bhadrapad and Chaitra months, Raysingh Mama performs in about 185 to 190 villages. They charge Rs.12000 to Rs.15000 per show. After deducting the expenses, they distribute the money among themselves. The Khandesh troupe consists of 4 artistes who enact women, 2 singers, one harmonium player, two dholkiwalla, two junior songadyas and one main Songadya. The team has 12 members.

It starts with gan. Then comes tribal songs called rudali. The Bhil language expressions are translated in Marathi. At midnight, the main artiste — songadya — who mocks about the social situation enters. It is called vag. The topics handled are prohibition, love marriage, step mother, demonetization etc. It is farcical. In Western Maharashtra, the tamasha audience starts to leave when vag starts. In Khandesh, it is the main attraction.

Print in India is a growing and profitable industry. It has more than doubled in the last 10 years. It would not have survived if there is no readership. The impression is that the digital is cornering a large amount of ad pie, but the fact is that TV and print toghter account for 74 per cent of all advertising. Next to TV, print dominates India’s Rs. 126,200 crore M & E industry. Yes, digital remains the fastest growing segment at Rs. 7,690 crore.

Why the print media continue to grow? There are several reasons. The rising literacy rate which is 74 per cent currently is the biggest reason for print to grow. In India, there is primacy of the written word. The third reason is the home delivery of the newspapers. In the developed word, the decline against internet is rapid as there is volition involved in going out to buy a newspaper in the US or UK. In India labour is inexpensive and so the delivery costs are low.

The number of copies sld have increased, despite the rise in cover prices.

In India, circulation is not the chosen metrics for advertisers, as a newspaper is shared anywhere between 2-11 people Readership is a better metrics of reach.

Netflix is using technology disruption — SVOD or streaming video on demand. Netflix has acquired 50 million subscribers in the US over the past ten years. It has 100 million globally. The loss of conventional TV companies is not much, which means most consumer’s use both the services. Still, there is a shift towards new platforms such as Netflix and that is scary for conventional linear TV. The data adjusted for demographics is scarier — the younger audience has the most loss of viewership. Older citizens are actually watching more TV. Netflix spends heavily on content, except sports content. It will account for more than 20 per cent of global non-sport content spend. All this yields viewership.

In India, the situation is different. In the US, pay TV is expensive, and at $ 10 per month, Netflix is great value. In India, cable TV and DTH are cheap.

Here content is owned by the broadcaster and not the studio. Will the broadcasters licence the content to Netflix? It will take years to build a library of content. Even Internet access here in India is through wirless and mobile. A streaming business cannot be built on wireless broadband. In India, Netflix is not an immediate disruptor.

As you know, France is the birth place of films. They resist the business model of Netflix which finances less commercial  arty films. France wants a film to be released in theatres first, at least for three days, and then expects it to be released on internet. If a film is never shown in cinemas, is it still a film? Netflix disregard for releasing films in cinemas wins it few friends. Its comedy drama The Meyerowitz Stories got standing ovation at Cannes, and still there were cries of protest.

Netflix alone generates more revenue than the entire North American box office. Streaming wars began on April 2, 2010, a day when Netflix app appeared on Apple iPad. Soon it spread to fit into our pockets. It tied up with Star cable channel. It had access to thousands of films, including hits made by Disney. Soon at reasonable price, it became an alternative to cable TV.

Mergers of media companies followed. Murdoch sold off most of his companies to Disney. Many other companies on the lines of Netflix appeared after these mergers. All this cord-cutting and consolidation redefined the media landscape.

The erstwhile media moghuls are retiring. The road ahead is uncertain.

If there are leads generated because of a digital campaign, on verifying these, there could be detection of fraud. There is a lot of fraud in the digital ad industry, and so it is difficult to monetise it. There are instances of misalignment of incentives, overbiling and fake traffic. Ad frauds could be 10-30 per cent of all digital advertising done in India. The most common are the click fraud and bot fraud. Bots trick impressions and clicks. They mimic human behaviour. They mingle with the rest of the traffic. Yahoo India’s detection system identifies 20-40 per cent traffic on its tech platform as non-human traffic (NHT). It blocks its pre-bid, leaving less than 5 per cent NHT, as measured by third party vendors.

In mobiles, the frequency of fraud is higher. Fraudsters not only try to deliver and get paid for bot impressions, bot clicks, farmed leads, incentivised installs and fake customers. Human and machine farms drive installs and leads. It affects performance marketing. The marketer does not understand the cost of incentivesed installs or mobile apps.

Fraudsters follow the money. The highest CPMs are in video ads. Advertisers expect little measurable RoI from video ads. This makes a fraudster command a higher return, and remain under the radar.

Programmatic video accounts for more fraud than direct video in the US. India is still a nascent market for programmatic video.

The opportunities for an ad fraud arrive when marketers want results quickly.

Ad fraud can be countered by working with large reputed publishers and by using the right metrics.

The focus should be on buying viewable impressions and working with established publishers. While an advertiser is charged for the impression, it is not served in a humanly viewable space.

DSP platforms chosen must be right — e.g. The Trade Desk, Appnexus and Media Math. They ensure the efficient buys.

It also matters from where the inventory is sourced.. If the sources are non-identifiable, the possibilities of fraud increase.

Ad tech partners must convince the advertisers about their anti-fraud technology. There should be third-party verification and certification.