tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-217946732024-03-13T08:44:17.102-07:00Internet in India - Business TrendsInternet in India is drawing fair number of eyeballs, interest, conversation and investment.
Through putting my business perspective, thoughts and understanding of the "space" in this blog and by encouraging readers to comment and contribute I am attempting a more comprehensive business view of the Internet Industry in India.
I encourage readers to contribute and take this dialogue forward.Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-4696728135981205452011-01-27T22:17:00.000-08:002011-01-27T22:17:49.173-08:00Presentation at Wirefoot's India Digital Expo 2011<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Digital Retail in India : Key opportunities & challenges </b></div><br />
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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-35304084611968886222010-08-30T03:11:00.000-07:002010-08-30T03:11:46.203-07:002011-2013: Top 10 Digital media trends & betsI strongly believe that finally internet in India is on the threshold of inflection. In this scenario what will be the big trends & bets over next 3 years? List of my Top 10 is given below. I encourage readers to add theirs...<br />
<ol><li><b>Mobile broadband:</b> With close to INR 70,000 crore having been paid by the Telecom companies to the government for the 3G licenses, we should see a surge in number of users connecting to the internet through their mobile phone which will be aided by the fact that almost all modern mobile handsets have the capability to access the internet. </li>
<li><b>Continued interest in Social Media:</b> The stats released by Comscore for July 2010 revealed that more than 33 million Internet users in India visited social networking sites, representing 84 percent of the total Internet audience. This was a growth of 43% over a 12 month period whilst the Total audience grew only by 13%. I feel that Social media will have continued interest.</li>
<li><b>Decline in standalone email & instant messaging usage:</b> I envisage the email & instant messaging applications of the social media platforms undergoing a huge improvement and matching the features & functionalities of the stand alone services. As users get more hooked onto the Social media platforms like Facebok & Orkut, the users will start using the instant messaging & email services built into these platforms to interact with others more and this will gradually reduce & replace the usage of standalone email & instant messaging services</li>
<li><b>Surge in eCommerce:</b> Barring Travel, that too Air & Railway tickets, India has not witnessed significant numbers in other ecommerce verticals. I foresee non travel ecommerce taking off in a big way over next 3 years spurred by verticals like Deal-a-day, Books, Gifting, Luxury retail etc.</li>
<li> <b>Explosion of Digital advertising spends in India</b>: Digital advertising in India to constitute at least 7% (up from under 3% as of now) of total ad spends over next 3 years. The growth will also get spurred by mobile advertising & DTH advertising. There will be continued dominance of performance metrics based pricing.</li>
<li><b>Demand for relevant Audiences</b>: There will a demand from advertisers for delivery of audiences vis-à-vis delivery of traffic. There will be emergence of more options for targeting users on behavior, demographic & contextual relevancy including location based advertising.</li>
<li><b>Rich media consumption:</b> With higher speed of internet access, users will start consuming more rich media content.</li>
<li><b>Mobile internet:</b> Users will access internet through various devices (ala iPads etc.) and not only through smartphones or desktops/laptops. With this there will also be an explosion in usage of mobile applications.</li>
<li><b>Mobile payments & mCommerce</b>: Mobile payments & mCommerce should take off over next 3 years in a major way.</li>
<li><b>Innovations & Entrepreneurship:</b> We should see a Silicon Valley kind of environment in India over next 3 years with lot of entrepreneurial ideas & innovations happening.</li>
</ol><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-73158003818049355062010-04-19T04:22:00.000-07:002010-04-19T04:22:49.122-07:00Social Networking in India For the launch of their first store in the up market Select Citywalk mall in Delhi, Haagen Dazs chose the words – ‘Entry restricted to holders of international passports only’. The intent of the company as clarified by them was to ‘get a taste of abroad right here in India’. However, their choice of words was easily misinterpreted as if they did not want to allow Indians in their store! Someone took a photograph of the signage and e-mailed it to a Times of India blogger, who put it on his blog within a couple of hours with the headline saying ‘Sorry, Indians not allowed’. The blog where this was carried has 804 hate comments till now and 2 hate groups on Facebook were spawned having close to 400 members. Thanks to the power of social media the hate Haagen Dazs campaign spread like wildfire not only in India but across the globe, inciting a hail of protests that left the company red-faced and ultimately they were forced to backtrack and issue an apology. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_MXHXsilf48c/S8w7_OXwtVI/AAAAAAAACrs/JmtC31oCZ0c/s1600/1.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_MXHXsilf48c/S8w7_OXwtVI/AAAAAAAACrs/JmtC31oCZ0c/s200/1.bmp" width="123" /></a></div><br />
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Emergence of Internet has changed the way media is created and consumed. Traditionally media was created by media companies who created the content and were the content owners. The content owners use to ‘broadcast’ this media to the consumers of such content. With internet this equation has undergone a fundamental change, now anyone can create content and share it with others using platforms like Blogging, Social Networks, YouTube etc. There is a term that describes this phenomenon- USG or User Generated Content! <br />
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In today’s era the consumers of media themselves have become media creators and the best part is that once such content is created it is getting distributed on the internet through any of the previously mentioned platforms and other users/ consumers engage with this content by commenting, Re-Tweeting etc. The communication on the internet between content and consumers is becoming a 2-way dialogue instead of the earlier 1-way broadcast. <br />
Gaining popularity of social networking has brought in another dimension to this rapidly changing landscape. People are getting more connected & communicative with their networks. Technology allows them to voice their opinions at literally the speed of thought. It is imperative for brands to very carefully manage their ‘image; in this new digital space. Online reputation management becomes an integral part of a well planned Social Media Marketing exercise. The recent fiasco of Haagen Dazs launch in Delhi is a prime example of how fast negative publicity can travel in this new wired world.<br />
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This entire fast changing multi dimensional communication system is broadly referred to as SOCIAL MEDIA. It opens new areas and throws new challenges in front of the advertisers; they can either leverage this or get left behind. Conventional wisdom of marketing dictates that a brand should be present where the users are. Hence we see advertisers evaluating media options by the cost per user or cost per eyeball reached and most media is priced on this basis and you have metrics like Viewership (Television Rating Points - TRPs), Readership (IRS- Indian Readership Survey/NRS – National Readership Survey) etc. to measure these.<br />
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If we were to use the conventional logic and evaluate how many of the 50 Million Internet users in India who are visiting various online social networking sites, following interesting facts emerge as per Alexa & Vizisense:<br />
<ul><li>Orkut & Facebook : 4th & 5th most visited sites. Facebook claims to have 5.7 Million users in India.</li>
<li>Twitter: 12th most visited site</li>
<li>Linkedin: 14th rank</li>
</ul><br />
In addition to the above, take a look at the ranking in terms of users of UGC sites:<br />
<ul><li>Blogger.com – 6th visited site</li>
<li>You Tube: - 7th</li>
<li>Wordpress: 15th </li>
</ul><br />
What the above simply means is that 7 out of top 20 sites Indian internet users are visiting are in the arena of social media. 4 out of top 20 most visited sites in India are social networking sites. I would estimate that more than 70% people who are online are engaging with social media on some or the other platform (site).<br />
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One can argue that these are quantitative numbers, what about quality? Advertisers look for certain demographics whilst targeting their communication messages. Hence it is important to also see what kind of people are a part of this social media fraternity. Let us look at the demographics of users of Facebook (source: Vizisense). Almost 50% of Facebook users have income over 2 lacs / annum and more than half of the users are above 24 years of age. 63% users are graduates & above. <br />
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Audience demographics of LinkedIn.com - a business networking website is even better. Close to 60% users have an annual income of more than 2 lacs and close to 80% users are graduates and above.<br />
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To find more about the usage of Social networking sites, I conducted a survey and the following were key findings:<br />
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1. Reasons for usage of internet<br />
<ul><li>Top usage of internet was for communication (email / chat). Almost 96% users use internet for communication purposes.</li>
<li>Almost 85% users stated that they visit social networking sites. This emerged as the second largest reason for using the internet.</li>
<li>This was followed by consumption of news at 61%.</li>
</ul><br />
2. Amongst the social networking sites, Facebook emerged as the most popular website with almost 91% users visiting it, followed by Orkut at 61%, LinkedIn at 34% and Twitter at 23%.<br />
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3. 35% of the users contacted are students and almost 60% of the users earn more than Rs. 10,000 per month. 22% users claimed to earn more than Rs. 50,000 per month.<br />
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4. Usage hours:<br />
<ul><li>Another significant finding from our survey was that 80% users consume Internet for more than 2 hours / day, while only 33% users watched TV for more than 2 hours/day, and none of the users read newspaper for more than 2 hours/day.</li>
<li>Almost 75% newspaper readers read it for less than 1 hour/day. 36% viewers watch TV for less than 2 hour/day. While amongst the Internet users, the percentage of users spending less than 1 hour/day on Internet was only 4%.</li>
<li>The fact that gets clearly established is that the internet users consume Internet far more than any other media! Advertisers need to really note this point. Since to find these users on any media other than internet will become more and more difficult as they increase their internet consumption and reduce consumption of other media. in the western countries already the advertisers are finding it hard to target the under 29 users outside Internet and I feel it is only a matter of time when this will also happen in India.</li>
</ul>The results of this survey and the demographic details of social media users, reinforces the point that not only there is a substantial number of users visiting various social media sites but they are also relatively well educated and well to do – exactly the kind of Audience that most of the fashion brands & marketers will want to address.<br />
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I would go a step ahead and say that after bollywood and cricket, the only other thing than has the potential of truly binding Indians is social networking! <br />
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The important question that would emerge for any advertiser is ‘How do I ‘Participate’ in social media? The tricky part is that rules for engaging with customers on social media platforms are very different. Hence the advertising formats that the advertisers are used to are not really applicable in this new world<br />
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There are two ways of being present / to participate in social media. Brands can pay and buy ‘space’ on social media websites. Such buys can be targeted on demographics and keywords. But the second way is more exciting where advertisers can actually leverage the social media to get consumers to endorse the brands to their friends and networks. Such endorsement is far more powerful that a regular advertisement because here rather than the brand saying something about themselves to me, a friend who is in my network is saying nice things about the brand and exhorting me to check it out. I will tend to believe such endorsement more than a brand advertisement. Such endorsement is also referred to as ‘in-stream’ participation/ advertising. For being ‘in-stream’, advertisers have to speak the language of the users, they have to be in constant dialogue with them, and they have to give reasons for the consumers to endorse them instead of tom-tomming about themselves. The advertisers also need to learn how to leverage ‘virality’ the medium allows for spreading their image and proposition<br />
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Participation options on various Social media sites:<br />
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1. Facebook: <br />
<ul><li>Self-served advertising model on selected inventories. Advertisers can buy some inventories on a Cost-per-Click (CPC) or Cost-per-Mille/ Thousand impressions (CPM) basis. Payment can be made through credit card. </li>
<li>Facebook also has a tie-up with Google wherein advertising is possible through the Google Content Network on a CPC/CPM basis. </li>
<li>Presence through brand page/ fan page. Facebook has an option for brands to create their fan/ brand page. This allows users to become fans of the brand and they can then engage with the brand in various manners. Any ‘post’ made by the advertiser/ brand on this page will go directly into the account of the fans. Using the Fan page application advertisers can send regular updates, promotional messages etc to the fans / followers very easily. It is not difficult for a brand to create a brand/fan page, but what is challenging is to give users compelling reasons to become fans and then also to keep remained engaged with the brand over a period of time. This requires great level of strategic planning & execution. Users can remain engaged over a period of time only due to either compelling content being disseminated by the brand or through contests or through gratification (deals & discounts). For a participation strategy brands must pre plan a complete calendar of user engagement hooks and then embark on the implementation.</li>
<li>Can create discussion groups and invite engagement / participation from users. No media cost implication</li>
</ul><br />
2. LinkedIn<br />
<ul><li>Has a tie-up with Google. We can use Google Content network for text advertisements on LinkedIn on a CPC/CPM basis.</li>
<li>LinkedIn also has a self-served advertising model on selected inventories. Advertisers can buy some inventories on a CPC basis. Payment through credit card.</li>
<li>In India LinkedIn have appointed www.NetworkPlay.in as sole concessionaires for representing their inventory where advertisers can buy this inventory on a CPM basis.</li>
<li>Create company page</li>
<li>Create discussion groups.</li>
</ul>3. Orkut: It is a Google company. Advertising possible through Google Content Network on a CPC/CPM basis.<br />
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4. YouTube: It is also a Google company. Advertising possible through Google Content Network on a CPC/CPM basis. We have also seen companies uploading their TVCs etc on YouTube to gain from the wide distribution and reach that YouTube platform offers.<br />
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5. Blogger.com: Though this is a Google company as well, it is difficult to get inventories to advertise on individual blogs as these are owned by various bloggers and they have exclusive rights to the inventory of their own blogs. Can reach them through ad networks including Google content network. Any company can create their own blog on one of the blogging platforms like blogger.com. Care should be taken that a blog is not a replica of a company website; It should revolve around interesting content. For example a Fashion Designer’s / brand’s blog could talk about design trends globally and in India! <br />
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6. Twitter: <br />
<ul><li>Offers inventories through two models where the advertiser pays the Twitter users to</li>
<ul><li>Sport the ad on their personal profiles for a pre-decided period of time, so it can be viewed by their “followers” –Twitad. (Payment is for the number of users that agree to publish the ad on their profile/account pages.)</li>
<li>Publish “ad tweets” through their personal profiles – Twivert. (CPC inventory in terms of ad tweets created by the advertiser & sent out by twitter users. An advertiser pays only when the ad tweet is clicked on.)</li>
</ul><li>Allows users to create a company profile which can then be used for promotions in the form of personal tweets.</li>
</ul><b>How to launch & run a successful social media marketing exercise</b><br />
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To launch & run a social media campaign for a brand, it requires skills that span strategic & creative thinking, technology, content creation and content aggregation capabilities. The main problem is that the amalgamation of all these skills is neither available with the advertiser nor with their conventional agency! There are some specialized social media marketing companies that are getting formed in India but they leave a lot to be desired. This could be one of the chief reasons why social media marketing has not taken off in India in a big way till now.<br />
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I would like to suggest a 7 point recipe for a successful social media campaign:<br />
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<ol><li>It has to be owned by the marketing team of the advertiser as a must do project. (IT or PR department can have a peripheral role at best) </li>
<li>A project manager from the marketing team has to be identified for this task.</li>
<li>Advertiser should hire a specialized social media marketing agency. They will bring perspective on technology & user engagement.</li>
<li>The specialized agency should be made to work closely with the advertiser’s creative agency. They will bring brand understanding to the table.</li>
<li>Advertiser should insist on a proper content team to be deployed by the specialized agency.</li>
<li>Detailed activity plans & budgetary provisions should be made for content, contests & gratification of users.</li>
<li>Advertiser should not be averse to spending media monies to get users to sign up as fans, i.e. advertiser should plan to allocate media monies for promoting their social network destination.</li>
</ol>I would like to issue a note of caution here. In the internet world, changes are very rapid, hence to even suggest planning for and making a long term strategy online is futile. At best I would recommend thinking in terms of a maximum period span of six months to a year. User habits & preferences change very rapidly in this new world order. Orkut was a rage before Facebook came in, and the uber-cool users in India quickly migrated to Facebook which had more functionalities, features and was considered to be more happening! Facebook got its formula right from the beginning since it allowed developers, application makers and even brands to plug into its platform. All this made Orkut seem like a poor cousin and now it has lost its sheen amongst lot of urban internet users. Marketers need to be totally clued in to the changing preferences on internet users if they have to leverage the power of not only social media but internet per se.<br />
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I did a comparison of Indian Fashion Brands and International Fashion Brands' presence on Social media. Out of the 27 Indian & international fashion and sports brand studied, what was extremely surprising that only 11 had presence on Facebook. What really impressed was that the (international) presence of international brands was truly fantastic with some brands having even more than 2 million fans! The ones that deserve a special mention are – Levis, Reebok women, Adidas & Puma. Indian brands should take a leaf from the way these brands have represented themselves on Facebook. However, at the same time most of these brands haven’t taken care to have local/ India specific presence. I feel that international brands must have robust local presence to leverage the power of social media in specific countries.<br />
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It is very surprising that even though the emergence of social media in India has been happening over the past 2-3 years and has now reached a significant proportion, advertisers still consider it more of an upcoming phenomenon. They should wake up and realize the potential this platform provides for engaging users, something that no other media vehicle can give to an advertiser.<br />
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<i>First published in Images Business of Fashion December’09 issue</i><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-41581638637722427142010-02-10T22:57:00.000-08:002010-02-10T22:57:11.140-08:00India digital advertising 2009 - Not all was doom & gloomIn times of crisis and recession, it is only obvious that advertisers will want to make every penny spent on advertisement count. Internet lends itself very well here. It is the only medium that on one hand can deliver against ROI objectives of the advertisers, since the medium is truly capable of specific measurement in terms of ‘cost of acquiring a customer’ or ‘cost of generating a transaction’. Advertisers can use internet as a direct response medium, a medium where they can actually specify their objectives in terms of cost per acquired customer. On the other hand being an interactive medium Internet can provide a really immersive brand engagement with the user.<br />
However, it is a pity that advertisers in India have still not exploited the true potential of Internet. Digital media in India has not got its due despite being present for over a decade in India. There has been no growth in terms of advertising spends per user during the decade. The following table & chart highlight this fact:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_MXHXsilf48c/S3Ooaeld_OI/AAAAAAAACrY/LfAndLzJDNg/s1600-h/anurag1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_MXHXsilf48c/S3Ooaeld_OI/AAAAAAAACrY/LfAndLzJDNg/s320/anurag1.JPG" /></a></div><br />
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Source: Zenith Optimedia & Internet World Stats</i><br />
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The above charts clearly show that in 2009 the ad spend per user in India have remained almost the same at an abysmal $ 1.3 up from $ 1.2 in 2000, though during this period the number of internet users have gone up 14 times. There is a lot of catching up that Indian digital media has to do with other parts of the world.<br />
Not everything in 2009 was doom and gloom as far as Digital advertising is concerned. Categories that continued using internet were Travel, Finance and Online classified businesses. Categories that significantly increased the share of digital in their overall mix were Automobiles & Consumer Electronics. Emerging categories include Education & Real Estate. We would like to see FMCG & Retail advertise more on the internet.<br />
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A significant trend that really scaled up in India was Social Media. Following interesting facts emerge as per Alexa & Vizisense:<br />
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Orkut & Facebook : 4th & 5th most visited sites. Facebook claims to have 5.7 Million users in India.<br />
Twitter: 12th most visited site<br />
Linkedin: 14th rank<br />
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In addition to the above, take a look at the ranking in terms of users of User Generated Content sites:<br />
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Blogger.com – 6th visited site<br />
You Tube: - 7th<br />
Wordpress: 15th <br />
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What the above simply means is that 7 out of top 20 sites Indian internet users are visiting are in the arena of social media. 4 out of top 20 most visited sites in India are social networking sites. I would estimate that more than 70% people who are online are engaging with social media on some or the other platform (site).<br />
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One can argue that these are quantitative numbers, what about quality? Advertisers look for certain demographics whilst targeting their communication messages. Hence it is important to also see what kind of people are a part of this social media fraternity. Let us look at the demographics of users of Facebook (source: Vizisense). Almost 50% of Facebook users have income over 2 lacs / annum and more than half of the users are above 24 years of age. 63% users are graduates & above. <br />
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Audience demographics of LinkedIn.com - a business networking website is even better. Close to 60% users have an annual income of more than 2 lacs and close to 80% users are graduates and above.<br />
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This reinforces the point that not only there is a substantial number of users visiting various social media sites but they are also relatively well educated and well to do – exactly the kind of Audience that most of the brands & marketers will want to address. I would go a step ahead and say that after bollywood and cricket, the only other thing than has the potential of truly binding Indians is social networking!<br />
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Advertisers need to understand that it is also only a matter of time that the younger generation who is growing with internet will be difficult to find anywhere but on the web, as these people are shunning consumption of the traditional / offline media and are spending disproportionate time on the Internet. This phenomenon can already be witnessed across the world. <br />
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I believe that at 50 million users Internet is no longer a niche medium and the advertisers need to start allocating proportionate monies to internet in their overall marketing plans rather than allocating some small percentages.<br />
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<a href="http://www.exchange4media.com/Rewind/2009/DIGI_AnuragGupta.asp">The above article published in exchange4media.com </a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-26409569936510343102010-02-05T11:29:00.000-08:002010-02-05T11:29:58.750-08:00Retailers in India – www ChallengedAs an internet & online marketing professional I often come across many retailers and when I ask them why they don’t have a cohesive strategy for e commerce some of their usual refrains are:<br />
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<ul><li>Internet in India is small</li>
<li>Indians do not like to shop online</li>
<li>Channel conflict – This issue is generally raised by the Electronics/ Consumer Durable Brands that have very well established Dealer networks. They think that if they give lower prices online then they will have channel conflicts with their offline retailers which give almost 100% volumes and since internet doesn’t give them any sales, why on earth should they risk all for nothing?</li>
<li>ROI- Why should I invest in setting up e commerce portal when it will not give me any sales?</li>
</ul>I have recently seen lot of Leading Brands across many categories in India like Consumer Electronics, Real Estate, Automobiles etc. who are advertising heavily online for lead generation, which is passed on to the sales channels for conversions. Hence they are already using online media for Direct Marketing!<br />
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I do agree that not many people are buying these brands online and I have tried to map out the reasons for this and what do the retailers need to do to overcome these. I strongly believe that none of the above refrains used by Brands should be real deterrents for setting up their online stores.<br />
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<b>Internet in India is small </b>- Various estimates in India peg Internet users between 35 million to 80 million users with 6.8 Million Broadband connections.<br />
India is ranked 4th largest country in terms of Internet users by www.InternetWorldStats.com *<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_MXHXsilf48c/S2xryGxM5iI/AAAAAAAACrI/wz3-7_dQ2dE/s1600-h/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_MXHXsilf48c/S2xryGxM5iI/AAAAAAAACrI/wz3-7_dQ2dE/s320/1.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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• Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com/top20.htm<br />
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Taking median of various estimates even at 45 Million users, we are way ahead of all European countries in terms of number of Internet Users. Another interesting comparison is with total <br />
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English print media readership in India is 50 million, Internet doesn’t seem small? Why should we then insist that Internet is small? It may be small in terms of revenues as of today, however by no means is it small in terms of reach or eyeballs.<br />
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What is also encouraging is that Internet connectivity is growing. We have an estimated 7 million Broadband users with an annual growth rate in excess of 60%. Some states are seeing Internet penetration at close to 10% levels! Also, with the advent of technologies like WiMax and Mobile Broadband we are all set to be poised to take a leap and eliminate all such connectivity issues in times to come.<br />
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<b>Indians are averse to transacting online</b> – As per industry estimates out of almost 1 million tickets sold by Indian Railways, 1 in 3 tickets are sold online by IRCTC. This translates into close to 300,000 tickets being sold online every day.<br />
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Also consider this, Almost 100,000 people fly every day in India on domestic air travel. It is estimated that almost 35% of these people book their tickets on various online travel portals. Another 20-25% book on the Airlines Websites directly through Internet. Hence almost 60,000 people are flying every day using tickets bought through the Internet!<br />
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The above would clearly indicate that if there is a compelling proposition (Convenience in case of Indian Railways & price comparison & transparency in case of Airlines) people will buy online. However, when it comes to non-travel online retailing, the numbers look woefully small. A research report by IMRB-IAMAI indicates that non travel online retailing was estimated to be only 850 crores in 2006-07. In 2009 it would have reached around 1200 crores. <br />
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Before we get into analyzing why Indians are not buying online, let us look at how consumer ecommerce is behaving in a developed market like USA. Forrester Research in its five-year e-commerce forecast for USA has reported that Online sales amounted to a whopping US$ 156 Billion in 2009 and it contributed to estimated 6 % of total retail sales in 2009. They further expect online sales to contribute to almost 8% by 2013.<br />
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The top ecommerce product categories in USA* are:<br />
<ul><li> Clothing & clothing accessories</li>
<li> Drugs, Health & Beauty Aids</li>
<li> Computer Hardware</li>
<li> Books & magazines</li>
<li> Electronic Appliances</li>
<li> Furniture & home furnishings</li>
<li> Toys & Hobbies. Etc</li>
</ul>Let us look at the traffic on the websites of leading Brick & Mortar retailers in USA. The following numbers are taken from Comscore and represent the rankings amongst all websites in terms of visitors:<br />
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<ul><li> eBay: 7th </li>
<li> Amazon: 9th </li>
<li> Wal-Mart: 22nd</li>
<li> Target: 26th </li>
</ul><br />
From the above we can see that the top offline retailers like Wal-Mart & Target have a very significant traffic on their websites and are the 22nd & 26th most visited website in USA. Contrast this with the traffic rank as per www.Alexa.com of the big Indian retailers like:<br />
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<ul><li> BigBazaar (www.FutureBazaar.com) : India rank 836</li>
<li> ShoppersStop (www.Shopperstop.com) : India Rank: 1,847</li>
</ul><br />
Big Bazaar is at the top with an abysmal ranking of 836 this means that no Indian Retail brand is within first 800 most visited websites in India. We also need to see what are people really buying? Some of the products/ categories bought that are online are:<br />
<br />
<ul><li> Books</li>
<li> Flowers</li>
<li> Cheap / low priced electronic gadget</li>
</ul><br />
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*Source: http://www.census.gov/econ/estats/2007/2007tables.html<br />
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Indians are not buying brands online. The big question then is what is holding people back from doing this? The IAMAI-IMRB research report has tried to answer this by citing time saving, convenience, variety & comparison possibility & discounts as reasons why people buy online. The same report lists Suspect product quality, Credit card security, lack of touch & feel, fixed price format & waiting for delivery as the chief reasons why Shoppers are shying away from buying online<br />
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However, I personally do not agree that people are not buying due to Product Quality, or not being able to negotiate or issues with security of credit cards. In terms of the reasons why ecommerce has not taken off in India I feel that following are the main reasons why ecommerce has not really taken off in India:<br />
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<b>1. Cultural / Habitual </b>– Indians look at shopping as an entertainment activity/ an evening out with family, when they go out to the Mall/ Market and shop, dine & enjoy. Ecommerce robs this completely! I am not sure that anyone can really address this issue! What the Brands need to realize is that how can they make themselves attractive online so that despite the Indian habits, people still get tempted to buy online.<br />
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<b>2. Leading Brands not present online or present in a very non friendly manner:</b><br />
We did a study of 14 Indian brands across genres to see their Internet & ecommerce presence. The results can be seen in the following chart:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Notes: </i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i> • Website URL- If not present on first page of Google search using different Brand terms, taken as website not available</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i> • To determine if Brand is available on some other shopping portal, used google search with queries Buy + </i></span><brand name=""><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i> and listed just top 1-2 </i></span></brand><br />
<brand name=""><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i> stores if brand available on some other shopping portal.<br />
• Not considered listings in Auction Sites like Ebay or comparison sites like Naaptol.com, TolMol.com</i></span><br />
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A broad Analysis of the 14 Brands studied above show that more than half of the brands do not even have their own ecommerce enabled website! The ones that have ecommerce capabilities, only one brand gives some discounts on their website while almost all of them sell at MRP and they none of them have any offline-online integration. It is interesting to note that 6 out of 8 Brands that do not have their own ecommerce enabled site sell their products on some other shopping portal.<br />
</brand><br />
<brand name=""><b>3. No offline / online integration</b></brand><br />
<brand name=""><b> </b><br />
If one studies Wal-Mart’s bricks 'n clicks integration strategy i.e. tying its Web site into its real world stores, some very interesting things emerge, for example, few things that a customer can do are:</brand><br />
<brand name=""><br />
• Choose replacement tires at Walmart.com and have them installed at a local Wal-Mart.<br />
• The site's pharmacy section lets you place an order to be picked up locally; you can also view your prescription history online and set up e-mail reminders for refills. <br />
• Walmart.com’s vision center offers a similar service for contact lenses. <br />
• You can drop off photos to be developed at Wal-Mart and see the finished prints at Walmart.com, where you can e-mail them to friends or make them into gift cards. <br />
• If you buy an item at Walmart.com, you can return it at a local Wal-Mart. <br />
• If there's an item your local Wal-Mart is out of, it's likely that the site has it. Walmart.com stocks 500,000 books and 80,000 CDs, not to mention replacement lawn mower blades, hot tubs, women's shoes, and Harry Potter Lego sets. Though the site doesn't release inventory figures, it's probable that it has the largest inventory of any retailer, online or off. <br />
</brand><br />
<brand name=""> None of the 50% Indian Brands studied that have an ecommerce presence have done any offline-online integration. It almost seems that the online & offline stores operate in different silos. There is a huge need for integrating online & offline offerings by Brands. For instance why can’t a shopper just create her shopping list online and take delivery offline from her nearest Food Bazaar outlet and eliminate massive queues at checkout counters? Or why cannot these items be home delivered once a shopper puts them in her shopping cart online?</brand><br />
<brand name=""><br />
<b>4. No real incentive to buy online – There aren’t any significant discounts.</b><br />
Only 1 out of 8 brands I.e. FutureBazaar had some web only SKUs or discounts across products. None of the other 7 ecommerce enabled brands studies have web only offers or deep discounts. It almost seems that the Brands are really not interested in offering anything extra to people for coming online & shopping. Brands need to understand and make extra efforts into wooing users to buy online. Merely putting their catalogue online even with ecommerce capability doesn’t help the cause.<br />
<br />
<i><b>Channel Conflict:</b></i> I recently came across a very large White Goods brand that has priced their products higher than the offline prices available in the market, as they said that they do not want to upset their retailers! Why on earth anyone would want to buy from them online in such a case? Online consumers are looking for DEALS DEALS & MORE DEALS. There are some easy ways of sidestepping the issue of channel conflict in case a Brand is offering lower price on their online store. Brand can create a product range that is Web Exclusive or push end of life products that can be deep discounted. Why can’t a Shoppers Stop continue its end of Season Sale 7 days more than at the offline stores, or better even begin it online 3 days prior to starting them offline?<br />
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<b>Gen Next & online buying</b><br />
The younger generation in India is growing with the presence of Internet all around them in homes as well as schools. With online connectivity increasing, more and more people will be spending increasing amounts of time online, consuming different kinds of media & engaging with online media in different manners. We have already seen Social networking impacting the lives of all of us already.<br />
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Studies indicate that even though users in India may not be buying online right now, but they are surely increasingly using Internet for their pre-buying research. This is becoming more evident in high involvement categories like Automobiles, Real Estate etc.<br />
<br />
Also, with the urban families becoming more nuclear where all members are working, there is a huge paucity of time for people to go out for research before shopping. Hence it is apparent that it is only a matter of time that more and more shoppers will turn to research & then buying online. The question is Will the brands be available when they are ready to buy online? <br />
<br />
<b>Evangelizing V/s ROI </b><br />
<br />
Most trends indicate that it is only a matter of time when the users will start shifting some percentage of their spending online and that online shopping can only increase from here. Why is it that the Retailers and brands are still not investing in having their ecommerce stores & presence? <br />
<br />
One of the chief reasons can be their own myopic view. I have often hear retailers say that since online retail doesn’t give them sales in the short run, why should they invest in setting up & running an ecommerce portal ? <br />
To some extent they are not unjustified in saying this. We also need to understand that organized retiling is a relatively new phenomenon in India and yet there is a huge opportunity and gap in terms of sheer physical presence of Brands in various geographies / catchment areas of their potential clients. Hence it is understandable that bulk of energies of the retailers will go in addressing this immediate opportunity at hand.<br />
<br />
However, the Brands need to understand that the consumer’s habits can change much faster that what we sometimes expect and that it is only imperative that they are present where the consumers want to look for them and in the manner in which the consumers want to engage with them. In my mind there cannot be any debate on the importance for Brands to be available online.<br />
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<b>What does it take to get online</b><br />
<br />
The first step towards this is having your website ready with ecommerce & payment gateway integration. The Website should be ready with SKUs / catalogues integrated for ecommerce. Care should be taken for the following:</brand><br />
<ul><li><brand name=""> Use technology that is robust and can handle volumes once business starts scaling up. Use of Open source based OScommerce(www.oscommerce.com) , xcart (www.x-cart.com) , zencart (www.zen-cart.com) , etc or commercial technologies like Octashop (www.octashop.com) , Martjack (www.martjack.com) are recommended</brand></li>
<li><brand name=""> Technology should allow quick addition & modification of SKUs using good Content Management System. One can use Open Source CMS like Joomla (www.joomla.org) Drupal (www.drupal.org) , typo3(www.typo3.com) , or commercial custom build solution offered by many technology companies like Mind tree, ANMsoft etc. </brand></li>
<li><brand name=""> Quick creation of Catalogues for offers & promotions.</brand></li>
<li><brand name=""> Provide world class User Interface (UI) & navigation. Some of the companies who can help in creating state of art UI design are HFI, Wirefoot etc. </brand></li>
<li><brand name=""> Website should be designed with Search Engines friendliness in mind. </brand></li>
<li><brand name=""> Payment gateway with multiple payment options like Credit cards, debit cards, cash on delivery. Most commonly used gateway are cc avenue, DirecPay, EBS (axis bank), ICICI Payment Gateway, HDFC Credit Card Gateway, also some mobile payment gateway are atom, Mcheck etc.</brand></li>
<li><brand name=""> Defining standard work & process flows for handling & fulfilling online orders. </brand></li>
<li><brand name=""> Tying up with Logistics partners like Aramex, First Flight, Elbee etc. I would recommend offering options like Cash on Delivery to customers as well.</brand></li>
<li><brand name=""> Defining pricing & promotion policies with adequate incentives for shoppers to buy online</brand></li>
<li><brand name=""> Laying our proper offline & online integration</brand></li>
<li><brand name=""> Ensuring proper customer support using call centres. Also ensuring having SOPs with all escalations laid out for handling customer queries & issues in a very prompt manner.</brand></li>
<li><brand name=""> Driving customers online –Brands can drive customers online through a variety of activities. I am listing a few of them:</brand><br />
- Design a calendar of ongoing web only promotions<brand name=""><br />
- Communicate these promptly to their own user databases & through online marketing.<br />
- Can use different channels of online marketing like - Search, Affiliate, Display advertising</brand><brand name=""><br />
- Look at a life time value of a potential customer. Drive users to register on their website for <br />
receiving information and updates about various offers & promotions</brand><brand name=""><br />
- For higher value products & higher involvement products actively collect intent / leads from <br />
potential consumers and use tele-marketing or offline channel to close the sales.</brand><brand name=""><br />
- Run innovating customer reach programmes online like Click to call.</brand><br />
- Integrate Mobile with web. </li>
</ul><brand name=""></brand><brand name=""> I am sure, if Brands & retailers make a sustained strategy to harness the power of ecommerce it can become a significant channel for sales & Brand engagement for them with their customers. This of course needs a long term vision & commitment.<br />
<br />
__________________________________________________________________________<br />
<i>First published in Images Business of Fashion November ’09 issue</i><br />
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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-42089628405768158172010-01-16T20:47:00.000-08:002010-01-16T21:00:13.466-08:00Using Internet for Brand Engagement & ActivationFMCG Marketers in Indian have generally used Internet like traditional media doing high impact and high visibility advertising akin to television advertising with almost negligible measurability or accountability. <br /><br />With the onset of Global slowdown there is an increased accountability on brand advertising spends. Brands now are actively looking for more cost efficient ways of fulfilling their marketing objectives. This is where Internet can be used as it is the only medium that is completely measurable right from time of a user seeing an advertisement online to evincing of interest by clicking on it, to measuring of action post the click of the user. This throws open opportunities for advertisers that can go beyond using Internet just as a conventional media into the realm of what is called as “performance advertising”. <br /><br />The basic currency for buying media on the Internet is CPM (Cost per Thousand ad impressions served). Since internet is completely trackable, there are other interesting payment models available on some inventories that charge on CPC (Cost per click done by a user on the ad) and even CPA (Cost per Action). Action is defined as what the Advertiser wants user to do post clicking on their advertisement, it could be a Registration, Sale, Enquiry/ Lead, Intent for information etc.<br /><br />A question that is discussed frequently is “under what circumstances would FMCG advertisers need to go for performance based advertising metrics”? The answer lies in the distinct qualities of Internet as a medium. Internet can be actually used & measured for different points in the consumer’s path to purchase / consideration. <br />Of particular interest to FMCG Advertisers will be the fact that out of the various media options available nothing comes close to Internet when a marketer wants to engage with consumers. This is possible due to the Interactive properties of Internet Medium. Internet can also be used very effectively for Brand Activation campaigns. Further what is most interesting is that Brand Engagement / Activation can be done at very attractive costs and is totally measurable, thereby an Advertiser can actually measure Brand Engagement done in terms of “Cost per User engaged” or “Cost per user Activated”. On the internet, the advertiser can buy online inventory with a defined cost per brand engagement / activation clearly laid down. <br /><br />Brand Engagement can be done in different ways. Depending on the Advertiser’s communication objectives - It could be creating an application / puzzle / game for a user online where the user can engage with this application / puzzle/ game and in the process soak herself into the core of the Brand communication. A few examples of Brand Engagement & Activation done by Indian FMCG advertisers are given below:<br /> <br /><br /><strong>Lipton – Stay Sharp</strong><br /><br />Concept: Lipton wanted to communicate that the leaves picked for Lipton Yellow Label Tea are a natural source of Theanine, which along with the other goodness of tea can help drinkers relax and be alert throughout the day. For this they an online application where users were encouraged to solve various jigsaw puzzles online with an on ground event that culminated to solving world’s largest Jigsaw Puzzle.<br /><br />URL: <a href="http://www.stay-sharp.in/staysharp/liptonLogin.aspx">http://www.stay-sharp.in/staysharp/liptonLogin.aspx</a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_MXHXsilf48c/S1KXOfhu-NI/AAAAAAAACqM/lD372kCvOj4/s1600-h/lipton+stay+sharp.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 155px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_MXHXsilf48c/S1KXOfhu-NI/AAAAAAAACqM/lD372kCvOj4/s320/lipton+stay+sharp.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427566776171821266" /></a><br /><br /> <br /><br /><em><strong>Outcome: Lipton’s website states that close to 175,000 users engaged with their brand online by participating and solving various puzzles.</strong></em> <br /><br /><strong>Quaker Oats</strong><br /><br />Concept: To position Quaker Oats as a healthy cereal, launched a web based initiative called Good Morning Heart.com, the users are encouraged to register on the website and take a test online that shows health of the user’s heart and also gave tips on maintaining a healthy heart.<br /><br />URL: <a href="http://www.goodmorningheart.com ">http://www.goodmorningheart.com </a><br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_MXHXsilf48c/S1KX7fKP2lI/AAAAAAAACqU/lusz0sev4-s/s1600-h/quaker+oats.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_MXHXsilf48c/S1KX7fKP2lI/AAAAAAAACqU/lusz0sev4-s/s320/quaker+oats.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427567549167426130" /></a><br /><br /><br /><em><strong>Outcome: The Quaker websites states that more than 120,000 tests have been taken in the past 2 months.<br /> </strong></em><br /><br /><strong>Olay</strong><br /><br />Concept: Olay wanted to do sampling of Olay Total effects. For this they used Internet marketing very effectively by getting users to come and register on their website to receive their free sample. These requests were followed by a confirmation call and the samples were then couriered to the users.<br /><br />URL: <a href="http://www.olaysampling.com/lms0509/Olay07Oct2009/landingpage.asp# ">http://www.olaysampling.com/lms0509/Olay07Oct2009/landingpage.asp# </a><br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_MXHXsilf48c/S1KYWGX48uI/AAAAAAAACqc/8ouz_dwBWoU/s1600-h/olay.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 170px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_MXHXsilf48c/S1KYWGX48uI/AAAAAAAACqc/8ouz_dwBWoU/s320/olay.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427568006370226914" /></a><br /><br /><br /><strong>Peers</strong><br /><br />Concept: Peers launched an Internet initiative around their Brand proposition of ‘Masoom Pears’. The users (mothers) were encouraged to sign up on their website and upload their Masoom moment, a picture with their child on the website. The reward for doing this was that a selected mother-child pair will be featured in their print advertisement.<br /><br />URL: <a href="http://www.MasoomPears.com ">www.MasoomPears.com </a><br /><br /> <br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_MXHXsilf48c/S1KY8T1Y1-I/AAAAAAAACqk/hvR3rGAAFto/s1600-h/pears.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 159px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_MXHXsilf48c/S1KY8T1Y1-I/AAAAAAAACqk/hvR3rGAAFto/s320/pears.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427568662818641890" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br />In the above examples, the most interesting part was that bulk of online media buys were done by the Advertisers on a CPA (Cost per Action) basis. In case of Lipton this meant buying online media on a cost per Puzzle play and in case of Olay on a Cost per registration for request of free sample. Such media buys eliminate any risk for the Advertisers of not meeting their marketing objectives vis-à-vis the budgets laid down.<br /><br />However till now only a handful of Indian FMCG advertisers have made use of the power of Internet & Online Marketing for achieving Brand Engagement & Activations. There is a tremendous opportunity that still lies unexploited.<br /><br />________________________<br /><br /><em>Note: The above artricle written by me was first published in 4Ps Business & Marketing magazine, issue 22 dated 4th-17th Dec, 2009)</em><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-85777071950279333622008-11-21T02:52:00.000-08:002008-11-21T03:16:02.327-08:00Online Customer Acquisition - Session ID vs Cookie TrackingThe following diagrams illustrate the difference between Session ID & Cookie based tracking<br /><br /><strong>Session based tracking</strong><br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_MXHXsilf48c/SSaTHO-UV1I/AAAAAAAABvE/QulSrFLFvR0/s1600-h/session+ID.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_MXHXsilf48c/SSaTHO-UV1I/AAAAAAAABvE/QulSrFLFvR0/s320/session+ID.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5271062166371587922" /></a><br /><br /><br /><strong>Cookie based tracking</strong><br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_MXHXsilf48c/SSaTugMBqGI/AAAAAAAABvM/LH9Mhq8hkU0/s1600-h/cookie.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_MXHXsilf48c/SSaTugMBqGI/AAAAAAAABvM/LH9Mhq8hkU0/s320/cookie.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5271062841007384674" /></a><br /><br /><br />Most of the advertisers in India use Session based tracking to track performance. This is like evaluating a TV ad by correlating sales within 5 minutes of airing the Ad!! The effect of this tracking is that the Advertiser will allocate the Action /Sale to the LAST referrer. So say if a user sees a banner Ad for a job portal (for discussion sake let us say it is TimesJobs) on monday clicks on it and decides he will fill in the resume over the weekend since there is a lot of information to be provided which will take time. Let us say over the weekend he doesnt remember the exact spelling of the job portal and he goes to Google and types Jobs at Times and finds the link and then clicks and goes on to filling the resume. In this case is it fair to give ALL credit to Google?<br /><br />See this in context of let us say a Bank that generates leads of credit cards. Online application forms of banks for Credit cards run in 4-5 pages and has information like PAN number etc. Lot of these details may not readily be available with the user or the user may just want to bookmark the page and come back to it later. Should the advertiser not recognise the role of the other referrers in the user journey before buying? It is a pity that Advertisers in India are not making use of wealth of information of a user journey before he finally buys from their site.<br /><br />Fortunately Internet technology allows us to track all this, however, Advertisers must be willing to make use of superior technologies and must be willing to change their mid sets else they will never be able to fully optimise their online customer acquisition activities.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-20674058455417157022008-10-04T02:09:00.000-07:002008-10-04T03:01:57.350-07:00Online Ad Networks in IndiaAd Networks have been operating in the Indian online space for over 2 years. They have now started achieving some scale and it is estimated that they now account for almost 15-20% of the online display advertising in India. Buys on Ad Networks have started figuring in almost 75-80% of the media plans.<br /><br />The following are the kinds of networks:<br /><br /><strong>Rep Networks</strong> <br /><br />- They represent the publications in their portfolio, <br />- Provide full transparency for the advertiser about where their ads will run. <br />- Promote high quality traffic at market prices and are heavily used by brand marketers. <br />- Pricing model : Generally CPM<br />- Leading examples of Rep networks operating in Indian space - NDTV repping for MSN's inventory, Publicitas Digital.<br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>Blind Networks</strong><br /><br />- Low pricing model<br />- Marketers relinquish control over where their ads will run. <br />- Achieve their low pricing through large bulk buys of typically remnant inventory combined with campaign optimization and ad targeting technology. <br />- Pricing model - Generally CPC or CPA<br />- Most popular players - Ozone, Komli, Tyroo<br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>Targeted Networks</strong><br /><br />- Focus on specific targeting technologies - behavioral or contextual. <br />- Specialize in using consumer click stream data to enhance the value of the inventory. <br />- Pricing model - Generally CPM or CPC in some cases<br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>Affiliate Networks</strong><br /><br />- Fully transparent network focused on Performance. <br />- Pricing : CPA<br />- Indian Affiliate network: DGM India<br /><br /><br /><strong>Advantages of Networks:</strong><br /><br /><em><strong>Reach at lower costs</strong></em>. 50% of page views happen outside the top 2o sites and users spend more than 60% of their time outside the top 20 sites. These users can be reached at a fraction of cost through networks as compared to reaching them through top 20 sites.<br /><br /><em><strong>Ease</strong></em>: By using the technology & relationships of networks with publishers, an advertiser can reach literally tens of thousands websites through one single window. They can monitor efficiency of the buys also from one single intrface, making it very simple & convenient for an advertiser.<br /><br /><br /><br />See the following coverage by DNA of a recently held session on Ad networks in India in an IAMAI session:<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_MXHXsilf48c/SOc7c5xRCVI/AAAAAAAABu8/NVErzwDuH30/s1600-h/Picture2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_MXHXsilf48c/SOc7c5xRCVI/AAAAAAAABu8/NVErzwDuH30/s320/Picture2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5253232858080807250" /></a><br /><br /><br />Ad networks will grow in prominence with time. I personally feel that there will be 4-5 good networks that will survive & thrive easily in India in times to come.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-35562119527980808362008-01-11T09:51:00.000-08:002008-01-11T09:56:28.295-08:00The future of Indian Web 2.0 brands - will they make money?There has been a plethora of almost me-too brands that have mushroomed in India all of them inspired by success of brands like Orkut, Facebook etc.<br /><br />I feel that most of the Web 2.0 brands have ‘technology’ at their core. Take the case of Web2.0 vertical - social networking – which has Orkut & Facebook as the leaders or Global /Generic Search Engines where the best technology offering like Google & Overture are the undisputed leaders in terms of share of mind & wallet. Similar case is of photo sharing & blogging sites.<br /><br />The biggies can score very easily over small Indian start-ups. I am not sure if an Indian start-up can match tech prowess / capabilities of a Google or a Facebook who may have millions of dollars just to invest in technology & product engineering. I personally feel that Indian companies do not have the capabilities, might or mind-set to compete in offerings that are purely tech led.<br /><br />Another issue that a Web 2.0 brand will have to constantly face is migration of people to newer offerings as and when a better technology offering with better bells & whistles come in. A case in point is people migrating to Facebook away from Orkut.<br /><br />On the other hand, where the differentiator is “Compelling localized offering (localized / topical content / local buzz) – there is a huge potential for Indian start ups in the Indian market. Vertical like Local Search Engines, Travel portals, Online Shopping comparison sites, online classifieds, niche community sites, horizontal /local news sites etc. have a huge potential to scale up in India. <br /><br />However, I see that almost all Indian Web 2.0 companies have not got any really well thought out differentiators that can set them apart on parameters other than technology. In light of this the BIG question is - will the Indian Web2.0 brands make money for their promoters?<div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com37tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-24296372694641848732007-11-24T22:50:00.000-08:002007-11-24T22:55:38.447-08:00My soundbytes on NDTV IndiaMy Soundbytes:<br /><br />NDTV India on 17th November 2007<br /><br /><br /><object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/b3uHWK9Oga8&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/b3uHWK9Oga8&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><br /><br /><br />NDTV India - September 2007<br /><br /><object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/IYjCFWyb7qw&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/IYjCFWyb7qw&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-55062355226186492752007-07-14T09:53:00.000-07:002007-07-14T09:59:40.769-07:00Perform or PerishFollowing article written by me on the Voices section of AgencyFaqs:<br /><br />*******************************************************************************<br />From the perspective of an advertiser’s objectives, there are two broad genres -- one is advertising for brand saliency and the second is advertising for generating business or acquiring customers. Performance marketing refers to the second genre of advertising. Marketing managers are increasingly allocating more monies towards advertising for performance and the internet is the only medium that is truly capable of specific measurement in terms of ‘cost of acquiring a customer’ or ‘cost of generating a transaction’.<br /><br />Advertisers are using the internet as a direct response medium. A medium where they can actually specify their objectives in terms of cost per acquired customer. It is estimated that almost 70 per cent of the online advertising in India is happening for ‘performance’. Google alone enjoys close to 25 per cent share of the total online advertising in India. It is also estimated that 50-60 per cent of banner advertising is also happening for performance.<br /><br />However, advertisers have still not exploited the true potential of Internet as a medium that can increasingly deliver ROI objectives of advertisers. It is very fashionable to talk about ROI, but the fact is that the offline agencies are still grappling with understanding the Internet and most of the online agencies are still using primitive tools and technologies..............<br /><br />*************************************************************<br /><br />You can read the full article here: <a href="http://www.agencyfaqs.com/perl/digital/voices/digispeak/index.html?id=12">http://www.agencyfaqs.com/perl/digital/voices/digispeak/index.html?id=12</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-34243629315670173662007-06-16T22:35:00.000-07:002007-06-16T23:23:07.652-07:00Affiliate Marketing<strong>What is Affiliate Marketing</strong>?<br /><br />In layman’s terms, affiliate marketing is: "<u>web publishers/ affiliates</u> generating registrations/ leads/ sales for <u>merchants/advertisers</u>, in return for a bounty / commission each time they do so".<br /><br />Advertisers don’t buy this advertising, they simply pay them when people click through and perform the action specified by the Advertiser - sign up, transact, fill in a lead etc. Affiliate marketing networks like <a href="http://www.dgm-india.com/">http://www.dgm-india.com/</a>are the link between the merchants and affiliates, they provide the advertisers with technology and track end-to-end performance across various defined performance metrics / parameters like registrations, transactions, referrals, leads etc. while acting as a gateway to large numbers of individual affiliates / publishers. It also allows third party tracking and certification which is crucial when the quantum of referrals are huge.<br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>Benefits of Affiliate Marketing to Advertisers / Merchants</strong><br /><ul><li><u>Expand reach</u> : More traffic > More registrations</li><li><u>Brand exposure</u>: Free benefit, since you do not pay for advertising.</li><li><u>Drive revenue</u>: Well-run affiliate programmes can generate terrific returns</li><li><u>Inform marketing activities</u>: Learn from affiliates about what is working in terms of pricing, offers, products, propositions, landing pages … and what is not. For example, you can watch the best performing affiliates to see how they write their Google ads for the best response. These skilled practitioners can help you improve other areas of your business.</li><li><u>Reduce costs/financial risks</u>: Affiliates offer merchants a virtual sales force without the need to worry about staff salaries, overheads, sick pay etc. The CPA (cost per action) performance model is very cost effective in this respect. </li><li><u>Measurability and accountability</u>: Affiliate networks have lots of tools to help you track your campaigns. Combine this information with your web analytics and sales data to see the big picture and measure ROI.</li><li>Easy draw for merchants with good products but no monies to commit upfront.</li></ul><strong>Benefits to Publishers</strong><br /><ul><li>Get an instant alternative monetising opportunity beyond Ad Sales & ad networks</li><li>Affiliate Marketing can act as a platform to drive in monies with unused inventory.</li><li>Cookies set up for 30,60 days ensure sales incentive for publishers</li><li>Complete control of merchants they wish to promote, unlike the situation of an Ad network.</li></ul><strong>Benefits to Consumers</strong><br /><br />Consumers use Internet to seek information about products - their features, pricing etc. Primary need of Internet Customers is 'comparison shopping' where buyers can see in “one-view” offers from multiple merchants for the same SKU/ product and then with a click proceed to buy the same.<br /><br />This becomes easily possible for Web Publishers to achieve through the help of Affiliate Networks, since the networks pick up 'live feeds' of all products and services from Merchants. The Affiliates in turn pick up those feeds, aggregate & display them on their respective websites the way the consumers would want to see them. Few examples of top global affiliate sites:<br /><ul><li>Kelkoo (Yahoo shopping)</li><li>Shopping.com</li><li>PriceRunner.com </li><li>NextTag.com....</li></ul>Comparative shopping is a huge growth driver for online leads/commerce. Amazon.com & eBay have been able to scale up largely due to their Affiliate programmes. Huge monies are globally going on to comparison shopping / affiliate marketing. <a href="http://www.moneysupermarket.co.uk/">http://www.moneysupermarket.co.uk/</a> is considered as the best comparative portal for Financial products and has become a Billion Dollar company in UK. .<br /><br />e-commerce in India currently driven by Individual deals & bargains. Customers are exposed to a single proposition of a “Deal” at one point of time and hence they can respond to only specific stimuli. I fee that this can be one of the major reasons for the low commerce activities in India. The only exception is the 'Travel' category where we anyways see all online travel portal giving comparisons between various airlines, hotels etc.<br /><p><strong>Affiliate Marketing: Important channel for customer acquisition</strong><br /><br />Affiliate Marketing is globally becoming an indispensable channel for advertisers looking to acquire customers online. Globally, affiliate marketing already contributes to almost 25% of the online spends. Sample these:</p><ul><li>Affiliates worldwide will earn $6.5 billion in bounty and commissions in 2006 [Source: Marketing Sherpa]</li><li>Market for UK affiliate marketing to grow to £2.16 billion: [Source: E-consultancy – October 11th, 2006]</li><li>UK market for this marketing segment will record a growth of 60% this year to about £2.16 billion, compared to the £1.35 billion in 2005 [Source: Traffic Junction – October 11th, 2006] </li></ul><p><strong>Affiliate Marketing in India</strong></p><p>Start has been made by <a href="http://www.dgm-india.com/">http://www.dgm-india.com/</a> by being the first credible Affiliate network in India. I expect over a period of next 18-24 months Affiliate Marketing becoming a very important channel for online customer acquisition and contributing to almost 10% of online advertising.<br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-56295318229042932502007-06-10T06:41:00.000-07:002007-11-24T22:57:57.351-08:00Launched dgm IndiaI apologise for the long silence but I had been very busy setting up operations for <a href="http://www.dgm-india.com/">dgm India</a>.<br /><br /><br /><br />dgm India, is part of <a href="http://www.dgm-group.com/">dgm Holdings Plc</a>. The Company's principal activity is the delivery of ROI through affiliate marketing, search engine marketing, display inventory and email, either as individual channels, or as a complete solution. Globally, dgm provides services to more than 250 blue-chip clients and agencies with over 100 staff. Utilising powerful software, dgm has the ability to trace a consumer's activity online to a specific advertisement placed on a specific channel. Therefore, regardless of the pricing model or channel used, dgm can report on the direct correlation between advertising spend and consumer response.<br /><br /><br /><br />We formally launched dgm India on 6th June 2007. You can read more about the launch here:<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India_Business/Online_affiliate_marketing_major_dgm_sets_up_shop_in_India/articleshow/2106609.cms">TimesofIndia.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.alootechie.com/News/2501.asp">AlooTechie</a><br /><a href="http://www.alootechie.com/news/2500.asp">AlooTechie</a><br /><a href="http://www.contentsutra.com/entry/419-dgm-launches-india-operations-targets-break-even-by-q1-2008/">ContentSutra</a><br /><a href="http://www.agencyfaqs.com/perl/digital/news/index.html?sid=18059">Agencyfaqs</a><br /><a href="http://www.exchange4media.com/e4m/izone1/izone_fullstory.asp?section_id=4&news_id=26373&tag=21106&pict=9">Exchange4Media </a><br /><a href="http://www.delhievents.com/2007/06/dgm-india-launch-heralds-new-dawn-for.html">Delhi Events </a><br /><br /><strong>DD News</strong><br /><br /><object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-NEy2NgWw1o&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-NEy2NgWw1o&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><br /><br />We have launched dgm India with 3 initial solutions:<br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>dgm Performance</strong>: First credible & interntional Affiliate network in India.<br /><br /><strong>dgm Search Lab</strong>: Cutting edge Search Marketing (PPC & SEO) solutions using state of the art Web Analytics & completely automated Bid Management & Optimisation tools that talk to the search engines through APIs.<br /><br /><strong>dgmeMail:</strong> Our managed email solution system.<br /><br /><br /><br />dgm's DNA is delivering better ROI to online advertisers using cutting edge technology, channels & solutions. We have been doing this for close to 8 years in markets like UK & Australia.<br /><br /><br /><br />Seeing the state of Indian online advertising and the solutions that exist here, I am very sure that dgm India, with its superior solutions will be able to raise the bar significantly and will help in taking the online advertising to the next level.<br /><br /><br /><br />More about the state of Indian online advertising in my next post.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-40958811432160405192007-02-09T23:38:00.000-08:002007-07-23T20:54:11.761-07:00Indian Online Advertising Market<p>I estimate the following size of the Indian Online Advertising <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Market</span> during the year 2006 (Jan-Dec basis)<br /><br /></p><a href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_MXHXsilf48c/Rc2PuzszAVI/AAAAAAAAAAc/hDsNg0m3Ok4/s1600-h/online+ad2.bmp"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5029834393157566802" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 355px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 255px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" height="268" alt="" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_MXHXsilf48c/Rc2PuzszAVI/AAAAAAAAAAc/hDsNg0m3Ok4/s320/online+ad2.bmp" width="364" border="0" /> <p></a><strong>Display Advertising Revenues</strong></p><ul><li><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Rediff</span> 15.0 </li><li>Yahoo 12.0 </li><li><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Indiatimes</span> 6.0 </li><li>Web18 Group 3.0 </li><li><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">MSN</span> 2.5 </li><li><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Sify</span> 2.0 </li><li><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Naukri</span> 1.3 </li><li><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">WebDunia</span> 0.8 </li><li>Others 5.0 </li></ul><p><strong>Total Display 47.5</strong> </p><ul><li>Search Advertising 15 </li></ul><p><strong>Grand Total 62.5</strong> </p><p>Key trends that have emerged during the last year: </p><p>- Search accounts for almost 24% of the total Ad Market<br />- 90% of online advertising revenues go to Top 8-10 portals / portal group sites.<br />- Growth in Online advertising over 2005 is close to 100%.<br />- Most of the advertising is being sold directly by the Publishers. Ad networks still do not enjoy a noticeable share<br />- Almost 30-40% o<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">f</span> Advertising is happening through Direct deals between <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Advertisers</span> & Publishers.<br />- More and more advertisers are using online medium<br />- Almost 70% of Online Advertising is happening for "performance"<br />- Largest categories are Internet players & Financial services. These two together would account for close to 60% spends.<br /><br /><br /><br /></p><p><span style="font-size:0;"><br /></span><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-1168100412754621632007-01-06T07:55:00.000-08:002007-01-06T09:05:35.903-08:00Online Advertising: Advertising Units & OptionsFollowing up on my <a href="http://anuraggupta.blogspot.com/2006/12/online-advertising-terminology.html">last post </a>where I had explained the terms used in buying of Online Advertising. In this post I am attempting to explain the Advertising units, sizes & Options.<br /><br /><strong>Advertising Units </strong><br /><br />A digital image is made of basic units called pixels. Advertising Units on the Internet are called "Banners" and are measures & expressed in the same standard measuring unit - pixels. This is also the same unit that measures resolution / screen size of any Computer Monitor. The most commonly used resolutions in India are 800 x 600 pixels and 1024 x 768 pixels. The first number always indicates the number of horizontal pixels.<br /><br /><strong></strong>728X90<br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1637/2203/1600/882206/b%20728X90.bmp.jpg"><img style="CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1637/2203/400/185854/b%20728X90.bmp.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />300X250<br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1637/2203/1600/302397/300X250.bmp.jpg"><img style="CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1637/2203/320/813524/300X250.bmp.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Indiatimes Home Page - 230 X 250<br /><br /><p align="left"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1637/2203/320/99505/blog%20-%20indiatimes%20h%20page.jpg" border="0" /></p><p><strong>Sections </strong><br /><br />Advertising units can be placed in various sections of a Website – like Homepage, specific section pages etc.<br /><br /><em>ROS(Run of Site):<strong> </strong></em>This refers to placing ads across different sections on the site on a random basis. Websites take ROS ads for non premium sections / pages of their websites.<br /><br /><strong>Innovations </strong><br /><em></em><br />Publishers offer use of various high impact & innovative advertising units in addition to the normal ad banners. Few such innovative options are:<br /><br /><em>Site captures / Interstitials: </em>Ad formats that interrupt sequential content, forcing exposure to the advertisement before visitors can continue on their content path. Interstitials are a form of interruption marketing. This quality appeals to advertisers who feel Web advertising needs to be more like a broadcast medium to be effective.<br />Few Indian sites that allow Site captures are Indiatimes, MoneyControl, Exchange4Media etc.<br /><br /><em>Pop ups / Pop unders</em></p><p><em>Expandable Banners: </em>See the following image for example of expandable banner. In this the banner loads as 4 times its contracted size (180 X 150 pixels) and then settles down back to 180X150 after playing the advertisement. </p><p></p><p><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1637/2203/1600/265073/blog%20-%20rediff%20expandable%20banner.jpg"></a></p><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1637/2203/1600/265073/blog%20-%20rediff%20expandable%20banner.jpg"></a><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1637/2203/1600/754035/blog%20-%20rediff%20expandable%20banner.jpg"><img style="CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1637/2203/320/41527/blog%20-%20rediff%20expandable%20banner.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><em></em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em></em></p><em><p><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1637/2203/1600/265073/blog%20-%20rediff%20expandable%20banner.jpg"></a></p></em><p><em></em></p><em><p><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1637/2203/1600/265073/blog%20-%20rediff%20expandable%20banner.jpg"></a></p></em><p><em></em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Shoshkeles / Floaters: </em>Browser driven, platform agnostic, sound enabled, free moving forms. These do not require plug-ins, and there is no discernable download for users. </p><p><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1637/2203/1600/106451/b%20it%20shosh.bmp.jpg"></a></p><p></p><p><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1637/2203/1600/106451/b%20it%20shosh.bmp.jpg"></a></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1637/2203/1600/251225/b%20it%20shosh.bmp.jpg"><img style="CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1637/2203/320/481287/b%20it%20shosh.bmp.jpg" border="0" /></a></p><p>Click here for an example of <a href="http://advertise.indiatimes.com/images/levis%20shosh/indiatimes.htm">Shoshkele on Indiatimes.com</a> </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>In the absence of any standards each publisher is deciding their own sizes. As a consequence, there are just too many sizes of advertisements floating around. 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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-1164952034978294152006-11-30T21:39:00.000-08:002006-11-30T21:48:27.513-08:00Online Advertising terminology: ExplainedIn this post I am explaining various terms used in Online Advertising:<br /><br /><strong>CPM (Cost per thousand)<br /></strong><br />The basic currency / unit of purchase of Internet ad inventory is “Thousand” impression blocks. Cost per thousand is referred as CPM. (M here stands for ‘Milli’ in Latin which means ‘Thousand’)<br /><br /><strong>CPC (Cost per click)</strong><br /><br />Whenever a surfer clicks on a Banner Ad, it is recorded as a “Click”. The percentage of number of clicks from number of impressions is measured by Click Though Ratio (CTR). So for Eg if 1,000 impressions lead to 5 clicks then the CTR will be 0.5%.<br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1637/2203/1600/433695/3.jpg"></a><br /><strong>CPL (Cost per Lead)</strong><br /><br />A lead is defined as a potential customer who is interested in buying the product advertised and provides his contact information like email id , contact numbers etc. Today a bulk of Online Advertising is happening for generation of leads.<br /><br />I2L : Impressions to Leads ratio. Number of leads from served Impressions. If we get 1 lead from 1,000 impressions then i2l will be 0.1%.<br />C2L: Clicks to Leads ratio: Number of leads from clicks. If 5 clicks yield a Lead then the C2L will be 20%.<br /><br /><strong>CPA (Cost per acquisition)</strong><br /><br />Generally a whole lot of Product Categories need Offline Sales teams to “close the sales loop”. Typically, in such cases the leads generated Online are passed on to the Sales organisation who close the loop by talking to / meeting the prospective customer.<br /><br />However, for online organizations like a Travel Portal, acquisition will happen when the customer finishes an online transaction like say buying a ticket. Technology easily allows us to monitor the number of people coming to a site from an Online Ad campaign to ascertain how many people who clicked and reached the website actually ended up completing a transaction.<br /><br />C2A : Clicks to Acquisition ratio. Number of Acquisitions from people who clicked on a particular Banner Ad. If we get 1 transacting customer lead from 100 clicks then the C2A will be 1%.<br /><br /><br /><strong>Metrics stem from objectives</strong><br /><br />The following illustrations will give a clearer picture of the terminology used and the way Online Advertising campaign objectives and Metrics are juxtaposed & viewed .<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1637/2203/1600/433695/3.jpg"></a><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1637/2203/1600/433695/3.jpg"></a><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1637/2203/1600/168219/3.jpg"><img style="CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1637/2203/320/667911/3.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1637/2203/1600/758612/4.jpg"></a><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1637/2203/1600/390562/4.jpg"><img style="CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/1637/2203/320/590579/4.jpg" border="0" /></a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-1163181422760211932006-11-10T09:56:00.000-08:002006-11-10T10:00:06.353-08:00Online Travel India: Size of businessFollowing my earlier posts on online travel:<br /><br /><a href="http://anuraggupta.blogspot.com/2006/05/crowded-skies-or-crowded-online-travel.html">Crowded skies or crowded online travel space?</a><br /><a href="http://anuraggupta.blogspot.com/2006/02/action-in-indian-online-travel-space.html">Action in Indian online Travel space</a><br /><br />I have tried to calculate the size of India business of all the travel portals.<br /><br />I estimate that close to 1,00,000 Air tickets are being sold every day in India. Out of this nearly 20,000 are being sold online. Online tickets are sold by Online Travel Portals / Agents & Directly by the Airlines Websites. Out of this 20,000 I believe that Online Travel portals are selling around 4-5000 tickets per day.<br /><br />At an average ticket value of Rs. 3,000 the total revenue (Gross revenue) earned by Online Travel Portals from sale of Airline Tickets would be in the range of Rs 430-540 Crores. The portals would be getting a net commission ranging from 0.5% to 7.5% from various Airlines. At an average commission rate of 3-4%, the net revenue would be between Rs. 13-22 crores.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.MakemyTrip.com">www.MakemyTrip.com</a> has emerged as the clear leader enjoying more than 50-55% of the market share. <a href="http://travel.indiatimes.com">Indiatimes travel </a>and <a href="http://www.yatra.com">Yatra</a> follow behind with close to 10-15% market share each. Other prominent players include <a href="http://www.travelguru.com">Travelguru</a>, <a href="http://www.cleartrip.com">Cleartrip</a> , <a href="http://www.xplorz.com">Xplorz</a> etc.<br /><br />The Air Tickets business would be forming almost 90% of the total revenues of the online travel portals. 10% revenues would be coming from Hotel bookings, Taxi rentals Packages etc. The margins on these products would be much higher going up to almost 20%. This would give them another Rs 10 crore in net revenues. This makes the total business size around 25-30 crores in net revenues.<br /><br />What will be very interesting to see is how the market shares will pan out once the global biggies like <a href="http://www.expedia.com">Expedia</a> & <a href="http://www.travelocity.com">Travelocity</a> come in (Both of them are going to soon launch their India business) as well as the larger brick & mortar players like <a href="http://www.sotcindia.com">SOTC/ Kuoni </a>& <a href="http://www.thomascook.co.in/">Thomas Cook </a>throw their hats into the ring.<br /><br />However, one thing is very clear - the volumes of business being done by Online Travel Portals will continue growing exponentially over the next 2-3 years.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-1161947205226453272006-10-27T03:54:00.000-07:002006-11-07T07:17:38.403-08:00Online video rental companies in IndiaThere has been lots of activity in the space of Online Video rental. The value proposition is of course convenience in the process of renting movies. Subscribers can order / queue the movies they want to watch and the movie rental company will despatch the movie by courier to their home. Once the movie has been watched the courier will collect back the same, saving the hassle of going to a movie rental shop and browsing through loads of photo albums with movie covers. The online library is of course searchable & browsable making the task of selecting movies easier!<br /><br />I have done a deeper analysis of their offerings:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.Seventymm.com"><strong>www.Seventymm.com</strong></a><br /><br />Area of operation: Delhi & Bangalore<br />Number of Titles : 10,000+<br />Membership options: Rs 199/599 ; 4/ Unlimited DVDs in a month<br />Number of movies at a time: upto 2<br />Viewing Time: No limit<br />Registration : Rs. 499<br />Security Deposit: Rs. 999<br /><br /><a href="http://www.clikflix.com"><strong>www.clikflix.com</strong></a><br /><br />Area of operation: Mumbai (selected areas)<br />Number of titles: Several Thousand (?!)<br />Membership options: Rs 399-999 / 1-2 discs out at a time/ 6-unlimited DVDs in a month<br />Viewing Time: 3-7 days<br />Security Deposit: 1500 / 3000<br /><br /><a href="http://www.catchflix.com"><strong>www.catchflix.com</strong></a><br /><br />Area of operation: Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi & NCR, Mumbai<br />Number of titles: Thousands (?!)<br />One DVD Rs 99, 2 DVDs Rs 149<br />Viewing Time: 3 days<br />Security Deposit: None<br /><br /><a href="http://www.CineSprite.com"><strong>www.CineSprite.com</strong></a><br /><br />Area of operation: Delhi & NCR<br />Number of titles: Not specified<br />One DVD Rs 399, 2 DVDs Rs 499; unlimited / month<br />Viewing Time: Unlimited<br />Registration: 150-250<br /><br /><a href="http://www.fridayboxoffice.com"><strong>www.fridayboxoffice.com</strong></a><br /><br />Area of operation: Bangalore<br />Number of titles: Not specified<br />Limited (2 DVDs) - Rs 100 / Unlimited movies Rs 400 per month<br />Viewing Time: Unlimited<br />Registration: 1500-250<br /><br /><a href="http://www.Homeview.in"><strong>www.Homeview.in</strong></a><br /><br />Area of operation: Delhi, Gurgaon & Noida<br />Number of titles: Not specified<br />Rs. 699 pm to Rs 999 pm ; 1 movie at a time<br />Viewing Time: Unlimited<br /><br /><br /><strong>Related links</strong><br /><br /><a href="http://www.contentsutra.com/online-dvd-rental-company-seventymm-gets-7-million-from-matrix-partners-india#comment-7441">http://www.contentsutra.com/online-dvd-rental-company-seventymm-gets-7-million-from-matrix-partners-india#comment-7441</a><br /><br /><a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1510994.cms">http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1510994.cms</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.webyantra.net/2006/07/20/seventymmnational-footprint-is-eagerly-awaited/">Excellent post by Webyatra</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.contentsutra.com/entry/more-online-dvd-rental-companies-to-get-funded-in-india/">http://www.contentsutra.com/entry/more-online-dvd-rental-companies-to-get-funded-in-india/</a><br /><br /><br />With so much of Video piracy in India, an interesting aspect to be seen is will these players be able to create a sustainable and profitable business model for themselves?<br /><br />I am sure there will be few other players whom I would have missed out. I invite readers to help me update the list.<br /><br /><strong>Update</strong><br /><br />Another online video rental company to get funded: <a href="http://www.madhouse.in">Madhouse.in</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-1160396473013551932006-10-09T05:00:00.000-07:002006-11-07T07:20:21.876-08:00Web 2.0 Companies in IndiaThere has been a lot of interest of late in the Web 2.0 space. Of course there are global biggies like <a href="http://www.MySpace.com">MySpace</a> , <a href="http://www.YouTube.com">YouTube</a> , <a href="http://www.Linkedin.com">LinkedIn</a>, <a href="http://www.Ryze.com">Ryze </a>, <a href="http://www.Hi5.com">Hi5 </a>, <a href="http://www.Orkut.com">Orkut</a> , <a href="http://www.Filckr.com">Filckr </a>, <a href="http://Del.icio.us">Del.icio.us</a> , <a href="http://www.Blogger.com">Blogger</a>, <a href="http://www.Digg.com">Digg </a>etc etc.<br /><br />A recent news of great interest in this space is Google’s interest in acquiring YouTube. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/06/AR2006100601404.html">Read Washington Post’s article</a><br /><br />There have been loads of Indian Companies foraying into the Web 2.0 space. One of the recent more high profile joinees of the bandwagon is MIH with <a href="http://www.Ibibio.com">Ibibo</a> (I build I bond)<br /><br />I just wanted to compile a list of the Web2.0 companies, I am sure this will not still be a comprehensive list and I encourage readers to contribute to make it as exhaustive as possible. I could not resist adding Indian Search Engines to this lot though they are not Web 2.0 play. Well here it goes:<br /><br /><strong>Social Bookmarking</strong><br /><br /><a href="http://in.myweb2.search.yahoo.com/">Yahoo My Web 2.0 </a><br /><a href="http://www.indiagram.com">Indiagram</a><br /><a href="http://www.putvote.com">PutVote</a><br /><a href="http://www.humdigg.com">HumDigg</a><br /><a href="http://www.ForumsofIndia.com">ForumsofIndia</a><br /><a href="http://www.Newscola.com">NewsCola</a><br /><a href="http://www.Indianpad.com">IndianPad</a><br /><a href="http://www.Indiamarks.com">IndiaMarks</a><br /><a href="http://www.Rambhai.com">Rambhai </a><br /><a href="http://www.IndianBytes.com">IndianBytes</a><br /><a href="http://www.Jhanki.com">Jhanki </a><br /><br /><strong>Photo Sharing / printing</strong><br /><br /><a href="http://in.photos.yahoo.com">Yahoo India Photos</a><br /><a href="http://Albums.Ibibo.com">Ibibo Albums</a><br /><a href="http://www.merasnap.com">MeraSnap</a><br /><a href="http://www.PhotoBaaz.com">PhotoBaaz</a><br /><a href="http://www.picsquare.com">PicSquare</a><br /><a href="http://spaces.live.com/?mkt=en-in">Windlows Live Spaces</a><br /><br /><br /><strong>Blogging</strong><br /><br /><a href="http://o3.indiatimes.com">Indiatimes Blogs</a><br /><a href="http://www.rediffiland.com">Rediff Blogs</a><br /><a href="http://www.burrp.com">Burrp </a><br /><a href="http://spaces.live.com/?mkt=en-in">Windows live Spaces</a><br /><a href="http://www.Techtribe.com">TechTribe</a><br /><a href="http://blogs.ibibo.com">Ibibo Blogs</a><br /><a href="http://www.gandhigiri.org">Gandhigiri</a><br /><a href="http://expressindia.com/blogs">Expressindia Blogs</a><br /><a href="http://ibnlive.com/blogs/">IBNLive blogs</a><br /><a href="http://www.moneycontrol.com/messageboardblogindia/">Moneycontrol Blogs</a><br /><a href="http://www.ndtvblogs.com/">NDTV Blogs</a><br /><br /><br /><strong>Social Networking</strong><br /><br /><a href="http://connexions.rediff.com">Rediff Connexions</a><br /><a href="http://in.groups.yahoo.com">Yahoo Groups</a><br /><a href="http://clubs.indiatimes.com">Indiatimes Clubs</a><br /><a href="http://www.HumSubka.com">HumSubka</a><br /><a href="http://www.Sixer.tv">Sixer</a> – Social networking for cricket fans<br /><a href="http://www.WahIndia.com">Wah India</a> – Social networking for bollywood fans<br /><a href="http://www.Yaari.com">Yaari</a> – Social networking for youth (Hi5 of India)<br /><br /><strong>Indian Search engines<br /></strong><br /><a href="http://www.Byindia.com">ByIndia</a><br /><a href="http://www.guruji.com">Guruji </a>– Yet to be launched<br /><a href="http://www.Onyomo.com">OnYoMo</a> – Short form for On Your Move - Local search with maps.<br /><br /><br />Even globally, the Web 2.0 companies have not yet defined a very clear revenue model and path to profitability for themselves. So it will be very interesting to see who survives and thrives amongst the clutter of the Web 2.0 companies in India.<br /><br /><strong>Related links</strong><br /><br /><a href="http://www.contentsutra.com/more-indians-join-the-web-20-bandwagon">http://www.contentsutra.com/more-indians-join-the-web-20-bandwagon</a><br /><a href="http://www.watblog.com/index.php?content=detail&id=149">http://www.watblog.com/index.php?content=detail&id=149</a><br /><a href="http://www.indianpad.com/view/10167">http://www.indianpad.com/view/10167</a><br /><a href="http://www.alootechie.com/liveserver/news_detail.asp?id=1545">http://www.alootechie.com/liveserver/news_detail.asp?id=1545</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-1156319452106251772006-08-23T00:42:00.000-07:002006-08-25T04:19:34.466-07:00When will we see a global Indian Internet consumer brand?Yahoo India, MSN India, eBay India, Google India, Monster India – these are some of the most popular digital consumer brands in India – what do they have in common ?<br />Answer: None of them are Indian brands!<br /><br />Not that there are no home-grown desi digital brands – <a href="http://www.naukri.com">Naukri.com</a>, <a href="http://www.indiatimes.com">Indiatimes.com</a>, <a href="http://www.shaadi.com">Shaadi.com</a>, <a href="http://www.rediff.com">Rediff.com </a>, <a href="http://www.bharatmatrimony.com">Bharat Matrimony.com</a>, and <a href="http://www.makemytrip.com">MakeMyTrip.com </a>among others have carved a space for themselves in the Indian consumers' mind. However, there is no Indian Internet brand which has either gone global or shaken the Internet world by sheer innovation.<br /><br />Why is that despite having a talent pool of good technology & business professionals and despite VC/PE money chasing Indian Internet business ideas we do not have even ONE global internet brand! More so, when the playing field is really level in the digital world – after all isn't that what internet is all about?<br /><br />Forget about creating a global brand, where is India's answer to China's <a href="http://www.alibaba.com/">Alibaba</a> or <a href="http://www.sohu.com/">Sohu</a>, which can get a Google or Yahoo to sit up and take notice.<br /><br />Why is it that in Web 2.0 there is no Indian company doing anything exciting? Why can't we create a <a href="http://del.icio.us/">del.icio.us </a>or a <a href="http://digg.com/">digg.com</a>? Simple concepts but which have become a rage.<br /><br />We as Indian businesses need to really think large and place some big bets to address global markets. Our businesses need to plan more investments in Technolgy (R & D / engineering) for us to be able to complete with global Internet brands. Why Internet, even our software industry has not been able to turn around even a single global brand.<br /><br />I hope in the next 4-5 years we should see some larger Indian Internet & software brands competing in the global markets with the global biggies!<br /><br /><strong>Related link</strong><br /><br /><a href="http://www.alootechie.com/liveserver/news_detail.asp?id=1396">http://www.alootechie.com/liveserver/news_detail.asp?id=1396</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-1155023647329663722006-08-08T00:53:00.000-07:002006-08-08T01:46:23.126-07:00From problem of too few to problem of plenty…During the dot com 'golden era' between 1998- 2000, India had less than 5 million Internet users and around 50 million phone users. There were various kinds of sites looking at chasing eyeballs to selling various products. Such was optimism at that time that business plans were almost an after thought. Main objective of an Internet business was getting VC funding. Not surprisingly, most of them folded up in the infamous Dot-com bust.<br /><br />Cut to 2006, the situation seems to have reversed, this is the era of Internet 2.0 in India. There are 30-40 million Internet users and more than 150 million telephone users (More than 100 million are mobile phone users). Internet firms have matured, many online business models have got established. Dotcoms seem destined for a good run in their second coming. However, multiple players have cropped up in most of the spaces. Sample partial list of players in different spaces:<br /><br /><ul><li>Email: Almost a dozen players including horizontal portals like <a href="http://www.yahoo.co.in">Yahoo</a>, <a href="http://www.msn.co.in">MSN</a> to ISPs like <a href="http://www.vsnl.in">VSNL</a>, <a href="http://airtel-broadband.com/">Airtel broadband</a> etc. </li><li>Travel: More than 15 travel players along with most airlines offering online ticket booking. I had written about this in an <a href="http://anuraggupta.blogspot.com/2006/05/crowded-skies-or-crowded-online-travel.html">earlier post</a></li><li>Horizontal portals: <a href="http://www.yahoo.co.in">Yahoo</a>, <a href="http://www,rediff.com">Rediff</a>, <a href="http://www.indiatimes.com">Indiatimes</a>, <a href="http://www.sify.com">Sify</a>, <a href="http://www.msn.co.in">MSN</a> </li><li>News sites: <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/">Times of India</a>, <a href="http://www.ibnlive.com/">IBN Live</a>, <a href="http://www.ndtv.com/homepage/default.asp">NDTV</a>, <a href="http://www.samachar.com/">Samachar</a>, <a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/">HT.com</a>, <a href="http://us.jagran.com/home.asp" target="_blank">Jagran</a><br />Financial sites: <a href="http://www.moneycontrol.com/" target="_blank">Moneycontrol</a>, <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/" target="_blank">Economic Times</a>, <a href="http://www.indiainfoline.com/" target="_blank">Indiainfoline</a></li><li>Shopping : <a href="http://shopping.indiatimes.com">Indiatimes</a>, <a href="http://shopping.rediff.com">Rediff</a>, <a href="http://www.ebay.in/">eBay</a>, <a href="http://www.fabmall.com">Fabmall</a>,</li><li>Share broking: <a href="http://www.icicidirect.com">ICICI</a>, <a href="http://www.hdfcsec.com/">HDFC Securties</a>, <a href="http://indiabulls.com/">Indiabulls</a>, <a href="http://www.sharekhan.com">Sharekhan</a>, <a href="http://www.5paisa.com/" target="_blank">5paisa.com </a>, <a href="http://www.investsmartindia.com/IIL_NEW/home/homemain.aspx">Investmart </a></li><li>Mobile VAS players: As per last count there are more than 3,000 short coded in India. </li><li>Jobs – <a href="http://www.naukri.com">Naukri</a>, <a href="http://www.monsterindia.com/">Monster</a>, <a href="http://www.jobsahead.com">Jobs Ahead</a>, <a href="http://www.clickjobs.com">Clickjobs</a>, <a href="http://www.timesjobs.com">Timesjobs</a> along with a dozen smaller sites / aggregators </li><li>Matrimonial: <a href="http://www.shaadi.com">Shaadi</a>, <a href="http://www.bharatmatrimony.com">Bharat matrimony</a>, <a href="http://www.jeevansathi.com/">Jeevan Saathi</a>, <a href="http://www.timesmatri.com">Timesmatri</a>. </li><li>Real estate : <a href="http://www.99acres.com">99Acres</a>, <a href="http://www.indiaproperties.com">Indiaproperties</a>, <a href="http://www.magicbricks.com">Magicbricks</a> </li><li>Auto:<a href="http://www.automartindia.com"> Automart</a>, <a href="http://www.carwale.com">Carwale</a>, <a href="http://www.cybersteering.com">Cybersteering</a> (<a href="http://www.contentsutra.com/the-rush-of-auto-portals">Read more here</a>)</li></ul><p>With Online advertising also growing at 100% y-o-y, even eyeball chasing models besides commerce generating models have begun making sense when we compare it with the Internet 1.0 era. </p><p>Several players operating in the same spaces will surely lead to expansion and development of the market. This however triggers a key question-will all of them survive? I feel that over the next couple of years we will witness consolidation with only the top 3-4 players in each vertical surviving & more importantly thriving. </p><p>The key for survival and growth will be differentiated offering, better user experience and more importantly deep pockets leading to sustenance power. </p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-1152795469396628732006-07-13T05:57:00.000-07:002006-07-13T06:00:18.243-07:00Moving on....After a four year action packed stint with Indiatimes, I have decided to move on. I will be shortly joining <a href="http://www.mediaturf.com/">Mediaturf</a> as Executive Vice-President and Director. With the Online Ad space growing close to 100% yoy, I see tremendous opportunity in creating value with Mediaturf.<br /><br />I will be based out of Delhi and will aim to take Mediaturf's business to the next level by getting into new businesses like mobile marketing, retail advertisement, trade advertising solutions in addition to scaling up the existing business of Banner advertising & search marketing. I will also be setting up the Northern India operations for Mediaturf.<br /><br /><strong>Related links</strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><a href="http://www.exchange4media.com/peoplemovement/movement_fullstory.asp?section_id=23&news_id=21799&tag=16526&pict=5">Anurag Gupta quits Indiatimes, to join Mediaturf as EVP and Director</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.alootechie.com/News/1207.asp">Anurag Gupta quits Indiatimes, to join Mediaturf</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.contentsutra.com/industry-moves-anurag-gupta-joins-mediaturf-as-evp">Industry Moves: Anurag Gupta Joins Mediaturf As EVP</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-1151482442504430692006-06-28T01:00:00.000-07:002006-06-28T03:27:40.276-07:003Cs of Digital Consumers - Is Content still King ?What drives people to the Internet? Typically usage is driven by needs that are popularly labeled as falling into the either of the 3Cs – To <strong>"Connect” </strong>- To consume <strong>“Content”</strong> or to transact for <strong>“Commerce”</strong> services.<br /><br />I estimate the following percentages of total quantum of usage (page views) in India:<br /><br />Connect: 70-75%<br />Content : 20-25% (Includes Classifieds – Jobs, matrimony etc)<br />Commerce : 5%<br /><br /><strong>Connect </strong><br /><br />One to one contact or one to many / many to one community applications like Email, Messenger , Chat , Clubs, Social & business networking, User generated content services (Blogs, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikipedia</a>, etc.), Picture sharing (<a href="http://www.flickr.com">Flickr</a>, etc).<br /><br />Almost 100% of users use Internet for one or more of “connect” services. Email is the most dominant activity. Importantly enough, community tools such as social networking and photo sharing are extremely popular with the 15-25 age group<br /><br />Most of the “connect” services are being offered free to users and are being used as “gateways” to acquire users. Monetisation of these users happens through serving advertisements while they use these services or through getting them to do commercial transactions by delivering them paid content, services & product offerings.<br /><br /><br /><strong>Content</strong><br /><br />I estimate that today only 20-25% users in India are coming to Internet for consuming content pushed by publishers. I have also taken all classifieds services into this category. A recent <a href="http://www.iamai.in/r9_home.php3">study done by IAMAI </a>indicates that there are currently 6.1 million job seekers online. On a base of 38 million users this translates into 16% of internet users coming for seeking jobs online!<br /><br />I have not taken into consideration porn sites.<br /><br />With social web 2.0 and increasing amount of consumer generated content proliferating internet (Blogs, Wikipedia etc.) on one side and on the other side the dominant gateway for acquiring customers being Connect services. “Content being king” seems to be a little irrelevant today. Any comments ?<br /><br /><br /><strong>Commerce<br /></strong><br /><a href="http://www.iamai.in/">IAMAI</a> in one of their <a href="http://www.iamai.in/r2_home.php3">studies conducted in April 2005</a> have estimated following:<br /><br />Internet users in India : 25 million<br />Number of B2C transactions in Year 2005-06 : 0.8 million.<br /><br />If we were to take on an average 2 transactions per customer in a year, we will get 0.45 million unique transacting users. Translating into less than 2% share of 25 million total internet users. I think that they have not taken stock broking into account. If we take stock broking, then I estimate that currently, just about 5% of total Internet users are getting into paid relationships with portals, there of course needs to be a larger set of merchants, merchandise and services that need to be offered to the consumers. I have written about this in an <a href="http://anuraggupta.blogspot.com/2006/02/online-shopping-in-india.html">earlier post</a> as well.<br /><br />As Indians get more used to getting their daily news fix online and get more comfortable using their credit card, there would be a quantum leap in terms of users and pageviews. However, over the next few years services that allow users to “Connect” will continue to remain the dominant tool for acquisition of new customers to the Internet. The portals that are able to gather more such customers will be winners in the long term.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-1148884823641575592006-05-28T23:20:00.000-07:002006-06-06T00:04:23.523-07:00Crowded skies or crowded online travel space?Following up on my earlier <a href="http://anuraggupta.blogspot.com/2006/02/action-in-indian-online-travel-space.html">post on online travel space </a>, here is an updated compilation of the travel players who have either launched their offerings or have announced the same.<br /><br /><strong>Operational sites<br /></strong><br /><a href="http://travel.indiatimes.com">Indiatimes Travel</a><br /><a href="http://www.makemytrip.com">MakeMyTrip </a><br /><a href="http://www.travelguru.com">Travelguru </a><br /><a href="http://www.xplorz.com">Xplorz</a> : (Promoted by Tulip Travels)<br /><a href="http://www.thomascook.co.in">Thomas Cook</a><br /><a href="http://www.mobissimo.in">Mobissimo</a> : Fare search & redirect to airline for booking fulfilment<br /><a href="http://faresearch.rediff.com/travel/domestic/farenchse.htm">Rediff Fare Search</a> : Fare search & redirect<br /><a href="http://www.traveljini.com">Traveljini</a> : Tavel content<br /><br /><br /><strong>Launch announced</strong><br /><br /><a href="http://www.yatra.in">Yatra</a><br /><a href="http://www.cleartrip.com">Cleartrip</a><br /><a href="http://www.ezeego1.com">Ezeego1</a> – Cox and Kings, <a href="http://www.m-travel.com/news/2006/04/coxkings_ready_.html">read more</a><br />Travelocity India : <a href="http://www.m-travel.com/news/2006/05/travelocity_con.html">read more </a><br /><a href="http://www.sify.com">Sify's</a> acquisition of Globe travels : <a href="http://news.moneycontrol.com/india/news/business/sifyltdindiaus/sifyacquiresglobetravels/market/stocks/article/218345">read more </a> (Updated : 6th June 2006)<br /><br />This makes it more than a dozen sites already and counting ! Any wagers on who will survive ?<div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21794673.post-1148539670114571172006-05-24T23:35:00.000-07:002006-05-25T05:59:49.983-07:00Online education: A big opportunity<p>A business is likely to do well in the online space when</p><ol><li>It meets a need that offline businesses cannot provide or is able to provide a more efficient and convenient experience to the consumer</li><li>The demand and supply of a product or a service is very disorganized, fragmented and geographically scattered. </li></ol><p>With majority of India’s population below the age of 25, education is a huge business. It also fits very well in the online space by clearly scoring over offline education in terms of:<br /><br /><strong><em>Convenience:</em></strong> </p><p>- Very easy for a student to reach out to a good teacher from within confines of his/her home<br />- Provides help on a 24/7 basis.<br /><br /><strong><em>Disorganised & Scattered Demand (students) – Supply(teachers)</em></strong><br /><br />On one side good quality teachers are concentrated in few geographical areas / institutes / colleges & schools. On the other side there are students from all over the country who want to get into a good school / college / institute. </p><p>Kota in Rajasthan is a very good example where the entire eco-system of the town has been built around thousands of students staying in the town for almost a year to prepare for engineering examinations by enrolling in one of the numerous engineering entrance coaching institutes of the likes of Bansals etc.</p><p><br /><br />As we will see the internet connectivity expand to smaller towns and speeds improve, online education should grow extremely rapidly. Currently there are very few players concentrating on online education<br /><br />I have recently led Indiatimes’ foray into education by launching testing services for all competitive examinations under the brand <a href="http://www.testcentre.indiatimes.com">Indiatimes Mindscape Test Centre</a>. We would like to eventually offer a full services education portal, with a whole range of content and service offerings, right from school to post graduation.<br /><br /><strong>Related links<br /></strong><br /><a href="http://infotech.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1517139.cms">http://infotech.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1517139.cms</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.alootechie.com/News/1006.asp">http://www.alootechie.com/News/1006.asp</a><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 0px 3px 0.5em 3px;'>
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</div>Anurag Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02870332493875197259noreply@blogger.com7