Category: Advertising

A brand has a purpose. It is the reason for which it exists. It is the reason why people buy it. Content is an opportunity to establish the relevance of the  brand and articulate brand purpose. Here some feel that an opportunity to sell is sacrificed but it is sacrificed to tell people about the brand. A company has to build the affinity with the brand. This connect helps. The story telling is a connection tool that has been used by people over a long time.

Content talks to all, and not just consumers. People participate in a brands journey. Consumers simply have a transactional relationship with the brand. Content provides an opportunity for conversation and participation.

Content facilitates the brand to play to its potential.

In the 1980s, advertising and marketing was all gut and feel and there was little quantitative back up. It worked. There were less number of products. The media options were limited. The pace of life was slow. The consumers were easily satisfied.

In the early 1990s, we came across the word clutter. Computerisation was adopted. Mass media proliferated. There were multiple satellite channels. Brands galore. Markets were competitive. There was globalisation. Traditional marketing and advertising was stretched to a breaking point. There was advice on breaking the clutter.

Internet revolutionised the whole scene. The whole world  changed. E-commerce and e-tailing, new methods of payments, mobile telephony and social media all descended on us in quick succession. It was not a downpour, it was a deluge. It was a deluge of information — a mass distraction hither to unheard in human history.

Prior to the advent of internet, advertising was already disrupted by bifurcating itself into distinct creative and buying functions. WPP  and its clones focused on media planning and buying. All this was highly quantitative and optimisation models were the order of the day.

Creative agencies did design highly creative campaigns but the dissemination of such communication became the sole preserve of the media agencies. These agencies worked out the targeting (of messages to audiences ), how efficiently the audiences could be reached and how media buying could be done in bulk so as to extract the best and lowest prices for the clients from the media owners.

This brave new world of the last 30 years has new challenges. It is necessary to keep the brands alive. Consumption is the king and brands unite the consumers. Despite the clutter, consumers spot what they want. They spread the word. They in fact own the brands. They market them. Social media facilitates this consumer-driven marketing.

Even today, marketing cannot sell a bad product. The challenge is not marketing but product management. The product should be so compelling that marketing and selling are rendered superfluous. The job of marketing is to inform the consumers that what you need exists. This should be done in as exciting a way as possible.

 

 

 

 

 

More than a third of mobile programmatic traffic is at the risk of fraud. Multiple banners are stacked on top of each other, while only one could be effectively seen. This is called impression fraud. A bot can generate huge number of clicks.This is called click fraud. A postback event can be stimulated to fake an install or a post-install event. This is installation fraud. Fraudsters also work around the objectives the advertisers are seeking so as to satisfy them. In programmatic, without bidding, data pattern is analysed to detect fraud. As programmatic evolves, fraud prevention at the impression level, will be easier.

In the 1980s, IIMs used to supply the manpower to advertising industry. Later came MICA in 1991 in Ahmedabad, which was founded by the late A G Krishnamoorthy of Mudra. Lintas launched a few years later at Khandala, Northpoint Centre of Learning. Since then, there was a lull till recently when the current crop of new schools have appeared on the scene. Indian School of Design and Innovation ( ISGI ) has been set up by Radha Kapoor and Siddharth Shahani at Lower Parel, Mumbai. They also run ISDI WPP School of Communication. Miami Ad school has been set up in Mumbai by Ravi Deshpande for teaching graphic design. Pralhad Kakkar School of Branding and Enterpreneurship  ( PKSBE ) in Mumbai teaches ad film making and branding. They run a one year course in ad film making and branding and a two-year fellowship in business and entreprneur at a cost of Rs.12 lac per annum.

Branded content is made by specialised agencies such as Truly Madly and The ViralFever ( TVF ). Most advertisers still consider TV as a premium medium and will not pay even a fraction of the TV spends for online video production. Some online videos may hit a sixer. They go viral too. They are much more effective than TV Commercials. Branded content is a whole new animal. It may work for a certain market community or genre, and may not work for the other. In content marketing, brief is not sacrosanct. The production may deviate from the brief. Key online content creators would charge a couple of years ago around Rs. 5 lac for a video. The price has now risen to Rs. 25 lac per video. The top players reap high margins because the production cost has not increased much. These creators are not motivated by money alone. An advertiser must pitch the brand relevance to them. They can then pitch ideas for you.

Advertising was a mad world, and the business was entrusted to mad men. Of late, advertising is shifting to maths men. Big Blue has built Interactive Experience the world’s largest digital agency. Deloitte has set up Deloitte Digital and Accenture has started Accenture Interactive. Sapient has entered the digital arena. A single click provides the brand experience that has been promoted meticulously through brand story in mass media. There has to be a consistency between what is being promoted and the brand experience on the digital media.

Tech firms bring their capability in analysis and insights. They can guide the company in new product development. They can be true marketing partners to the CEOs. Tech firms formerly used to hire engineers and MBAs, but these days they hire designers. Design thinking is the in-thing. Tech firms in ad business just do not rely on intuition. They rely more on science.

It does not mean the death of the large agencies, but it means the death of the working style of the large agencies.

Still the tech giants are not the first port of call for marketing solutions. However, things are changing very fast.

Digital agencies are dealing with CMOs and CFOs. They use technology to understand and discover user preferences and then deliver the right level of experience.

In design thinking the approach is not piecemeal but holistic. There could be a new way of discovering a problem and finding its solution. In selling diapers, you can use the whole processers of conception, delivery and growing up of the baby. In this process of rearing up the child, you may need diapers, wipes and gripe water. The foundation is big data which is analysed to understand the problem.

Digital customer is connected. It has led to the changes the way digital marketing is handled. As usual customers are not interested in the hard sell. They would like to know how far that works for them. Video marketing is a tool to achieve this. To break the clutter, the customer is inclined to press the play button. This trend of video marketing is of recent origin. Business to business marketing used video to attract the audience and to distinguish the message. In 2015, Facebook played over eight billion videos. Internet traffic in future is going to stream videos increasingly. Video enhances the journey of the customer. It is not plain advertising but is storytelling. Videos should be convincing. They should be kept short and suggest the steps which ultimately lead to action. While scrolling the feed, videos now auto play without the audio. Therefore, the initial visuals must be attention grabbing. Videos based on emotions have a more lasting impact on the consumers. The campaigns are becoming participative.

Native advertising is that advertising that matches the form and function of the platform on which it appears. It is so indistinguishable from the other editorial matter. It is mostly online, but is feasible elsewhere too. Generally, native advertising assumes the form of an article or video produced by an advertiser for promotional purposes which match the editorial content. Native here refers to the content coherence. It blends with the surroundings. Somewhere in order to avoid deception, it is indicated in corners, or at the bottom of the ad that it is an ad. This is called disclosure. The Hall Mark of Fame series which first appreared in 1951 is an earliest instance of native advertising. Mostly these ads are publisher produced brand content. The ads that appear along side the search results are native to the search experience. All promoted tweets, stories and posts on social media are native marketing. It is a moot point whether content marketing is native advertising or not.

An ad that is hard to identify as an ad performs better against ad blockers. The disclosures make it easier to block.

Native advertising is highly contextual and audience-centric. It is not much brand-centric. Readers themselves reject the content that sound like a sales pitch. This applies to blogs and content marketing. It is important to know where not to advertise. Or else it leads to brand dilution.

It all boils down to the creativity of the marketer. The communication should add value to the online user’s experience.It should be integrated and relevant. It does so through storytelling.

At the same time, it is important to monitor and track the results. In the light of this feedback, we can modify the ad and improve upon it.

In measuring the effect of the native content, it is important to focus on emotional aspects. The traditional metrics just measure the clicks, and emotional impact is underreported.

Native ads are used to connect with the consumers at a deeper level. They are not short term tactical tools.

Native ads are consumed across multiple platforms — from TV to online to mobile apps. Each brand cannot build campaigns for multiple platforms.

Native ads can use fixed slots, but the better idea is to create these ads dynamically based on user interaction.

To buy native inventory over exchange is challenging. Its major inventory is with the publishers. If negotiations are held with the sales team of the publishers, the ability of the advertisers to negotiate is reduced. It is for the publisher to decide how much advertising-driven content is to be allowed. It is necessary for them to maintain editorial integrity. There should not be content mismatch too.

According to the research project of Science of Engahament ( SoE ) sponsored by BBC, some facial coding techniques have been explored. The maxim is that ‘your face never lies’ holds true.The project measured an individual’s unconscious response to native content. Well-excuted native content is trusted and persuasive. It does exercise emotional impact.

Native ad clients must collaborate with the publisher and must be ready to devote time, effort and resources.

Branded content must be informative and be in tune with the interest of the users.There should be transparency in disclosures. The content must be compelling. It should be consistent across the platforms. They should not be distractive, demanding attention but must sync with the editorial content. There should be experiemantation with content and formats.

arketerailabommendd the deadhich eSince we have entered the Internet age, online ads have become an integral part of our lives. It is necessary to understand the variety of online ads available. The following discussion explains the categories of online ads.

Google Search Ads

These ads appear alongside the results of our searches. Here the search is initiated by putting a key word in the box, and the results are displayed. The ads appear on the side. These ads are pay-per-click ads (PPC ) and are managed by Goole AdWords Platform. Advertisers bid for key words through this platform. Advertisers provide the crafted ads and set budgets. An advertiser has to create Google AdWords account to advertise here.

AdWord Ads

These are similar to search ads. These also use AdWords platform. Many blogs subscribe to AdWords to get advertisement.

PPC Ads

Pay-per-click ads are priced on the basis of the number of clicks an ad receives. AdWords and BigAds both generate Pay-per-click ads.

Bing Ads

These are similar to Google ads since they too are on pay-per-click basis. Bing was formerly called Microsoft adCenter. Here too just like AdWords,one has tocreate a Bing Ads account.

Facebook Ads

Social media have emerged as big ad platforms, and carry different forms of ads.

Marketplace ads appear as side columns of the Fle for acebook. The elements we see are the headline, copy and an image. Another method is to have promoted posts which are ads that permit advertisers to pay a flat rate to promote a single post on the Facebook business page. Such promoted posts have a wider reach. A user’s interaction with an advertisers page or product page is shown to the user’s friends and larger network through sponsored stories. These stories appear in a user’s newsfeed. Facebook Exchange ( FBX ) are remarketing ads, which considers a user’s surfing habits to project ads to the precise target audience.

Twitter Ads

Twitter ads are the paid boosts. Brands use these to extend the reach of the tweets, promote hashtag and get more followers.There are promoted tweets to have a wider reach. There are which show up more frequently in the Who to Follow recommendation feature. Promoted trends put the custom hashtag in Trends Bar. That attracts additional attention.

Tumblr Ads

There are several formats of Tumblr ads. Tumlr Radar and Spotlight are sponsored  feature in highlights of unique content and accounts. These sponsored web post ads — are pieces of Tumblr content crafted by advertisers. These appear on dashboard feed of the users.A dollar sign distinguishes these as ads. To advertise on Tumblr, one has to become Tumbl sponsor.

Banner Ads

Theses ads are placed on the side, top or bottom and are image-based. They are of different sizes and designs. They appear in blogs, web sites and communities. Some websites brokerage the ad space with Ad Exchanges ( Google Display Network ). Alternatively, these ads can be bought directly.

Google Display Ads

These are banner ads too in a context and are used in Google Display Network. YouTube, Gmail, Blogger are part of the Network. Display ads can be text-based or image-based. They can be viseo too. Online ads through Google Display Network can be served using Google AdWords.

Retargeting Ads

These lure a user into the site. They are similar to Google Remarketing ads. These use the past web history of a user. A user surfs a site, say of the advertiser. He then moves to other sites. The ads then can appear. These are better than regular banner ads.

Flash Ads

Flash ads are also banner ads which use Flash design. It may have interactive feature to lure a user. These days Flash is used subtly, rather than going overboard.

Reddit Ads

Reddit ads have the elements of headline, destintion URL, and an optional image. These are bid-based. Advertiser sets a budget and time-frame. There are unique targeting options. Users can vote — either upvote or downvote in the comments section. This feedback goes to the advertiser directly. Reddits are frequented by young tech savy audience. Reddit is risque too. If properly executed, they arrest the attention economically. One can advertise on Reddit through their website.

Mobile Ads

These ads appear on smart phones. tablets or any other mobile device. Social media, websites and apps have a unique mobile version. In Google AdWords, one can avail of Enhanced Campaigns to place ads on mobile devices.

In Game Ads 

These ads appear in computer or video games. In sport games, there are billboards. Brand names appear as status symbols.

AdMob Ads

These ads appear in mobile apps. AdMob is Google’s mobile platform. Game creators can benefit, if the games are free, by offering ad space. Advertisers get ad spots. The format could be interstitials using rich HTML5 or image-based banner ads.

E-Mail Ads

While sending web mail, these ads can be offered. These could be notifications of promotions, price discount schemes, or new features. Images are large and text minimum. Message should be clear and concise. The subject line must be compelling. E-mail ads could be spammed under the Spam Act, and so the provisions of the Act have to be complied with.

G-Mail Ads

Google’s email service is called Gmail. Here contextual ads are placed. These are generated by an automated process.

Video Ads

Videos are becoming popular, as the Internet speeds pick up. There is no blatant advertising, but the branded content that subtly associate the product with the story. Humorous video ads too perform well. They use video ad network, and add an element of interactivity.

YouTube Ads

This is video sharing site of Google where ads appear. After the take over of YouTube by Google, advertising on it has become easier. There are several targeting options and several formats. There could be banner ads, in-video overlay ads, in-stream video ads which are video ads that appear before or during YouTube video, and many other set-ups.

Pinterest Ads

These are pieces of content pinned by brands and advertisers. These ads have a dollar sign before the price indicating that the product is available for sale. The pinned item is linked to the official product page. Even contests can be arranged on Pinterest. A marketer has not to pay anything to Pinterest but production of the ad itself could be time and effort consuming.

Instagram Ads

Officially there are no Instagram ads, but creative Instagram pics which could be shared with the user-crafted content has advertising value.

Vine Ads

These are just like Instagram ads. Officially they are not ads. But brands produce vine videos that serve as content-based ads, and coalesce with user crafted content. Good vine ads are 6-second content that stand out and often stop-motion techniques are used.