Category: Advertising

Advertising should become mobile friendly. Carousal ads have been introduced in 2014. Such ads carry multiple images and links which a user can swipe through. It gives a viewer a panoramic picture. It is incredibly useful for the brands. The innovation has ‘ scroll ‘ functionality. It enhances the click through rate. It reduces the advertiser’s cost per install.

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.

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.

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.

Indian advertising professionals have started relying heavily on image banks. Image banks are a collection of stock photographs and videos which are on offer, after research and study of the society and its changing patterns. Image banks act as barometers to the society’s changing attitudes and predict trends and needs. All this is captured on film. Image banks encourage photographers by throwing open a global gateway to them to showcase their work and receive royalty.

The Hutch Pink puppy, the floating dias in the Deusche Bank ad are stock photographs taken from Getty Images, an international photography image bank. Getty has set up office in India, and is represented by Visage Media Services. Dell, Vipro, SBI have all used Getty images for their campaigns. Image banks are more than just still photos. The shot in Hindi film Rang De Basanti of the three MIGs flying over-head as the actors jump is a stock photograph altered for the film by adding the actors into the frame.

Imagine you wanted Albert Einstein in your ad film or ad commercial. Where would you go shoot him? Go back in time? There is a simpler solution — visage image.com. They have clips of Eiffel Tower, the Buckingham Palace, the San Francisco Bridge, historical events, planets. One can take one’s pick. Another organization that supplies creative images with Indian faces is www.imagesbazar.com. It is set up by Sandeep Maheshwari. It has seven lac plus images in stock. The web-site is fully e-searchable and e-commerce website. The search takes less than two seconds. Another web-site ShotIndia.com has been launched by Sandeep in 2009. Here anybody can upload pictures, and when it is sold, the person receives 50 per cent of the amount. It has more than 3000 registered members who load thousands of images everyday. At present over 6,000 customers in more than 42 countries are using images from Images Bazaar.com and ShotIndia.com for advertising, marketing and publishing. Their all-India toll free number is 1800-11-6869.

Big data ultimately means lots of information. Let it not seduce you to believe that by itself it will solve all your problems. You use this data and come at an original conclusion, or a new application or action from that data. Data catalyses creativity. Creativity transforms data into ideas. However, it is not a substitute for creativity. Big data is to be applied imaginatively. We have to yoke together the power of big data and ideas.

In the total advertising pie, cinema advertising accounts for 1 percent. It is showing signs of growth — a growth rate of 25 per cent year on year.As multiplexes mushroom all over, the industry has become more organised. It attracts the advertisers now. The chains of theatres and digital networks understand the  needs and wants of advertisers better. Even single screen theatres are getting digitised. Movies too are promoted heavily these days. It augurs well for the advertisers. The biggest hindrance to the spread of cinema advertising is the lack of credible measuring system. There should be a system of assessing the demographics and consumption patterns of the audience. It is a difficult proposition to capture the audience data in single screen theaters in smaller markets. Rentrak has appreared in the field to plug this gap. Cinema Audit and Monitoring ( CAM ) has been launched to track 200 most important screens in India. Rentrak and Interactive have collaborated in this measurement effort. Advertisers would like to have viewership profiles and the success of certain actors in particular geographies.

Cinema halls can offer branding solutions — on screen advertising options and off-screen advertising options at the food counter, in the lobby, at parking etc. An auto company can show on-screen advertising supported by placement of vehicle in the lobby with test driving facilities for patrons in the parking lot.

InMobi, a Banglore-based start up, is Indian advertising technology firm. It has launched its new advertising delivery platform, Miip in Silicon Valley, US in July, 2015. The platform, delivers content-rich ads to mobile app users, thus guaranteeing higher returns to the advertisers. InMobi is thus competing with Facebook and Google. It has tied up with 10 partners. Some 5000 different applications are using it. It has been piloted around the world with 100 partners. These partners are e-commerce companies, home services, entertainment and booking services. The revenue split is in the ratio of 40:60, 40 percent of advertiser’s money is retained by them and 60 percent given to the publisher.

Advertising is a $700-$800 bilion industry worldwide. There is a growing angst against the ads, with more and more users showing dislike towards ads. The response should not be that we show them more ads. Instead, the response should be to make the ads more likeable. The user must discover the content. This could be done through a story. This could be done by engaging the users. Facebook and Pinterest are full of ads. However, users do not look only at ads, to say that they dislike them. Yes, they could say, ‘ I hate Facebook’. This is a different way of looking at advertising. It is being presented as Miip.

Advertising has to be one-on-one. And mobile phones are one-on-one device, unlike TV or print medium. Therefore, a message on mobile phone must be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. We do not know who is reading it.

Miip has been launched in India in August, 2015. It is user-first discovery platform. It has tied up with Amazon and Paytm. It is an animated monkey. It tracks mobile activities based on which it shows rated and personalized products to users. It facilitates seamless payment and check outs within these discovery sessions.

The discovery of relevant products is a huge problem for consumers. Advertisements become intrusive for consumers, and they start hating them. InMobi worked on ways to solve this. With Miip, the company shows relevant advertisements to the users, ads that interest them. This is a new medium which enables discovery-led platform called d-commerce.

It brings window shopping network to the mobile platform. Marketers have a tough time getting users to discover and explore their products. Miip creates personalised shopping experiences to enable discovery of products from more marketers.

Miip creates discovery zones within the app. They can buy the product on the go by just tapping the ‘Buy’ button. Paytm helps the users seamless payment transactions.

Facebook and Twitter provide walked-garden experiences, and users commit 25-30 per cent of their time to this. Ola and Uber provide wild-garden experiences and users commit 70 per cent of their time to this. InMobi fits in here where users spend 70 per cent of time.

Miip is disruptive for mobile app developers. It helps monetization by creating contextualised product and app discovery experiences. This complements the app they are developing.

Miip is the newly introduced product. It targets user of shopping apps by sending them personalized information about products or experiences they might like. It seeks to target advertising better, allowing a smart phone user to discover, say where the stylish casual shirt stores in the city are.

Native advertising is a new way of engaging with consumers on the web. Here the brand decides to produce exclusive content for the digital medium, e.g. energy drink Red Bull making a video of a sky diver falling from a high altitude, at a mind-boggling velocity. It is called native advertising because the content does not ham the product the way the traditional advertising does. The content is interesting and engaging. Content could be in the form of a video, blog posts or articles which resemble editorial content. There are rebel non-traditional news companies which generate Buzzfeed. The spends on native advertising are increasing globally and in India. The content should be interesting and relevant, and the brand must be prepared to take a backseat. Native advertising believes in transparency. A food blog created as native advertising is in sync with the product. Here if there is no disclosure that it is paid content, and later if the truth comes out the influencer loses credibility. A cosmetic company can educate you about how to be a likeable girl. It need not concentrate on marketing its products. The quality of native advertising content should be consistent with the editorial matter. A cricketer may go to a school to interact with the students, and share tips with them. A sports company can use such content Native ads work best when they are accompanied by immersive content. In India, native has yet to catch up, because TV is still a robust medium here. A cosmetic company can run a series of tutorials on make up. Such content is helpful to the social media. Native advertising is used by real estate developers, banking, finance and insurance companies and equipment manufacturers. Bharati AXA ran a series of fresh perspectives videos. A banker quits a job to become a tiffin supplier — a dabbawalla. He realises a genuine need of wholesome lunch. E-commerce companies selling apparel can show latest fashion trends and rope in celebrities. Brands tend to write copious content about them.Native is more focused on telling a story, a story that engages consumers, content that interests them, or is relevant to their life.

As we know, digital inventory is traded by programmatic, but we do require a personal selling approach to sell native advertising. The story is conceived by the brand team. The agency and brand work in collaboration to create specialised content. These contents must be designed for various formats and different placements. The agency has to bring specialised resources to give concrete shape to the content. Brands have to track the native content, and collect data to know the results.

Mobile apps may not be genuinely helping the marketers. There are thousands of apps which run ads which cannot be seen by the users both on Apple and Android devices. Advertisers pay for these ads, and these are fake ads. This is a kind of fraud. The ads are called up at such a high frequency that the target audience cannot possibly see them. Ads in such rapid succession cannot not be seen by humans. They hit the numbers by showing as many as five ads in the background for every visible ad to users. Some applications scroll through the ads even after the app had been closed. At times, the phone takes a consumer to app store even when the consumer has not touched the screen. Pop up ads appear even when there is no accidental clicking. There are complaints of the phones getting slow or phones crashing. They run a code that produces a steady stream of unseen ads. To monitor this , it is necessary to assess the bandwidth usage over time. Google and Apple may no have the ability to do this. In online ad world,  fraud is endemic. The brands pay for the adds, and lose track of where the ads end up. There are many layers of automated intermediaries.The write-up is based on a report by Forensiq, a firm that tracks fraud in online advertising.