Category: Advertising

ASCI recently announced a set of guidelines that will help celebrities to perform due diligence on a product or brand they wish to endrose.

They should do due diligence to ensure that all description, claims and comparisons made in the advertisement they appear in or endorse are capable of being objectively ascertained and capable of substantiation and should not mislead or appear deceptive.

The veracity of the claims can be ascertained two ways. One is to do the background checks and research on their own. The claims in the past and futuristic claims are factored in.

Another way is approaching ASCI for assessing the claims. The query raised by the celebrity will be checked within ASCI and the veracity of claims will be tested. In order to have a deeper understanding, an expert can be called in. The findings will be presented to the celebrity. ASCI can make recommendations to relook at the claim in the light of the findings.

The findings can be used as a part of due diligence by the celebrity It builds up the case. It will allow to gauge the kind of  information the celebrity had access to with respect to the product or brand being endorsed.

A brand has to generate trust and loyalty and this is facilitated by the user generated content (UGC) in native advertising. There can be polls on the social media or contests. Native ads should be kept short and sweet. It does not mean that the brands cannot put the message across. They do by using strong headlines and relevant content. Native advertising is designed specially for mobile traffic, say for Instagram and Snapchat. Even if the content cannot be read on the small screen, they are likely to click on it and get the full message. As far as possible, native advertising should be designed for the platform it is used on. Social media are great platforms for native ads but they are cluttered. Publishers make available live video, 360-degree videos and virtual reality (VR). Consumers can now experience the content. The content becomes more engaging. Display advertising is being replaced by native advertising. The New York Times and BuzzFeed are monetising exclusively through native advertising. There are FTC guidelines for native advertising. The IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) is working for the standardisation of native advertising practices. Standardisation is the foundation of programmatic buying and selling.

Advertisers are now concerned about their ads appearing alongside offensive content on YouTube. The Times, a London-based newspaper ran a story in mid-March, 2017 about YouTube hate preachers sharing screens with household brand names. Ads are bought programmatically, that is automatically using algorithms. This technique allows brands to follow internet users wherever they spend time and direct ads specifically at them. Such targeted ads are okay, but should not neglect what content the ads appear next to. So far there is no filtering or blocking of inappropriate content on behalf of advertisers, though the technology to do so is available with third party firms such as Integral Ad Science. Advertisers can monitor ad placement, and there are tools for it. Organisations can choose key words so that they can stay away from certain contents. However, very few advertisers use such tools. In future, more advertisers may resort to such solutions.

The viewership of display ads is shrinking. Ad revenues are shifting to mobile friendly non-intrusive content ads. Widgets recommend content, and are used by the publishers. They are links such as You Might Like, Recommended for You, Sponsored Content or Around the Web. They appear below the stories so as to look an organic part of the story. These enable publishers to maximise the benefits of space available to them and make additional revenues.

The content recommendation networks in India are Taboola, Revcontent, Outbrain and Columbia. In fact, all major publishers in India use some kind of content recommendation widget. It is a clickbait.

Widgets improve the traffic and widgets are used to rent the real estate to other publishers and get paid when a reader clicks on one of these external links.

NDTV receives 80 percent revenues from the banner ads, while the remaining 20 per cent comes from Taboola. The publisher is not required to make any investment. Though the traffic is taken away from the site, still money is made when these links are clicked. ScoopWhoop receives 5-7 per cent of the total revenues from Taboola. Another 15 per cent comes from display ads. And 80 per cent from the branded content.

Content recommendation platforms work best for publishers who work on scale and reach a large number of people. These platforms are working closely with the publishers to enable contextualized and personalised content discovery.

EY conducted a study on social media marketing. Despite the presence of channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, brands still prefer a website to engage with the customers. They already consider mobile as the primary screen of choice. Most brands have mobile app and mobile friendly website. Digital ad spend is growing fastest. It grew by 47.5 per cent in 2016. Most brands prefer a 360 degree approach to communication, In digital space, content creation, sustaining engagement and measuring effectiveness are the three challenges. Brands may take a beating on social media, but they do not have plans to respond to such flogging. Instagram is becoming popular. Video viewing is the most preferred engagement. Brands have adopted programmatic. Instead of downloads, the metrics that could be applied to apps are measuring transactions and positive reviews. The same could be extended to content. Aggregated apps such as Chat bots may complement or substitute company apps in future.

In digital classifieds, there are players like JustDial, OLX and Quikr. The revenues in digital classifieds are likely to reach Rs. 7700 — 7900 crore by 2020 as per KPMG India and Google report. At present, the revenue stands at Rs. 2900 crore ( FY 15 ). The growth will be driven by e-services, real estate and automobiles.

At present, classifieds  sites earn either through advertising or through premium listings.

In business-to-consumer classifieds site, each listing has to pay Rs. 5000-Rs. 7000 per month. In consumer-to-consumer site more than 70 per cent revenue comes from advertising. An advertiser pays Rs. 200-Rs. 500 based on display of an ad.

An individual could be a creator of things as well as a consumer of things. Maker culture promotes learning through doing. Advertising business is affected by the maker culture. There is a shift of focus from just creating ads to making things, experiences, tech and content. Some agencies are making new technologies, apps, products that bring a brand’s idea to life, new distribution platforms and much more.

Volvo’s safety idea was manifested by the agency in a new way — Life Paint.Cyclists can spray the invisible paint onto their clothes, bikes, bags etc. It glows at night, making them visible in the dark. This paint is retailed at Volvo stores. It creates buzz for the brand.

Dominos agency made Twitter an ordering platform. It initiated Tweet-a-Pizza by twitting a pizza slice emoji.

Ad agencies have to treat the media as partners and collaborate with them. All brands do not require 360 degree communication. You have to target. And one has to try new things without being foolish. Always think in terms of what I can make.

As of March 2016, 122 million users in India are actively using mobile browsers with built in ad blocking. This is 55 per cent of Indian smartphone users. This provides new opportunities to the advertisers and marketers to adopt innovative communication methods .

Marketers and advertisers do not favour pop-up ads. These ads use data, and considering cost-conscious Indian audience, such ads are better avoided. Pop-ups should be visible only to those consumers who do not mind them, with carefully tailored content, targeting and timing. At the same time consumers are bombarded with generic ads such as pop-ups, pre-roll videos and broad banner ads. This is ineffective and unnecessary in the age of big data. Such spray and pay ads turn  people off and should be blocked! These should be replaced by more relevant ads.

Major sites are experimenting with ideas to avoid ad blocking. Some sites may restrict content access if users have ad blocker. Many publishers are investing in native advertising formats. The online ad quality must be improved.

The Federal Trade Commission ( FTC ) which is the consumer protection body describes native advertising as something  ‘marketers and publishers are using as innovative methods to create, format and deliver digital advertising. One form is native advertising, content that bears similarity to news, feature articles, product reviews, entertainment and other material that surround it online.’

They look like ‘ editorial ‘ — the same style, font, language and design. Journalists are hired to write the copy of native advertising. Either they are written in readable form or are watchable as videos.

Online advertising that is in the format of banners and display ads bring in pathetic revenues. They bring in a fraction of the money of a print ad. The screen size is also small. There are ad blocking softwares too. In such a scenario native advertising is contributing a lot to the growth of digital advertising. These ads using video are welcome for the youngsters. They fetch high CPM and attract rates just like print.

How to distinguish the editorial and advertising then? Is there a wall to divide these two? Readers are thus at the mercy of the media. What is sacrificed is objectivity and truthfulness. Perhaps, this is the price the readers pay for not paying for the news by subscription. If there is a disclosure that what you are reading or watching is an ad, it is okay. There should be a limit on its proportion, say 3 — 10 per cent of the total content. Disclosures are not prominent. If they are, the ads would not work. In the US, FTC has issued guidelines about how disclosures should be made. ASCI’s guidelines about honesty in representation and harmful products cover in its scope native advertising.

Online publishers, especially the new sites, are facing troubled times. There are two factors that trouble online publishers. Web advertising business as such was always unpredictable. It has become treacherous now. The traffic to websites have plateued. In some cases, it is falling. This happens after a decade of exuberant growth. It is a transition period — from internet of websites to the internet of mobile apps and social platforms ( such as Facebook). Besides this there is automated advertising and ad blocking tools. Monetizing the web has become problematic. Instead of the websites, people prefer the social media, and apps. Site visit is an unnecessary detour. Advertisers adjust their ad spend accordingly. In the first quarter of 2016, 85 cents of every new dollar spent on online advertising goes to Google or Facebook. It is a big power shift.