Digital media future of advertising
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- Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2007 10:54:48 +0800
Digital media future of advertising
Search engines like Google are driving online advertising in digital media to
new heights, accounting for nearly 8 percent of global ads
Dawn
Thursday, July 19, 2007
By Sujit John & Swati Anand
Bangalore --- Anyone who's caught the Dove Evolution ad on YouTube feels
compelled to forward it to friends. The ad film, that shows an ordinary looking
woman transform into a glamorous model thanks to heavy make-up, strong lights
and clever Photoshop tools, drives home the message of unrealistic perceptions
of beauty.
O&M Toronto began its awards haul for the ad with the Cannes Lions and is set to
pick up more. And an enthused WPP (advertising majors like O&M, JWT and Grey
Worldwide form part of the media conglomerate) can't have enough of the success
story. Even the spoofs of the ad, particularly the one called Lardo, have only
driven the ad's popularity further.
That's just one indication of how powerful digital media is becoming in
communications space. Advertisers and agencies across the world are today
looking at channels like web sites, blogs, social networking sites and mobile
phones to influence consumer decisions.
"Consumers are beginning to participate in advertising and communication,
becoming part of the creative department," says Robyn Putter, creative head of
WPP. "Once you do good work, you have the consumer acting as the evangelist."
Digital media today accounts for 8% of global ad spend. In UK, it's as high as
17%. Over the coming years, it is expected to touch about 25%. "Consumers spend
20-25% of their time online, so ad spend should follow that and stabilise around
that level," says Mark Read, WPP's director. In India, the digital media spend
is currently less that 2% of total ad spend, but the expectation is that it will
be 8 to 10% by 2010.
"After years of stagnation, advertising expenditure in digital media in 2006
showed a steep growth of over 150% over the previous year," says Ruchira Raina,
ED of media house Dentsu Communications, who predicts a 50% CAGR in ad spend on
digital media over the next several years.
Online advertising is interactive and has greater measurability, with hits being
constantly monitored and in some cases, conversion rates of hits-to-purchase as
well.
Search engines like Google are the biggest driving force of online advertising.
With internet phenomena like social networking sites -- most notably Orkut and
Hi5 -- as well as blogging catching on especially among the youth, ad agencies
are coming up with different ways of targeting these channels.
"Advertising on blogging and social networking sites offers an opportunity to
match unique keywords for each ad unit and narrow the targeting directly to the
theme you want. Better targeting offers higher response to your ads," says
Raina.
Read feels that the introduction of IPTV will throw up a host of opportunities
as it will widen base Net users.
Although number of cellphone users in India is around 150 million and internet
users are only about 40 million, ad agencies are betting higher on internet than
mobile. "For one, mobile phones are far more personal and 'push SMSes' don't
work. There's great potential but one needs to work out models to suit the
medium," reasons Read.
Globally, while online advertising is estimated to be $32-33 billion in 2007,
advertising on mobiles is expected to be just about 3% of that. However,
companies like Bangalore-based mGinger are trying to offer advertising solutions
in mobile phone. "We send SMSes based on categories -- like travel or apparel --
only with the permission of the user. Besides, the SMSes usually have a discount
incentive," says Chaitanya Nallan, CEO, mGinger.
Date Posted: 7/19/2007
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