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Category: Digital Agencies

  • Digital will be core of ad budgets by 2020: DAN report

    Digital will be core of ad budgets by 2020: DAN report

    MUMBAI: The increasing penetration of digital media in India is creating huge opportunities for marketers to reach out to untapped audiences in newer ways than before. Marketers are getting innovative with the way they choose to advertise to their audience.

    As of 2017, the Indian ad industry stands at Rs 55960 crore and is estimated to grow with a CAGR of 11 per cent till 2020 to touch Rs 77623 crore. This growth will be driven by the smart phone revolution and the subsequent spends on digital advertising, according to the second edition of media and digital marketing communications company Dentsu Aegis Network’s (DAN) digital report that was launched yesterday.

    India is on the brink of transitioning into a digital economy with a big push from the government and the public private partnership model. The Indian government’s concerted endeavours to boost digitisation coupled with an array of economic reforms and policies have infused higher momentum into India’s participation in a digital economy. The telecom sector has contributed in equal measure — lower data rates, improved connectivity have put India on a path to a mobile revolution of sorts.

    The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) estimates the internet population in the country to hit 738 million by 2020. Currently India’s internet subscriber count stands at around 430 million. As per TRAI’s performance indicator report for July-September 2017, a total of 129 million rural subscribers and 300 million urban subscribers are connected via internet or broadband services. The tele-density in urban areas is 74 per cent whereas it is around 14 per cent in rural India.

    Ad spends have seen double digit growth rates in e-commerce, BFSI, automotive and telecom in 2017. Ad spends have seen the highest increase in e-commerce with 13 per cent and BFSI at 11 per cent. Television takes the largest share of media spends at 40 per cent (Rs 22526 crore) followed by print at 34 per cent (Rs 18981 crore) and digital media at 15 per cent (Rs 8202 crore).

    While spends on television will grow with a CAGR of eight per cent till 2020, its contribution to the advertising market has been on a decline. The digital ad industry is estimated to grow with a CAGR of 32 per cent by 2020 as advertisers are now adopting digital media as a branding medium, not merely a performance medium. The highest spender on digital is e-commerce followed by telecom and BFSI sector. The spends on digital video is expected to see the highest growth rate followed by display and social media. OTT and an engaging mobile experience will also help in driving the digital growth.

    DAN chairman and CEO South Asia Ashish Bhasin believes that digital is no longer a medium but a way of doing business. It is how consumers interact with brands. “The digital transformation is affecting every business and agencies and marketers who don’t recognise this will be left behind. Digital is a behavioural change taking place with the consumers, not just a way of building a brand. This is a critical difference many don’t understand,” he says.

    Brands are slowly shifting their marketing budgets to digital platforms as the digital medium becomes all pervasive and consumers increase time spent on this medium. Even though digital ad platforms have been instrumental in direct sales, so far they do not match up to traditional media when it comes to brand building. Brand building is largely happening through mature ad mediums such as TV rather than digital.

    Marketers are moving from purely mass-targeting platforms to a mix of traditional
    and digital platforms. This makes use of the relative advantages of both media for an optimal marketing strategy. Traditional media provides a better reach in comparison to digital media while the latter is unparalleled when it comes to measurability. When it comes to performance marketing, digital media has evolved as a powerful platform. The explosive growth of internet-enabled businesses such as e-commerce, digital wallets, etc., has also caused a shift of ad money towards this medium as businesses targeting consumers inclined to online transactions rely on digital ad platforms. Meanwhile, the smaller brands also prefer to make investments on digital platforms as compared to bigger brands it provides better return on investment (RoI).

    Automotive sector has had one of the highest growth in ad spends last year and is expected to spend a large majority of its ad budget on traditional media. Within digital, it distributes the budget across all ad formats. Growth in ad spends for e-commerce has been the highest and it spends the highest proportion of marketing budget on digital media and mostly on search and social media. Additionally, telecom also spends a high amount of its marketing budget on digital media but mostly on media and video.

    Marketing has been an ever-evolving field. It’s normally exposed to so many new technologies and is an early adopter for most of them. This happens because the consumer is nearly always a step ahead and the competition is stiff. Businesses today have to acquire and retain consumers extremely efficiently in the marketing process. There is a limit to how many line items a digital marketer can create and manage effectively at a human level. No matter how many segments our planners create, no matter how finely we slice and dice the data, it’s extremely difficult to connect all the dots. Here is where machines come in helpful.

    But the digital advertising industry is faced by several challenges like slow pace of digital transformation, lack of unified metric system, ROI on programmatic, ad frauds and the growing use of ad blocking softwares.

    Having said that, the future of digital advertising looks bright and optimistic with the rise in video content, engaging mobile experience, voice-based interaction, data science and machine learning and transformation in payment mechanism.

  • Vertoz shares gain in opening trade

    Vertoz shares gain in opening trade

    MUMBAI: It was a rare sight to witness at the bourse today when Vertoz Advertising became the first programmatic advertising company to be listed on National Stock Exchange this morning. The price for the public issue of 15.84 lakh equity shares was fixed at Rs 108 per share. Within the first 3 hours, the stock skyrocketed 21.6 per cent trading at Rs 129.6 after opening at Rs 116.

    Founded in 2012, Vertoz has offices worldwide with its global headquarter in New York, USA. It offers engaging and innovative advertising and monetisation solutions to clients as a better option to the traditional methods of media buying and selling. The company’s technology, advanced capabilities and programmatic platform makes for a highly scalable software platform that powers and optimises the marketplace for real-time trading of digital advertising inventory between advertisers and publishers.

    Indiantelevision.com got talking to the  company’s founders and CEO Ashish Shah and founders and chairman Hiren Shah where they spoke about the company’s growth, division of funds raised from the IPO, programmatic advertising in India and much more. Excerpts: 

    Why did Vertoz take the IPO route when most agencies prefer private investments or acquisitions?

    Ashish: We believe in doing different things rather than doing things differently. A lot of companies in our sector have gone through a private equity round and we did too had the same option but we chose to have an IPO as it helps in distributing the wealth in a better way. There are a lot of people in the company, investors, M&A, and all of that requires cash. Private equity wouldn’t have helped in solving that problem.

    What was the revenue of the company last year and how much has it grown? What is your projection for next year?

    Hiren: Our net revenue stood at Rs 20 crore in 2016 and at Rs 9 crore in Q1 2017. We are expecting revenue of Rs 30-40 crore in 2018. The way India is growing and with people moving to digital, we are expecting a huge growth in the segment. 

    Will you be looking at acquisitions going forward?

    Hiren: Yes, but we will be looking at acquiring companies and not getting acquired. We have a subsidiary in the US and other European countries for acquiring digital businesses. We will be using the funds raised from this IPO to acquire those businesses. 

    When can we expect that to happen?

    Hiren: Soon! It should happen in the second half of 2018. 

    When will you be listed on NSE completely?

    Hiren: It is mandatory for small and medium-sized enterprises to be listed on NSE Emerge for at least two years or four annual general meetings. Once we are able to comply with that, we will be listed on NSE, maybe in late 2019 or early 2020. 

    How do you intend to use the funds raised for the IPO?

    Hiren: We would be using around 70 per cent of the funds in inorganic growth and acquisition of businesses and the rest 30 per cent at a macro level on working capital of our business.

    Do you think the Indian media industry has understood programmatic advertising and are leveraging it to the best use as opposed to other markets? 

    Hiren: It is a long way to go for India as people here are still not aware about programmatic advertising. They still follow traditional methods of advertising and it was the case with the US as well but they have evolved in programmatic to a greater extent. India on the other hand, still needs to understand the core of it but with prime minister’s Digital India movement, programmatic will see better days. 

    How do you think will programmatic advertising shape up Indian media over the next few years, say by 2020?

    Ashish: India is a growing economy and is rapidly adopting various policies and changes for a future ready industry. We would be able to achieve what western countries have achieved in a quicker time. 

    How much do advertisers spend on programmatic now? How much is it in the west?

    Hiren: Advertisers shell out less than 5 per cent of the advertising spends and a major chunk still goes into traditional media. In western countries, this number is close to 60 per cent.

    When do you think will we be able to use programmatic advertising in radio?

    Hiren: Although programmatic advertising is already happening in radio and television in other counties, it would start in India very soon, maybe by 2019. Some radio players are using programmatic in jingles but that is only limited to online radio. 

    How will programmatic adverting shape up in India going forward?

    Ashish: programmatic is the need of hour and has huge potential in the ad world. Advertisers can take quick decisions on what they should do or change in their marketing communications. Although programmatic advertising will evolve in India, it will also change its form with various technologies coming in place.

    In western countries, in-house teams are created for this. Is it a challenge for agencies to sustain? 

    Ashish: I don’t see it as a challenge for agencies as it is just about economies of scale.Everybody has a room for everything.

  • Genpact recognised for analytics solutions & digital capabilities

    Genpact recognised for analytics solutions & digital capabilities

    MUMBAI: Genpact, a global professional services firm focused on delivering digital transformation for clients has announced that Everest Group has named Genpact as a “Leader” and “Star Performer” in its 2017 Analytics Business Process Services (BPS) Service Provider Landscape with PEAK Matrix™ Assessment. In North America specifically, Everest Group positioned Genpact as the market leader for Analytics Services market share.

    The report evaluates 18 providers of global analytics BPS on their market success and delivery capabilities. Everest Group cites Genpact as a dominant leader in the space for its broadened scope of advanced analytics solutions; strategic acquisitions such as Endeavour Technologies and PNMsoft; and digital capabilities in machine learning, cognitive computing, and Internet of Things.

    “Genpact has successfully used its existing accounts to grow its analytics business, putting to good use its expertise and experience in those industry verticals, and rising to become a Leader and a Star Performer,” said Everest Group practice director Anupam Jain. Its investments and partnerships, including those with academia, will allow Genpact to meet future client demands and stay competitive in the rapidly evolving analytics market.”

    Enterprises are shifting their approach to global analytics. To obtain a full picture of their entire businesses and gain greater insights, they are moving from piecemeal solutions to enterprise-wide, industrialized solutions. To be more effective, enterprises are partnering with one or two key strategic vendors to manage their company-wide analytics.

    Everest Group recognized Genpact’s analytics capabilities, flexibility, and customer responsiveness to improve business operations. Genpact helps enterprises harness data to transform operations to make smarter decisions and meet business goals.

    For example, Genpact used advanced analytics to help a consumer finance company acquire two million new customers by enabling more than 1,500 direct marketing campaigns. Genpact embedded analytics across marketing, risk, collections, and operations functions to generate $700 million of business impact for the client over ten years.

    “Our digitally-enabled analytics capabilities are pivotal in our ability to improve business operations and drive transformational value for our clients across industries,” said Genpact senior vice president and business leader – analytics and research Rohit Tandon. “Through our distinctive Data-to-Insight-to-Action approach, we help enterprises become more competitive. During 2016 alone, Genpact’s analytics interventions generated over $2 billion in annual impact for clients in support of their growth initiatives.”

  • 11% TV & 7% digital ad growth in ’16, says Smriti Irani

    11% TV & 7% digital ad growth in ’16, says Smriti Irani

    NEW DELHI: The ministry of information and broadcasting received a total of 280 complaints on misleading advertisements during the period 2015 to 2017 as on 30 June, the Parliament has been told.

    Information and broadcasting minister Smriti Irani said an advisory had been issued by the ministry on 21 August 2014 advising all TV channels not to telecast advertisements, which were found to be violating provisions of Cable Television Networks Rules, 1994, the Advertising Standards Council of India Code and also Drugs & Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisement) Act 1954.

    Irani said the report of Indian media and entertainment industry 2017 released by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI-KPMG) showed that there was a total growth of 11.2 per cent in 2016 as compared to 2015 in advertising in the industry. Of this, there was a growth of 11 per cent in television and seven per cent in digital advertising in 2016 over 2015.

    The Department of Consumer Affairs has established a ‘Grievances against Misleading Advertisement’ (GAMA) portal, through which a common man can lodge a complaint against misleading advertisements. These complaints are processed by Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) under an MoU with the department of consumer affairs.

    The total number of incidents/complaints received by department of consumers during the 2015-16 to 2016-17 is 3368.

    The ASCI self-regulates advertising content to monitor and decide on complaints against advertisements making misleading, false and unsubstantiated claims.

    Also Read:

    Smriti Irani gets additional charge as MIB minister

    Guest Column: M&E industry in India: 5 not-to-be-missed trends

     

  • Faber-Castell’s India digital mandate bagged by Prodigitz

    MUMBAI: Faber-Castell, a leading stationery products company, recently handed its digital mandate to Prodigitz, a Mumbai-based full-service digital agency.

    Said Nisha Sara Jose, Category Head at Faber-Castell India, “Faber-Castell’s four pillars: competence & tradition, outstanding quality, innovation & creativity along with social & environmental responsibility form the basis of what we do and how we do it- both within the company and in its dealing with external stakeholders. As we’re looking to further build our brand in the Indian market, we are keen on engaging with our technologically & digitally advanced audience, through a medium that they are most connected with.”

    Khushboo Tulsiani, CEO, Prodigitz, said, “Our approach has always been to first understand the business goals that drive the marketing objectives, evaluate it in it’s entirety and then create a digital strategy that utilises the medium for its strenghts to deliver results.”

  • Jio & Uber partner to enhance digital experience

    MUMBAI: Reliance Jio and Uber have announced a strategic partnership aimed at bringing the benefits of Jio Digital Life ecosystem to their users.

    As part of the partnership, Jio and Uber will work together and explore various opportunities to progressively enrich and enhance the digital life experience of their users through complementary programmes.

    Today JioMoney, the PPI wallet offered by Reliance Payment Solutions Ltd, and Uber announced an agreement that will enable Uber riders to pay for their rides using JioMoney and thereby enhance the digital transaction ecosystem in India. Similarly, JioMoney users will soon be able to request and pay for Uber rides from within the JioMoney app. The partnership will give a major boost to cash-free payments in India and provide mobility options to millions of Jio users.

    Starting today, Uber will gradually rollout the JioMoney payment option for its users across the country. This integration provides a hassle-free payment experience to Uber riders and will be an added avenue for digital transactions for JioMoney’s rapidly growing user-base across India.

    JioMoney business head Anirban S Mukherjee said, “Jio aims to bring the benefits of evolving digital technologies to every Indian through an entire ecosystem that will allow Indians to live Digital Life to the fullest. JioMoney is an integral part of the Jio ecosystem and is fast emerging as a preferred option for digital transactions due to its ease of use, intuitive interface and growing acceptability. JioMoney’s integration with Uber will power the rapid migration of many more Uber transactions to the digital platform.”

    Uber India and emerging markets chief business officer Madhu Kannan said that “We are delighted to partner with Reliance Jio to unlock synergies across two of the largest user bases in India. Digital payments have become part of our everyday lives and by integrating JioMoney as a payment option, our riders will have the ability to use a familiar and consistent payment experience. Through this strategic partnership we are looking to fast forward to digital solutions at scale for the Indian users.”

    To celebrate the association, JioMoney and Uber will offer exclusive incentives to every user paying for Uber rides through JioMoney. The users of JioMoney will enjoy the hassle free payment experience of JioMoney at multiple avenues along with attractive offers and coupons available through JioMoney app.

  • Digital campaign: Red Chillies wins ‘CMO Asia’ awards

    MUMBAI: Red Chillies Entertainment bagged two awards for Dear Zindagi’s brilliantly executed digital marketing campaign at the CMO Asia’s Social Media Marketing Awards. The marketing team won two titles for the film that included- ‘Best Viral Marketing Campaign’ & ‘Best Use Of Social Media In Entertainment Industry’.

    The film released on 25 November 2016 and was very well received by the audience across the world. Starring Alia Bhatt and Shah Rukh Khan, the film tracks the story of a 20s something girl trying to figure out her life. It reflects the mind space of today’s youngsters and they formed the target audience of the film. The digital medium became a preferred marketing platform to reach out and appeal to the young, urban millennial.

    Red Chillies is always known to break the paradigm of movie marketing and the makers of the film decided to do away with releasing a single trailer and launched Dear Zindagi Takes – 5 short teasers which gives unique insights about the movie. These were named very uniquely to capture the essence of each video and main protagonist’s life aspects.

    Talking about the win at CMO Asia awards, Red Chillies Entertainment head of marketing Binda Dey said, “The strategy was to focus on building a more casual and relatable communication to engage the digital natives. The proposition was communicated through narratives and storytelling instead of in-your-face promotions across all innovations and integrations, that led to organic share-ability and word of mouth”

    Red Chillies Entertainment, along with their digital agency, Flarepath made use of various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Tinder and YouTube to generate awareness and buzz among the target audience and amplified it with a blogger outreach program.

    Dear Zindagi was the first Bollywood film ever to collaborate with the popular dating platform Tinder where the main protagonist’s profile was launched and users who matched were given a chance to party with Alia Bhatt.

    Since the consumption of video content on the Internet is huge amongst Indian millennials; the marketing team associated with different content creators including TVF, Culture Machine, ScoopWhoop, Tinder and Miss Malini to launch multiple promotional videos.

    Overall, the campaign created 2.6 billion + impressions only across various social platforms. In the campaign period of 49 days, there were a total of 29 Twitter trends including India and Worldwide. These numbers and the awards certainly prove that content and creative experimentation can change the dynamics of any given campaign.

  • Collegedunia tops at India Digital Awards

    MUMBAI: Collegedunia, one of India’s largest college information aggregator and review site, has bagged first rank at the 7th edition of India Digital Awards organized by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI). The Award Ceremony was accompanied by 11th India Digital Summit, which is the premier digital event of the country.

    Collegedunia, India’s largest College Information Aggregator and Review site of India, bagged first rank at the 7th edition of India Digital Awards organized by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI). The Award Ceremony was accompanied by 11th India Digital Summit, which is the premier digital event of the country.

    This 7th edition of India Digital Awards, which was a part of 11th India Digital Summit, held at The Lalit Hotel, New Delhi, was attended by an audience full of Founders and Co-Founders of numerous successful startups. Collegedunia.com had been nominated for the Education category in the Website Awards genre.

    India Digital Summit is an annual event organized by IAMAI and is attended by startup enthusiasts from all over the country. With an aim to spread awareness and an agenda to discuss numerous pre-defined topic over some expert sessions, the event has received success in its old editions. The 11th edition also remained one of the biggest events of the nation.

    The summit acted as a playground for more than 1,500 Senior Executives from companies spread in genres including Mobile Tech, AdTech, Consumer Tech, Cloud Services, Digital Payments, Digital Startups, etc. Flow of knowledge took place during the summit in the form of keynote speeches by founders and co-founders of services like PayTM, Freecharge, Flipkart, Saavn, etc. which was followed by the much-awaited Award Ceremony.

    The 7th edition of India Digital Awards constituted nominations spread across seven categories and 38 sub-categories. The jury comprised of personalities spread throughout the genres of the awards who ranked the nominations based on the various parameters laid down. The awards surely do provide the top-performers, a totally different outlook in the world outside.

    Collegedunia bagged the first position in the category it was nominated for Sahil Chalana, founder of Collegedunia Web Pvt. Ltd. overwhelmingly said, “Education industry has a scope of tremendous growth and development. It must always be remembered that providing best-suited information to the seekers should be the aim of every such company.” He added, “The company has been able to grow exponentially and always aims at growing further. For the company being at such a young age and making this achievement is something that I feel pride in.”

    Collegedunia has aimed at providing detailed information about numerous colleges and courses and also provide free counselling to students who are confused by this huge plethora of options. The website plays host to information of more than 20,000 colleges and 5,000 courses. The information is updated regularly so that each student could get the exact information he needs through this medium.

    With a dynamic growth model, Collegedunia has become the largest of its kind in this genre and is continuously setting new benchmarks for the others to achieve. The daily traffic on the site is averaged at three lakh visits per day.

    The mobile app variant of Collegedunia is also flagging on heights of success as it has reached a number of 100,000 installs and the numbers are growing further. The Live Counselling session is also being extended to WhatsApp version for a further outreach.

  • iProspect wins IAMAI’s ‘digital’ silver

    MUMBAI: iProspect India, the digital agency from Dentsu Aegis Network has been bestowed with the prestigious title of ‘Digital Agency of the Year’ (Silver) at the Internet & Mobile Association of India’s (IAMAI) 7th Digital India Awards.

    iProspect India won a total of 3 trophies – 1 Gold and 2 Silver. Apart from the coveted award of Digital Agency of the Year (Silver), iProspect India bagged 2 more awards, cementing its position as one of the leading digital agencies in the country – Gold for its innovative technology that integrates offline and online, iPump for Abbott Healthcare in the Omni-channel Campaign Management & Marketing Automation category and Silver for its Apollo eDoc Getting Discovered campaign for Apollo Hospitals in the Search Marketing Campaign category.

    Moreover, the company saw 3 more nominations in the following categories for its successful campaigns.

    Display campaign:

    1. The Smart Display Banner – Max life Insurance

    2. Simple Makes Sense – Aegon Life Insurance

    Search Marketing Campaign:

    1. Winning the SEO Game – Myntra

    Marking the achievement, DAN Performance Group CEO Vivek Bhargava said, “We live in a digital age today and if brands want to remain relevant, they have to embrace digital. With path-breaking digital campaigns being delivered by our team, the last year has been a good one for us. We are thrilled by the victory and this pushes us to raise the benchmark in the coming years as well. This is a result of over 300 professionals at iProspect who come to work every day and give it all they have – I congratulate each one of them on this feat. What makes this accomplishment all the more special is that it comes from a respected industry body like IAMAI and a stellar jury panel with some of the most eminent names in the trade.”

    Expressing her delight, iProspect India Rubeena Singh CEO said, “We are a 20 year old digital agency, but have consistently evolved, transformed and innovated with changing times, a dynamic industry and progressive client demands. Macro trends indicate that access and availability of technology is shifting media spends from traditional media to digital media. The last year especially has seen some great creative campaigns from iProspect, seeking to solve business problems for our clients through digital. IAMAI is the last word in the ad and marketing sector and this validation from them is extremely encouraging.”

  • IPG Interactive Avenues ‘best agency’: IAMAI

    MUMBAI: The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) has named IPG Mediabrands’ full service digital agency, Interactive Avenues (IA), the Best Digital Agency of the Year for the fourth time in a row.

    The seventh edition of IAMAI’s India Digital Awards was part of the 11th India Digital Summit held in New Delhi yesterday. IAMAI is a not-for-profit industry body, which is mandated to expand and enhance the online and mobile value added services sectors.

    At the 2017, India Digital Awards, Interactive Avenues won four Gold (including the Best Digital Agency of the Year), 1 Silver and 2 Bronze trophies. The agency picked the Gold awards for Reckitt Benckiser’s Display Campaign, Johnson & Johnson’s Search Marketing Campaign and American Express Email Marketing Campaign. It picked the Silver award for Coca Cola India’s Social Media Marketing Campaign. The agency grabbed the 2 Bronze awards for Samsonite Most Innovative Use of Content and Jockey’s Search Campaigns.

    “Last year when we picked up this trophy for the third time, it seemed liked a momentous occasion in our journey as an agency. But winning this award for the 4th time is really gratifying and reinforces our belief in the kind of work we are doing and the value we are adding to our client’s business”, said, Interactive Avenues CEO Amardeep Singh.

    “IPG Mediabrands’ commitment in bringing in the most cutting edge tools and techniques to India has made Interactive Avenues the most future ready digital agency in the country We have India’s largest end-to-end social management infrastructure & teams, the most advanced data analytics and programmatic platforms and listening centres and several proprietary research tools”, added Singh.

    IA is the fastest growing company under the IPG Mediabrands India umbrella with a 4-year CAGR of about 40 per cent. In 2016, Interactive Avenues added several new businesses including FunOKplease, IDFC Bank, Angel Broking, Wockhardt Hospitals,Saint Gobain and Saregama. This is in addition to the integrated businesses like Johnson & Johnson, Gionee and Tourism Australia.