What Ails Online Advertising in India?
12 March, 2008
by Namrata Balwani, business director, Media2winThe relationship of many advertisers and the online medium in India has been a bit like a prince conquering a dragon. There is trepidation and nervousness prior to taking a decision to spend on the medium. This is followed by a tough battle of understanding what to do and how to determine ROI (return on investment). In the end, it’s victory for some who get results. But there is also defeat for those who have different expectations.
Some have an easier time than others. Financial brands, for instance, who benchmark the medium primarily for lead generation (i.e. collecting data of interested consumers by asking them to fill in their contact details in a form within an ad banner) can determine whether or not the medium is working through the quality of leads (by calling the interested consumers), the conversion to sales and the effective cost.
However, the internet is more than a direct marketing tool or a response mechanism. It’s a medium that can build brand awareness; build consumer engagement; reach consumers searching for information with a relevant product ad; create new brand language and ethos through social media marketing (social networking and blogs) and much more.
Measurement metrics is one of the most contentious issues plaguing internet advertising. We cannot compare online and other media by using the same measurement metric such as GRP (gross rating point), reach and frequency. All marketers love to see the numbers and ironically, given that this is the most measurable medium, one still doesn’t have research data to ‘sell’ a plan beyond unique visitors that come to a site such as Yahoo or Rediff. There is no 3rd party syndicated research that provides reach across demographics for a specific advertising plan. That’s something taken for granted on Press and TV.
Of course, once the user visits a landing page or a brand website, every activity is measured and can easily be analysed – something that no other medium can do. We can measure user interactivity and user interest i.e. how many people visit the website or view a viral film or how many forward to their friends or fill in the response form.
Do remember that it’s difficult to get the same number when it comes to mass media i.e. how many people read the print ad or shared with others. This is the key deliverable of the online medium and I believe that measuring 'interactivity' is far more critical and result-worthy. That should be the focus.
Therefore the media plan and the creative idea are even more strongly linked in the online space. The results in terms of user interactivity are dependent on a) the creative idea and execution b) the online media plan, websites and ad units chosen. It’s a bit different from a TV campaign where it stops at an ad TRP (television rating point). It’s difficult to quantify results beyond that i.e what happened after the ad was viewed.
This is a crucial difference – something that’s still a learning ground for many advertisers. Basic reproduction of mass media creative and leading to a page that does nothing to engage the visitor beyond information display is neither using the medium to its fullest potential nor is it delivering on the metrics. The 'interactive' element needs to be added. Creative and media both need to be integrated well.
If a marketer is still wary of using the digital space, I would say try it with a threshold budget depending on your needs, it will pay off and become an addiction. With over 30 million active internet users, and mobile internet also coming up, this is no longer a medium to ‘test’ but to integrate into the marketing plan. Some of the leading websites in India have more users than the total readership of leading English dailies! And the brand can directly interact with the consumer.
The internet is not a dragon to conquer; it’s a mesmerizing unicorn to run along with!
The biggest advantage of the internet is its panacea to the current working class' biggest bane :TIME. what online can do is initiate the fastest 'ACTION' to their advertiser's 'CALL'. owe it the power of online,its sheer interactivity and ability to let potential consumer look & feel at the service at a time when he has an interest in that particular service.
on the contrary, in the mass media, when i wanna watch a movie , i wanna watch a movie and not find out how many times a 'lover-boy' hubby calls his darling wife during the day....
Thank god advertising is personal again.......
we the Online ad Sellers and The Agencies need to wake up to the fact that if internet advertsing would be sold only on the basis of performance (CPC and CPA's) there would ne no growth in the Internet Display Market. How can an advertisers who spends 95% of its budget on offline media doesnt expect any performance from the campaign other than reach and frequency expects its 5% budget which it spend on internet to give him all the leads and conversions.
In the hurry to get whatever is available in the market, the publishers and Adgencies are bending over backwards to get business at ridiculous promises of acquistions and CPC's; completely ignoring the promise of Brand Building and catching the Eyeball of the most upwardly mobile TG -the guy on the inetrnet.
The CPM of 200-250 is consdered high by many clients and agencies unless its on Home Page or Logout...compare it with CPM of 10USD and above in most of the evolved economies in all tier 1 and 2 websites...where the large publishers flatly refuse any Performance campaigns.
I reckon that internet marketers should get together and stand up to any performance based non sense and treat and use internet as an extension of their media spends on Offline media.
Another way forward is that Internet Planner and Online ad Seller need to step out their Online Silos and engage the offline Media Strategy Planners and clients so that They can see the value of Internet as a huge brand building tool.
The dirty secret that no one talks about is Fraud both clickfraud and other associated fraud.
Nearly a year ago, I was promoting a new website aimed at the US market.
*All* our traffic was coming from a Google AdWords campaign. Yet when we saw the Google billing reports. It was consistently higher by 20% than the traffic were actually getting (and we were using google analytics to measure). Google denied anything and refused to do anything about it. Inspite of several reminders and requests. The Google account manager refused to take calls. This is inspite of spending nearly USD 100,000 with Google in less than 3 months. Good thing we realised this early.
Whether our competitors were indulging in malicious clicks or there were clickfarms at work, is something we never found out.
We changed business models after this and knocked off all internet advertising. We are doing very well, without it. Thank you very much.
Large publishers are rumored to consistently deliver fraudulent inventory (CPM and CPC). Whether it is auto-refresh on stock/portfolio pages or wholesale fraud.
The really sad part is, all this can be checked and without much difficulty.
*NO* one has checked and no one will, for it is our dirty little secret to keep. (Perhaps when I'm client side, I will do it)
Since it is measureable, it doesnt matter, is the attitude.
Measureablity doesn't mean accountability. Whoever believes so, is fooling himself.
To quote Namrata here " marketers love to see the numbers & ironically, given that this is the most measurable medium, one still doesn’t have research data to ‘sell’ a plan beyond unique visitors that come to a site such as a Yahoo or Rediff. There is no 3rd party syndicated research "
Well Namrata there is a 3rd Party that audits stuff and gives you lot of cool data : its called comscore , maybe your and other agencies in india could wake up to this fact ,this kind of ignorance is precisely what does not let your stuff sell as much or as fast as you want , wake up
That pretty much says it all. ComScore's system is fundamentally flawed because of its methodology, which focuses heavily on the most Internet-engaged demographic, is concentrated in the top 10 cities in India, and more or less completely ignores the fact that offices and cyber-cafe's account for an overwhelming component of India's Internet habits. No, sir, even if ComScore gave me their data for Free!, I'd have a very hard time believing them.
It would be helpful if you would dig a little deeper than the surface before declaring that other people are ignorant.
The digital industry is just a few years old in India.
Just wait for a year or two and I am sure we are on the right path.
First there was radio... the audio only medium, then came TV, with much joy now there is audio and the visual element to bring the user closer to the brand. Now that the online industry has arrived there is audio, video and that missing part of personalized advertising and interaction.
Its just a matter of time when every one want to be on the prime space on all the leading websites.
When TV came in TVC were made and slowly all the big brands wanted a spot in the primetime. Sooner even smaller companies wanted to shine in the primetime. Now it has become a standard for any new brand to come up with a good TVC before they launch the brand. The online medium has much more to offer than any other advertising medium.
Just wait and watch…i mean interact.
Yup,
tht true I agree. This media helps in getting the right eye balls in brand building.And an early adopter may click on one of these ads and have a sneak peak at this brand.
Hi
I am sure that the conversion of a typical financial product's online ad is minuscule.
Brand awareness, very much. This media helps in getting the right eye balls in brand building.
And an early adopter may click on one of these ads and have a sneak peak at this brand.
Still, surfers online are slightly wary of clicking online ad , thanks to the hype(?) on phishing,hacking etc.
And in some instances instead of clicking on a XYZ banner on home loans, would go directly to the website.
How sure can one be if the ad is from a trusted partner like a Google Adsense, a Tyroo etc.?
Nikhil Narayanan
I wonder, then, how pay-per-click advertising has already turned into a multi-million dollar industry in India.
While the actual numbers of conversion from online ads is lower than offline conversions (for obvious reasons of scale and volume), the click-to-conversion percentages are extremely compelling as evidence for finance advertisers. At any rate, it's possible to measure quite accurately what this figure is, compared to a television ad TRP, which is dodgy at best, and wildly inaccurate at worst.
You'd be surprised at the frequency at which people will click on an ad rather than bookmark a link - or worse, commit it to memory for future use. Plus, hacking/phishing is quite rare on advertising networks because these ads usually pass through a manual validation cycle before going live.
Most ad networks deliver ads with a tag identifying the source of these ads, so the validity of the ads is rarely an issue, if at all. The bigger question is one of fraudulent traffic, and how it can be detected and blocked upstream, rather than retroactively.
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