Digital media is cost-effective, more targeted, and able to connect with the youth. For traditional media planners grappling with digital media, however, it has been a steep learning curve as they try to navigate the obstacles and use the medium to the optimum

Google, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube are no more a new phenomenon evolving on the fringes of the media landscape. The popularity, the reach, the usage and the recall of these platforms is as mainstream as any popular traditional media platform. Digital media has, in fact, been growing the fastest among all the sections of media. Meanwhile, industry body Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) estimates that there are more than 100 million internet users in the country. Another study by market research agency IMRB suggests that 75% of these users are below the age of 35 years, making India a nation with the world?s youngest internet population.

Marketers, indeed, are not oblivious to these appealing developments and they have been making efforts to test the digital waters. Yet, their efforts have not translated into massive ad dollars flowing into online media?s coffers. The share of digital media in the total advertising pie is around 5%. Indeed, digital advertising has grown 25% year-on-year, according to IMRB and IAMAI, still at the end of March 2012, it accounted only for R2,851 crore. Estimates suggest that by the end of March 2013, this will have grown to R4,391 crore. Indeed, marketers can no longer afford to be lackadaisical about the fast growing online media.

Trekking online, however, is fraught with challenges. Majority of marketers, for instance, have been trained to tame the old media, which itself has been in constant churn. There is another factor that has held the marketers back from scaling the digital heights and that is their limited understanding of the dynamics of the medium. The digital media is crowded, noisy, heavily segmented, and indeed, there is a sea of data on consumers, their profiles and consumption predilections but there are no standard tools to assess their significance and draw out meaningful marketing lessons from them.

Ravi Rao, leader, Mindshare South Asia, says, ?Basic knowledge of SEO (search engine optimization), tagging, HTML, banner formats, SEM (search engine marketing)is still a challenge. And the best traditional planner who makes an easy transition into digital is one who understands the difference between GRPs (gross rating points, a measurement currency for television) and Impressions (a measurement currency for the web).?

Another major challenge is the need to constantly innovate while planning for the dynamic digital medium. According to Saugata Bagchi, vice president, Tribal DDB, this is a probable challenge for traditional media planners when entering the new media domain, where ability to experiment, work on and analyze fast and ever changing data points become critical success factors.

Arnab Mitra, national director?digital at Starcom Mediavest Group, however, says the challenges are primarily in the head. ?It is pure math. Media planners who have been doing traditional media planning since the last 8-10 years have boxed their thoughts. They need to be ready to open to newer challenges. Fluidity in the thought process is crucial for any planner,? he says.

The medium also lacks a standardized measurement tool?advertisers are increasingly demanding a standard measurement tool, to help them ascertain ROI?s (return on investment). Planners feel that if there is a standardized format, it can inspire confidence in advertisers about the medium since they can benchmark practices and appropriate larger budgets to this medium than what is currently being spent.

?From a planner?s perspective, benchmarking will help in better analyzing the new data points created from every campaign and create sharper, better tailored and effective plans. This, till achieved and accepted by the advertiser community, will continue to be a challenge. Because of these, advertisers mostly perceive digital media as a box to be checked in their promotional plan,? says Bagchi.

Another idea is that there should be an analytic tool that can be collaborated with traditional planning parameters, to give planners a holistic view of the audience, their media habits and responses to a media campaign. Due to this, digital media plans work in silos and are not truly a part of the integrated campaign.

?Insights on mobile campaigns are still not audited by an authentic source. With online and mobile video inventory giving equal or more reach than traditional inventory for a defined set of audiences, it is important that we look at one single source that can bring both digital and traditional media to one common platform. So a single dashboard that integrates all slow moving data (TV, print, radio spends, reach, GRPs, retail audit data, brand health tracks) and fast moving data (display, mobile, search, social) makes the planner look at the overall situation and make winning recommendations,? says Rao of Mindshare.

The media planner also needs to understand that if a customer is going to moneycontrol.com, the intent is different than when she is going to yahoo.com. For example, on yahoo.com, there is an ad for the new contest by Pepe Jeans targeted at youth and is apt for this website because it would drive a large traffic of young population due to its content about celebrities, lifestyle, relationships, etc. Moneycontrol.com meanwhile hosts digital ads for BNB Paribas Mutual Funds, Life Insurance Corporation of India and ICICIdirect.com which target the kind of people a business website would attract.

Despite these issues, brands are increasingly opting for this media, enticed by its ability to engage and connect better with target audiences, especially the youth. Brands, whose core audience is the youth, such as Fastrack, Tata DoCoMo, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Reebok, are looking to digital media to interact with their customers. Even banking and finance products are finding digital media, especially the social media, attractive, with the investor community increasingly going digital.

Pepsi has been using social media such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc., as a tool for sustaining engagement and direct conversations, and also to co-create content with its fans.

?It gives a brand the opportunity to interact with consumers on latest trends, interesting factoids and much more. Therefore, it?s safe to say that we at Pepsi, take digital media as an opportunity and not a challenge,? says Homi Battiwalla, category director, colas, hydration and mango based beverages, PepsiCo India. ?The youth?our core target audience?spends a significant amount of time online and uses the social media space to express their views and opinions. Therefore, all our campaigns have a strong social media element built in. Digital medium is increasingly proving to be the most effective platform to create awareness around a brand?s initiative as it provides an opportunity for direct consumer engagement.?

Says Bagchi, ?It is about laser like targeting, in an environment with information/data overload about consumer consumption habits. This enables effective consumer segmentation and targeting to the smallest detail. A digital planner has the ability to experiment, contextualize and to optimize campaigns through effective course correction options.?

Another big difference is that digital planning can be completely customised. The IP address pinpoints each and every customer individually. Based on this understanding, the communication message can be tweaked to meet the needs of the consumer at different stages, For example, there could be a particular message when the consumer is just browsing, and then it could be more targeted once the consumer has expressed interest by clicking. And finally, the advertiser can find out the actual conversion rates from click to purchase.?This is possible because apart from common parameters like reach, time spent, digital planning takes in to account interaction rate, conversion and online behaviour,? says Mindshare?s Rao.

While the limited reach of the medium has kept away many brands, Bagchi says this is fast changing with increasing internet penetration (led by mobile), better internet connectivity (speeds) leading to better advertising content and democratization of the medium (close to 40% of the total internet population comes from SEC C, D and E and 66% of the population logs in from non metro cities).

Digital medium can easily move ahead if planners keep certain focal points in mind such as the central marketing plan and the goal of a campaign. Planners need to know what it is that they actually need the campaign to deliver?generate leads, generate inbound calls, create database or sustain loyalty. Other points to be kept on mind are the key consumer segments that need to be reached, their content consumption patterns and online ?watering holes? that need to be ascertained and targeted in the plan.

?Once you know where customers are hanging out in the virtual world (the websites, social networks, etc), how does the brand get there? These basic questions need to be asked and answered before any planning is initiated,? says Bagchi.