While WPP registered only a low single digit growth in the developed markets (5.1% in North America, 3.1% in Europe and just 2.3% in the UK), it grew by a whopping 29% in China and 22% in India as per the first half results announced by the agency.
On a separate note, G2, owned by WPP, is close to acquiring three small to medium agencies in the digital marketing space in India.
A testament to how strong the advertising industry (including online-digital advertising) are growing in India.
Probably not one of the best examples of targeted advertising. But none the less, I was quite surprised to find Yatra banner ads on TechCrunch. The ad seemed to appear as part of the TribalFusion ad network. Wonder if this was intented or just a fluke.
Yes, you read it right. Thats exactly what a ZenithOptimedia projection says. Internet advertising market in India was Rs 210 crores in 2006 and is likely to double to Rs 450 crores by end of 2007. The market is estimated to touch Rs 2250 crores by 2009, accounting for 6.8% of the entire advertising pie. Currently, Internet ad spend in India accounts for only 1% of the entire market.
These estimates seem a bit far stretched to me for a couple of reasons:
1) Broadband internet base is not growing at a meteoric rate
2) At the given time (mid 2007), there just arent enough publishers in India
via AgencyFaqs
While a storm brews in the US blogosphere on a controversial ad campaign from Microsoft, the second session at IAMAI’s Web 2.0 conference touched upon the topic of using blogs as a marketing tool in the Indian market (If you do not have the time or patience to sit through the 1 1/2 hour video, catch a brief summary at ContentSutra).
A couple of panelists, including Garima from Citibank, were of the opinion that ad banners on blogs were a bad idea. The rationale being that advertising on blogs disrupts the sanctity and integrity of blogs.
I strongly disagree. Majority of the Indian blogs already use Adsense as part of their blogs and as long as bloggers have a disclosure policy, I think ad banners on blogs are perfectly acceptable.
What do other Indian bloggers feel about this ? Also, as part of the blog audience, what do you think about this ? Should blogs have ad banners ?
US based online ad network, PayPod, will launch its ad Network in India in three weeks. Currently, they have been beta testing the service with WebDunia. The network will include both, online and mobile ads. The company is in talks with publishers such as Reliance and mobile developers such as Mobile2win and Bugzy.
via AgencyFaqs
In an interview with AgencyFaqs, Manish Agarwal, VP Marketing for Rediff, talks about the Indian Internet landscape, some of the challenges to Internet penetration and finally, some of the efforts Rediff is taking in the mobile VAS and Web 2.0 areas.
Some interesting tidbits -
In a question about the role of ad networks in India, Manish says -
What’s happening is that ad networks are playing a good role in creating a long tail. There are networks, for example, like Komli and Tribal Fusion, which are doing a good job. For example, Tribal Fusion has the USP of working with niche sites, it helps in targeting a very savvy and niche audience. It helps advertisers in planning their ad campaigns beyond Rediff or Yahoo. There are clients who look for that kind of audience. Whereas for us, it would be more of carpet bombing.
Responding to a question on whether there are sufficient publishers (websites) in India,
That’s what it seems like. If the number of publishers increases, more content will be created. As Ajit (Balakrishnan, Rediff’s CEO) rightly says, more publishers are the key to the growth of the industry. For example, we keep hearing about the advent of local languages on the internet. That can only happen when there is published content in the languages.
Finally, he also touches upon the topic of the actual number of Internet users in India. The IAMAI report (PDF) is pretty confusing in terms of ‘active Internet users’, ‘ever Internet users’ etc.
Read the entire interview here.
Business-standard has a story on Nautanki.tv and their efforts to become the video portal destination for NRIs. With about 100K hits per day, the portal has close to 40 per cent of its users from the US and UK. They recently also announced a program where Indian bloggers can participate in a revenue sharing agreement by displaying the Nautanki video player on their blogs. The company expects its revenues will touch Rs 12 crore by 2008 — yes you read it right – 12 crores 
.
One interesting caveat that the story highlights:
“The other common theme is that none of these players, including Nautanki.com, is keen on introducing user generated content (UGC) which is the most popular format on portals like Youtube and Yahoo video.”
Rest of story in BS.
At the recently concluded GoaFest2007, Frederic Joseph, regional CEO – EMEA and APAC for Zed Digital highlighted the significance of Internet as a critical advertising medium. Key summaries that I found of interest:
“With the expansion in digital media, the number of touch points is also increasing. Companies have to keep their eyes and ears open to be at the forefront of what’s happening and to know where their audience is shifting.”
Talking about Web2.0, and how UGC empowers the Internet user:
“They can be anything they want; they can be broadcasters, critics, news reporters, celebrities, cameramen, media owners, etc”
Talking about online advertising in India, he says:
“In India specifically, ad spends on the Internet formed only 1 per cent and were expected to go up to 3 per cent by the end of 2008.”
If the above piques your interest, you can read the rest of the story.
I have searched quite extensively for statistics related to online advertising in India – how big is the market, who are the biggest online Indian advertisers, which portals lead the segment, what kind of advertising is popular – CPM / CPC / CPA and finally – how much is the average CPM rate for these Indian portals.
The closest story I found related to my questions above was Anurag Gupta’s guesstimate.
Now, Businessworld has a story in its latest edition, which answers pretty much all the questions above.
Some interesting points:
Read the entire story here.
I’ll elaborate further on this post tomorrow. Till then, its over and out at my end. Enjoy !
