As more and more consumers get on to the net, advertisers and internet companies alike are sprucing up their online campaigns. After its successful brand campaign YOU aired on television channels last year, internet company Yahoo! is now running a new campaign targeted at advertisers. In an interaction with FE?s Vivina Vishwanathan, Yahoo! India director (marketing) Nitin Mathur talks about the new campaign, the potential of the digital space in India an how Yahoo plans to convince advertisers to spend more online. Edited excerpts:
Why do you have an ad for advertisers?
The overall internet marketing space in India has started to grow. The current campaign is an extension of the YOU consumer focused TV campaign, aired between October and December that focused on how Yahoo! is making internet personal, relevant and open. The objective was to revitalise the brand among the consumers.
We wanted to extend this intention to the advertisers. It is to showcase the value of advertising on Yahoo!. We want to give a clear vision to advertisers who want to advertise on the internet and let them know how they can leverage it and also inform them as to how they can partner with Yahoo! for the purpose.
Through this campaign, we are also celebrating some of the successes with brands that have participated on the Yahoo! platform. The campaign will act as a truth point. It is to provide the right target technique to reach the target audience to the advertisers. It is to explain how via creativity you can communicate better. Also, we are in the business of advertising and so it makes sense to go ahead and do something out-of-the-box.
How is the Indian online market growing? And where does the Yahoo! brand stand?
We are at a stage where the market is growing at a double-digit rate which is a decent pace. The market will start growing when the big spenders, at least the top 100 spenders, increase their digital spend to 6-7% of their total ad spend. When we look at the market?s overall spend on advertising, currently the digital spend is still at 1.5-2%. The digital marketing space will explode and will happen on its own pace. At the moment we are seeing the momentum and it will definitely grow.
At present, India has 50 million internet users, of which 36 million are active internet users. Of the 36 million active users, 27 million are active Yahoo! users, which is around 73% of the active user base. Yahoo! Mail has 20 million users, that is around 70% of active users, Yahoo! Messenger has 39 million users and Yahoo! front page has 22 million users. As users grow, the advertisers will follow. Today the internet penetration is low, but it is growing faster than television and print. And as more users come, so will the advertisers.
How serious are the advertisers in the digital space?
The advertisers are beginning to realise the potential. There was a stage when advertisers were not spending at all. Now they are allocating a fixed budget from their ad spend which is a good sign. As people are spending more time on the internet the medium is growing at a much faster pace. Advertisers will look at the trend. Also, irrespective of whether an advertiser is present on the net or not, people are talking about that advertiser?s brand. This realization, to an extent, has made advertisers start spending aggressively. It is the responsibility of publishers like us to educate the advertisers as they come on board. There is a lot to be done to become equivalent to television. In UK, it is a different situation altogether where internet has surpassed television.
How cost effective is digital advertising?
It is much cheaper as it is based on cost per content. It is not just cheaper, but more efficient as you can reach your target audience with great frequency. It is also highly measurable though processes like hits, clicks, studying the post-campaign behaviour and much more.
Which media are you choosing for this particular campaign?
It will be more of a print and digital campaign. The campaign will be featuring our existing clients including Citibank and Maruti. It will be on newspapers, magazines and the digital space. As the campaign is focusing on the advertisers and it is a B2B (business to business) campaign, there will be no TV ads. It will be more on direct marketing, on trade magazines, trade online portals.