Interactive Marketing Blog

Lately, I’ve been talking to few of the advertisers/clients (disclosure: I’m not into selling ads or represent any digital agency) who have been looking for newer avenues to plug in their hard toiled money to earn enough from each buck spend. But they are bit skeptic about how to go into the digital space. While in the discussion I was trying to figure out the root problem to their media attention dilemma. What I gained is quite simple – primarily, problem in Indian perspective lies more into data, figures and numbers.

In India, we are situated in the midst of Kalahari desert in terms of dearth of enough authentic numbers and figures which can convince advertisers to push money into digital. Some of the discussion also led to the point where I was being convinced that India with a population of 1.2 billion people don’t have enough online junta who can justify the digital spend. Offhand, I do agree with it. But if we talk about influence, spending capability and purchasing proclivity, then surely digital can mend some of the failures that mainstream media were never able to achieve for the last decade or so.

What would give a big push to digital industry is a no-brainer. Yes, you got it right if we are in the same plane till now. Government has to be the catalyst – not only in providing stimulus (like standardizing broadband usage in terms of reach but also in the pricing game) but also providing a central agency (if possible) in providing legitimate statistics in terms of usage pattern, demographics etc. But still, if we take the latest numbers that are out in the public purview and average it out, then we have around 50 million internet users amongst which about 80% are youth i.e. from age-group 18-35 which accounts to about net 40 million youth internet users who are hooked into this space and definitely show a proclivity in terms of buying intention (be in through virtual trade fair, online shopping or even clicking data centric ads for information).

While I was mulling over these thoughts, today I went through some interesting stats from Alley Insider. You can see their presentation here (A must recommend). These stats provide insider view of whatever is happening in digital media space (primarily in US) and how things are changing at the pace of lightning. And I find no reason as to why it won’t happen too in Indian digital media scenario. Listed below are some of the key takeaways of a study they undertook which covers 80 ad campaigns from more than 50 brands tracked across 200 of the most trafficked sites of the web today:

• The Click Isn’t Everything – Currently, rich media CTR average about 0.1%, with entertainment sites having the highest CTR’s at 0.17% and Financial services having the lowest at 0.06%. Also, 80% of display ads clicks come from less than 20% of the internet population, indicating that clicks are not necessarily as relevant to brand advertisers.
• Display Impacts Search 4 weeks after Exposure – According to ComScore Analysis, there was more than a 50% lift in ‘Net users’ conducting a query on a brand term one week after exposure to the display ad. After 4 weeks, the lift was around 38% which is still significant. Indeed, a month after viewing the ad, 30% of  ‘Net users’ actually visited the advertiser’s site.
• Branded Display improves advertiser site engagement to a degree of 12 minutes more per unique visitor than when the branded content was not shown.
• Branded Ad Campaigns improve eCommerce spend by an Average of 7%

So the conclusion is: When exposed to branded ads, the impact may be direct or immediate, but there appears to be strong evidence that users engage better and transact more with brands once they have been exposed to them. With new/larger ad formats and the potential for richers ad formats in sponsored search results, the efficacy improves.

Now, some may proclaim that these are stats for US markets. Agreed! But what I’m trying to tell is between the fine prints. We still don’t have any definite identifiable organization who produces such research other than just generalized stats which we usually come across. And I find no reason why Indian digital space would be that vastly different from any other developed markets.

Pic Credit: Swaheel