Social Networking is the most important factor of growth of internet in India a Juxt Consult survey found that nearly 50% of traffic in India is related to Social networking. Orkut has been the one website which has driven the internet growth in India over last three years and has taken the Internet to the masses.
It has also been the primary focus of Google's product development team in India and they have introduced bunch of features to continue its growth like adding pictures and videos and introducing tighter privacy features this while may have arrested the migration to other networks but it also seemed to have led to the peaking of Orkut.
If you look at the Google trends for India search Orkut's searched seem to be declining of late. If we compare it to know if there is some migration to other popular social networks in India like Bigadda or Facebook then on the basis of search comparison it doesn't seems to be so.
though exact number of users on social networks are not available A comparison of Internet Statistics for major Indian Social networks
Orkut
16.76% of Orkut users are Indian which means greater than 12 million profiles are from India. Not all of whom would be active. Alexa's India ranking 4
Facebook
Facebook's advertising platform shows that there are only 600,000 users from India. Alexa's India ranking 11
Myspace
Alexa's India ranking 89
Minglebox
Alexa's India ranking 96
Bigadda
Bigadda claims that number of registered profiles greater than 1.24 million.
Alexa's India ranking 160
Monetization problems
Meanwhile even Google has also found difficulties in monetizing social networks by advertising and Businessweek reported that CTRs are decreasing at Myspace and are at 0.1%. People aren’t looking for information about products in a social network — they’re looking to communicate with friends. In that environment, ads are seen as an intrusion — which is the exact opposite of ads in a search world.In the recent days have also heard lot of startups in social networking field throwing down the towel so is the party over for social networking??
After the buzz surrounding the auctions Indian Premier League is setting it up for a huge marketing campaign from March. Mint reports on how together, BCCI, Sony and the teams are likely to spend around Rs160 crore on promoting IPL across various media platforms, including television channels, newspapers, mobiles and the Internet.
BCCI’s advertising tag line is expected to be themed around “the fight for excellence". “The campaign will be entertaining and aspirational and will try and invoke team loyalty by creating passion around the city it represents.
Initially, the campaign will run in India, but later, BCCI and WSG plan to take it global. “ the next two years they plan to take the campaign to various cricketing markets outside India, specially those from where players have been inducted.
The campaigns are likely to pitch the tournament as more of an entertainment option than just a game of cricket. “The theme is entertainment. The communication will be on the lines of ‘come watch a three-hour movie".
Closer to April 18 they plan to go for a roadblock strategy similar to the one used by Vodafone for Hutch is now Vodafone campaign where there will be only IPL ads during ad breaks on various TV shows across many TV channels. This one will be interesting to watch and I believe that if they are ready to spend on internet they can reach out to a larger base of customers internationally at a very low cost and so new media strategy should be higher on their priority list
Take a look at this brilliant award winning print ad from Adidas China as part of "Impossible is nothing" campaign. This really puts out a message that no matter how many people try and make your job impossible you can achieve it.
I love Mentos for the way they have turned out humorous and unconventional ads and they never disappoint. The latest commercial of Perfetti Van Melle’s Mentos continues with the value proposition of "Dimag ki batti jala de" however this time it takes the Darwinian theory of evolution of Man and gives it a minty twist. The animated format of the ad gives it an interesting look. The animation for this ad was done in Singapore though which disappoint me for I had hoped that such kind of work should ought to be done in India. Nevertheless its a funny ad and is quite a hit
Riding on the premise that young people today look for a 'metro-minded' match, SimplyMarry.com -- the matrimonial site of Times Business Solutions has launched a new ad campaign. With the campaign, the matrimonial site is focusing on the young people residing in metros who are looking for a life partner.
As part of the campaign is this wonderful new viral Fire and ice with a nice song behind it which is also available for download and whether you are in love or out of love... This one is for you
The campaign is targeted at the youth in the top 10 metro cities in India. Simply Marry says, "It's not just about staying in a metro city, we are targeting youth having metropolitan mindsets and aspirations"hence the new positioning of being a "metro-monial site" They are spending Rs 6-7 crore on the whole campaign lets see if it works for them. (via agencyfaqs)
HCL has been trying over the last year to improve its brand image among perspective employees as part of which it had a disastrously unbelievable ad campaign on TV where they tried to compare an investment banker with software engineer. They however have now decide to extend that brand campaign online and created viral based on the Deewar Theme which portrays them as an extremely hi-tech company nothing great it has just got 5300 hits only however if you want you can check it out at hcl.in/humor/
The latest ad from Pepsi features long-time brand ambassador Shah Rukh Khan along with the two hot stars of the moment, Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone. The ad is an example of lot of star power just going waste. Pepsi's of late trying to reinvent itself to cater to the young India and here they throw a new term Youngistaan. Youngistaan is the expression given to individuality – the need to do one’s own thing. “As Pepsi is an irreverent, youth brand, we thought of coining a term that encapsulates its young TG and brands this generation” says Pepsi. Like its previous mycan campaign this one is high on brand power but doesn't really portrays the youth concept that strongly lets see how this market strategy plays out for the moment enjoy ad
Must Read : Pepsi's Online Strategy for Youngistan
ITC's Bingo has always been known for their adoption of different mediums and having a different kind of advertising strategy compared to others. Now they have become the first FMCG company in India to experiment with viral marketing and have launched a new viral developed by Contests2win. It is in essence a spoof on the long winding saas bahu soaps on TV and looks interesting to say the least take a look at the video here or head to http://www.petkapaap.com
Update: Seems like campaign is still under wraps so they have made the video private and therefore the below video will not play lets wait and see
Advergaming is the practice of using games to advertise a product, organization or viewpoint.Its the latest technique in digital advertising space which is gaining traction in India with the rise of game websites like Zapak and contests2win. Zapak found that in-game advertising and advergaming contributed to 25-30 per cent of the company’s revenues, Zapak expected this to grow to reach 50 per cent of the total revenues by this year end and also claims to have more than 100 brands on board most of whom are first time online advertisers. Advergaming is not only limited to the web or to brands it is also happening on the mobile handsets and games are being developed around movies.
So what exactly is advergaming?
Advergames are games are designed around the attributes of brands. Consumers can ‘virtually’ touch, feel or experience the brand. Usually they are created in such a way that consumers wont be able to complete it on the first attempt. On the second, they just about succeed and on the third, they definitely crack it.Wiki goes on to segregate advergaming into 3 elements
ATL (Above the Line) Advergaming
At first a company provides interactive games on its website in the hope that potential customers will be drawn to the game and spend more time on the website, or simply become more product aware. The games themselves usually feature the company's products prominently.example
BTL (Below the Line) Advergaming
In the second form, games are published in the usual way and cause players to investigate further. The subjects may be commercial, political or educational. Examples of this form of game include recruitment tools like America's Army, intended to boost recruitment for the United States Army.
TTL (Through the Line) Advergaming
TTL advergames involve the use of URL hyperlinks within the game designed to induce the player to visit a webpage which then contains BTL advertisements.
Benefits of Advergaming
Rather than being exposed to a 30-second ad, your attention is captured in a much more significant manner for several minutes and potentially hours. It helps in boosting Brand Awareness and can also be used in creating viral marketing effect and last but not the least it can be a great tool for market research Car companies, for example, sometimes have virtual representations of car prototypes that players can interact with in the game and then elaborate on what they like and don’t like.
Its BTL advergaming which involves in-game advertising which is actually generating a lot of interest in India and has helped generate a totally new business model for gaming portals in India. Most widely used example of advergaming is Second life which is used by multitude of brands seeking attention as well as lot of B2B marketeers also. In India it reportedly costs 3-5 lakhs to create an advergame and there are even greater opportunities within mobile advergaming for which a good read would be Gaurav's post.
Its official rather than fighting Orkut as a youth hangout place various youth mediums like MTV and FM radio stations are extending their presence on Orkut. Orkut has become a means to engage youths for example MTV who on its various communities on Orkut has more than 1 lakh members with Roadies5.0 community leading by alone having 61000 members.
On these communities users vote for the next roadie or discuss through various chat rooms thus not only extending MTV's brand presence but also allows them to keep a tab on what these youths are discussing so much so that MTV roadies theme's idea came out of such initiatives. Infact before the growth of Orkut MTV had its own community on its website which however failed to take off after initial interest.Orkut and MTV have a cross promotion strategy with Orkut sponsoring MTV's bid for Vj's contest and the presence of MTV Vj profiles on Orkut which help generate interest for Orkut.
The demographics of Orkut makes it so interesting with 61.6% of Orkut members in age group 18-25 years. To exploit it various Radio companies are also not being left behind for example an interesting strategy was undertaken by Radio One in Bangalore as reported by Wat
The station created a community on Orkut and undertakes a varieties of activities on the community and to incentivize participation - they choose a ‘profile of the evening’ who appears on the Radio. Apart from that they also created a profile on Orkut for a ‘person’ called ‘RJ Anjaan’ (or unknown) - and if someone on Orkut adds than person as a friend, and discusses certain interesting topics or problems with ‘RJ Anjaan’ , they can be featured on Radio.
This Nokia 7650 ad is one of the finest piece of emotional advertising besides being a showcase of a smart solution to the perennial question how to propose to a gal in a way which is different then the rest Enjoy the video.
Vodafone has released a simple and sweet ad for musical greetings targeted at couples during the valentine week the feature of this campaign is its simplicity and believability and is quite well received. It uses the positioning "Make the most of now" enjoy the video
Even though you may have decided on using online marketing but making a decision on what kind of media to utilize to maximize Return on Investment(ROI) is difficult. MarketingSherpa in its annual survey asked some of the biggest Internet marketers what tactics worked (and what didn’t) in the past 12 months and where they plan to spend most of their budget in the coming year which points out to some very interesting trends in the world of digital marketing the results are basically from USA market. While paid search ads is the strong favorite the trend seems to be towards Search Engine Optimization (SEO) because of lower costs
Paid search continues to be a strong money maker for more than a third of the marketers surveyed, but that number is down steeply from the previous year. The decline reflects an increase in competition that raised keyword prices and lowered ROI.Upcoming Trends: Behaviorally targeted ads
SEO continues to increase in popularity. Its low costs and high returns make it a leader among more than half (57%) of the marketers surveyed. Those numbers were 45% in 2006 and 33% in 2005.
The percentage of marketers achieving high ROI with email marketing took a dip for both house and rented lists. These figures likely reflect consumer fatigue with the platform, causing lower returns.
It increased 10% percentage points while contextual advertising fell 8%. While Contextual ads show up based on the content of a web site. Behaviorally targeted ads that is targeted to a specific individual based on that user's previous surfing behavior. People are more likely to click if the ad reflects their interests.So if you have visited several travel sites then you’ll see an ad about travel. This is expensive for smaller retailers but larger brands can target ads based on interest and see a strong response.
Negative TrendsPop-ups and pop-under ads
The “worst Web ad of 2007” award goes to pop-ups and pop-unders, which no marketers claimed provided a significant ROI.and to see that among almost all major Indian websites are these days are filled with such ads
Once Google released its Android platform and openly said that the future focus is on mobile the final stone was set now Nokia views Google as a potential threat and it has begun an all out attack to protect its mobile turf. Nokia had already begun transforming into an internet services firm now it has announced a quartet of new handsets designed to more closely link global positioning systems (GPS) with the mobile Internet and has also also launched a global mobile advertising network both in direct competition to Google Maps and Google adwords for mobile. The major battleground for these two are going to be emerging economies like India where no of mobile users using the mobile web is greater than no. of P.C users and cell phone is fast becoming an Internet entry point of choice Businessweek while discussing this issue points out
Both companies are betting that where people are located will become an important part of how they use the Net. Nokia is trying to claim that arena with handsets such as its new, top-of-the-line N96. The device allows owners to shoot videos, "geotag" them with info about where the images were taken, and upload to a Nokia Web site that sounds suspiciously like Google's YouTube.
Nokia has 40% of the global handset market and more than half of the smartphone market. That and its software prowess give the company great clout to determine the standards that will be used to access the Internet via handheld devices.
While CNet discussing on Google's mobile ability says that Yahoo is better on mobile than Google and there is a chance that some other company can grab a lead on mobile.
But critics of Google's mobile search tool say its results aren't always as relevant as results from a desktop Google search. Another common complaint is that Google provides search results from regular Web pages and tries to trans-code them for mobile phones. Often these sites don't render well on certain phones.Yahoo Go, a similar application, is considered more robust and more user-friendly than Google's search tool.
However on the other end Nokia has no investment in search and is instead offering Google Search on its high-end phones which is a weakness.
All this makes for a fascinating battle in the future which should hopefully make for a great experience for consumers on the mobile.
An amphibious bicycle, a pedal-operated washing machine and other similar small but novel inventions have taken place in interiors of India and we are blissfully unaware of them. We complain that we don't see some great innovation coming out of India which changes the world however innovation happens in India at the very grassroots level. We are good at 'Jugaad' making things work with least resources and there are many people in India who really have novel ideas that have been transformed into fully operational machines. Here is a video saluting Indian innovators originally made by Discovery channel for its series Beyond Tomorrow.
What we need is to take ideas like these from our grassroots to the next level where they can make a difference to the life of many more people
Sony Entertainment Television (SET) India tried its hand at Social Media Marketing when it launched its comedy reality show, "Champion Chaalbaaz No. 1". The concept of the show, launched in December 2007, was to get 33 contestants to play the best practical jokes on people. Cyrus Broacha and Saajid Khan hosted the show. Sony wanted to create a buzz on the web about the show by trying to build upon the viral power of the web and making use of user generated content on the web.
The Campaign
On a micro site it developed in-house, Sony invited people to upload videos of pranks that they had played on their friends. Other content on the site included a pranks discussion forum and viral presentations with jokes and pranks. Sony also licensed an animated character developed by Phonethics (the agency behind the campaign) called Mian Fekoo, to create a presence on social media sites. Mian Fekoo created an identity on popular social networking sites such as Orkut and Facebook and uploaded animated videos on over 20 video sharing sites such as YouTube and Metacafe.This was also backed by a blog on which Mian Fekoo wrote about prank ideas and related videos
Now the campaign though a brave and innovative effort in this field doesn't really looks like a success with Sony refusing to quote the page views garnered by microsite and Alexa traffic report of the blog being disappointing. The character MianFekoo has only 68 friends on Orkut out of whom some of them are likely to be agency created Unfortunately the campaign wasn't backed up with enough promotions on the web or an effort to virally promote the blog. The problem grow deeper with the virals on the SetIndia site not even opening in Firefox.
( via Agencyfaqs)
Motorola has launched a new campaign for the second phone in its ‘Yuva’ series – MotoYuva W230. This MP3 player phone is priced at Rs 3,050 and it offers 2GB expandable memory along with stereo FM recording and a dedicated music key. The focus of the yuva series ad campaigns is on the rebellious youth part however its first head ad was a rather over the top and offensive to say the least but the ad for this phone is humorous and has been well received take a look at the video of the ad
As part of new Motorola Strategy in India Motorola is focusing on cheaper yet feature laden stylish phones. With MotoYuva Motorola is targeting youth in the age group 19-29 who would love its stylish phones but cannot afford its higher priced models like Razr. MotoYuva W230 has been Positioned as an entry level music phone with the message "Ab apni suno". However the problem with the campaign is that while the campaign is quite appealing to the youth it appears offensive to the parents who in many case control the purse strings lets see how this pan out
Guerrilla Marketing as a term means An unconventional way of performing marketing activities on a very low budget by relying on time, energy and imagination instead of big marketing budgets. Coined by Jay Conrad Levinson, guerilla marketing is more about matching wits than matching budgets. Guerilla marketing can be as different from traditional marketing as guerilla warfare is from traditional warfare. Rather than marching their marketing dollars forth like infantry divisions, guerilla marketers snipe away with their marketing resources for maximum impact.
Though this is usually meant for small companies having low budget and startups nowadays even bigger companies are willing to experiment with unusual methods in order to gain customer attention. Mint reports on how Reliance General Insurance Co. Ltd (RGIL) has launched an innovative “ambient media” campaign in Mumbai. The approach was to go for four point reach
Related: Guerrilla Marketing Star Plus
According to the Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions’ Consumer Electronics Survey conducted by Synovate during August to October 2007 for Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions gadget buffs in India are increasingly moving online to research their next consumer electronic products purchase, with an overwhelming 83 per cent of survey respondents citing the Net as their most-tapped resource for such buys.While vendor sites emerged as the most used resource, portals came second, followed by search engines, and product review Web sites.
This comes on the back of Ebay India confirming that gadgets are the hottest products on their sites also. Survey also says that Internet was the preferred choice in India because consumers could find the latest available models (67 per cent) and compare product features (65 per cent), and prices (62 per cent) and because they could do this at any time (61 per cent). Interestingly, quality and price were the key criteria for purchasing consumer electronics, rather than the brand name.
Another important results of the survey was that products most often researched by the respondents included mobile phones, laptop computers and digital cameras which were also among the top three preferred electronic products bought online by Indian users. The purchase decisions for electronics most often appeared to be influenced by children in the Indian households. Important aspect is that since the research was conducted Microsoft's digital advertising group they are most likely to promote those results which show their solutions in good light. Another aspect is that sample size is only 10000 people.
Stung by growth of ITC's Bingo Lays has kicked off a marketing campaign “Chala Change Ka Chakkar”, which the company claims is its biggest ever portfolio initiative in 2008. With “Chala Change Ka Chakkar” campaign FritoLay offers a slew of lucky prizes ranging from Honda Civic 1.8V, Philips LCD TV to spending an entire day with celebrity brand ambassadors Saif Ali Khan and Juhi Chawla.
They also have an online initiative in place in which they are trying to replicate the success of Bingo 's online campaign. The microsite for this campaign however lacks any interactive efforts and is basically informative in nature so far.
The campaign will run across the company’s core salty snacks portfolio including Lays, Kurkure, Cheetos, Lehar Namkeens and Uncle Chipps from January 1, 2008 to April 30, 2008.
They have also roped in Dhoni along with their previous brand ambassadors Juhi and Saif.
Lets see if such a large scale consumer promotion turns the tide for Lays.
Business Standard reports on state of Indian Snack market
In the Rs 1,860 crore branded snacks market, FritoLay commands a market share of 45 per cent, followed by Haldirams at 27 per cent and ITC at 16 per cent.
The competition in this market has increased with the entry of new players such as Amul and several biscuit companies such as Britannia Industries and Parle Products.
The increased activitiy in this sector has expanded the size of the market.
The branded snacks market accounts for 16 per cent value and 12 per cent volume sales in 2007. According to a projection by Euromonitor International, the branded snacks market is growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 14 per cent and would reach a value of Rs 3,510 crore by 2012.
Microsoft has pounced on slumping Internet icon Yahoo with an unsolicited takeover offer of $44.6 billion in its boldest bid yet to challenge Google's dominance of the lucrative online search and advertising markets.
Microsoft said it sees at least $1 billion cost savings generated by the merger, and intends to offer significant retention packages to Yahoo engineers, key leaders and employees.
Reason for the Bid
Despite an aggressive push in recent years, Microsoft's online advertising expansion hasn't paid off. Last week, the Redmond, Wash.-based company reported a 79 percent jump in its overall profit, but its online division's loss widened to $245 million.
And Yahoo has been struggling to attract more advertising even though its Web site attracts one of the biggest audiences. The Sunnyvale-based company's profit has declined for five consecutive quarters, prompting plans to cut 1,000 jobs later this month, a 7 percent reduction of its 14,300-employee work force.
Microsoft's Future Strategy
Yahoo Search Marketing and adCenter will indeed merge into something that will become a solid competitor to Google AdWords, and Yahoo Publishing Network does have some strong partners in place to work with adCenter to develop a more desirable offering.
Microsoft's Control over Web2.0
Search Engine Journal has an interesting comment on this deal
How ironic? Microsoft may very well soon be the parent company of the flagships of Web 2.0; Delicious & flickr. Wasn’t Web 2.0 kind of an anti-Microsoft movement in the beginning?
Microsoft owns part of Facebook, runs advertising on Digg and may soon own Delicious & Flickr. Web 2.0 is over.
via ( Businessweek,Yahoo,Techcrunch, Search Engine journal)
Despite Social Networks being the most popular destinations on the web and they making efforts to boost their ad platforms advertising has not really been very successful on social networks and Google just confirmed it in their conference call to showcase their last quarter earnings.
CFO George Reyes said social networking advertising is not monetizing as expected. When questioned further Sergey Brin, president of technology, said: “We don’t talk about individual partners or anything like that.” Brin noted some things were tried that didn’t pan out. While Brin won’t talk about partners it’s fairly obvious that MySpace is an issue. Google is obligated to pay at least $900 million in minimum revenue guarantees to MySpace through 2010. Later, the question was revisited again. He noted that Google also has Orkut and other social networking partners. “We have an incredible amount of this inventory,” said Brin. “I don’t think we have the killer best way to monetize social networks yet. We have had a lot of experiments (and some disappointments).”Unlike search advertising (where a user is shown an ad when he is looking for something which leads to greater success of ad) in social networking space users is more interested in his own activities and those of his friends and advertising here is more disruptive here so it is not likely to be as effective. However with the number of people available this is an obvious market which needs to be tapped lets wait and watch as to how it evolves (Via Zdnet)
