MxMIndia

Category: NEWS

  • The Asia Digital Marketing Association launches 2012 Yearbook, filled with more data and insights for marketers than ever

    Phew! Over a billion online in APAC

    By A Correspondent

     

    The Asia Digital Marketing Association (ADMA), in co-operation with leading digital marketing companies and research houses, has published the sixth annual Asia Pacific Digital Marketing Yearbook. Among the thousands of facts and data points, readers will learn that 46 per cent of the world’s online population – 1.016 billion people – is now in Asia Pacific, of whom 623 million access the web via mobile.

     

    Although this enormous and growing addressable market seems to hold boundless business potential for marketers, the reality is more complicated – and more interesting.

     

    The Yearbook is compiled for marketers, advertisers, and their agencies, to help them understand and maximise the digital potential of their business in the region. The 2012 Yearbook has more information than ever before on online demographics, user behaviour, online advertising, mobile, e-commerce and social media.

     

    “The billion people online in Asia Pacific are spread across more than 14 countries, with a wide range of languages, cultures and online habits. More than half of them (513 million) are in China, which has its own media properties and consumer dynamics. In fact, seven of the top eleven sites in the region are in China,” said David Ketchum, ADMA Chairman.

     

    “Across the rest of Asia Pacific there is remarkable diversity; the way people use the web and interact with content and with one another differs significantly from Australia, to Korea, to Indonesia, to India. The Yearbook helps marketers make sense of what works where in Asia’s increasingly social, local and mobile web environments,” he added.

     

    The one billion user number is made up of hundreds of thousands of communities of users, spread across a wide variety of devices and platforms, languages and cultures, and who use the web in a profusion of different ways.

     

    The data in the ADMA Yearbook send a clear message: it’s time for marketers to get local and get personal.  The implications and opportunities are far-reaching:

    • Social media continues to gain in importance, but brands have to proceed with caution. Although 60 per cent of social networkers say that social networks are a good place to learn about brands, 50 per cent also say they don’t want to be bothered by brands.
    • As in past years, people still put the most trust in recommendations from friends and family over all other media channels (with 52 per cent of users in Asia Pacific trusting friends and family completely as compared with newspaper and magazine ads at 14 per cent).
    • Social commerce is on the rise, and marketers can deploy sophisticated, personalised approaches, depending on where they are in the sales funnel, to build brand awareness and understanding, create brand preference, make sales, and do CRM.
    • Search remains vital to helping customers find your brand and for you to find your audience. With crowd-sourced curation of content, natural search rises in importance and complexity, and paid search is still effective for driving “last click” results.  Search/navigation properties in the region have 84.7 per cent reach.
    • Despite the rise of social media and user-generated content, paid, owned and earned media all continue to play important roles in achieving marketing goals.
    • Although in this fragmented environment marketers must work harder to understand and find their target customers, analytics, behavioural targeting and big data are providing more and more powerful tools for marketers to reach and engage with internet users in personalised ways.

     

    The Yearbook, compiled by editor Rachel Oliver from government, industry, company and research data, is the single most comprehensive source available for the Asia Pacific region.

     

  • Leading independent mobile video destination Vuclip is set to unveil India’s first mobile video portal, Mira!, this week

    And now a mobile video portal for women, Mira!

    From the MxM Infodesk

     

    Leading independent mobile video destination Vuclip will be launching India’s first mobile video portal, Mira!, this week. Set to be available on over 5500 different types of basic feature phones to advanced smart phones, Mira! will feature global and Indian mobile video content catering to a woman’s needs such as health, beauty, parenting, cookery, career and entertainment anywhere, anytime.

     

    Prof. Kiran Walia, Women Development Minister of Delhi will be chief guest and Vuclip global and India leadership will be in attendance. In India, Vuclip already has over 1.1 crore active monthly users, out of which about 15 lakh are women.

     

    Last month, Vuclip had announced the launch of Vuclip TV (available at http://tvshows.vuclip.com), which enable users to watch popular TV shows on their mobile phone. Initially, Vuclip TV is serving over 4000 video clips from various popular TV shows in Hindi, Telugu, English and other languages and new videos are being added regularly. Late last year, Vuclip had also launched India’s first independent mobile movie portal, Starlight Cinema (available at http://movies.vuclip.com), featuring over 9000 Bollywood and regional movie clips from over 350 popular movie titles including popular titles such as Rajneeti, Guzaarish, Once Upon a time in Mumbaai, 7 Khoon Maaf, I Hate Luv Storys, Sarkar, Family, Tees Maar Khan, Thank You, Barfee, and many more, along with clips of Hollywood movies like The Adventures of Tintin, The Awakening, Hugo and Tresspass. In its first 100 days itself, Vuclip Starlight Cinema had generated over 11 million video views from as many as 2 million movie-lovers.

     

    Vuclip also has a channel exclusively featuring South Indian movie clips including top-grosser blockbuster action comedy Dookudu, action film Oosaravelli, romantic action flick Dhada, romcom Mr Perfect, romantic drama Ye Maya Chesave, Panjaa, Sri Rama Rajyam; Sci-Fi 7 Aum Arivu, Poraali, Osthe and Mayakkam Enna amongst others.

     

  • This does away with the practice of advertisers having to pay on the basis of projected box office collections of a movie

    PVR explores charging ads less for flops

    By Ratna Bhushan

     

    Multiplex operator PVR plans to link its advertising rates to ticket sales to make its cinemas more attractive to advertisers.

     

    PVR has approached advertisers such as Hindustan Unilever, Bharti Airtel and Hero Group with a first-time concept of charging for advertising at the start and during the interval on the basis of the number of tickets sold, a top PVR executive said.

     

    This does away with the practice of advertisers having to pay on the basis of projected box office collections of a movie.

     

    “There’s a captive audience, no remote control and least amount of spill over. Most of all, it’s completely validated because we can’t over-state ticket sales,” said PVR COO Gautam Dutta.

     

    The concept means advertisers can fix the reach and duration for which they pay to advertise. So, for example, if Agent Vinod flopped, advertisers would have the option of pulling out midway, and instead put their money on another flick-say, Kahaani.

     

    The bulk deal they would have committed to PVR gets carried forward to the next movie.

     

    Media-buying houses, which have been rooting for higher accountability on television ad spends, are keen on the new concept.

     

    “This could be a significant step towards making cinema advertising more accountable. Though small compared to television, it at least guarantees returns on investment,” said Basabdutta Chowdhury, CEO of Platinum Media, a division of media buying group Madison World, which buys media for Bharti Airtel.

     

    Ajit Varghese, MD, South Asia of Group M-promoted media buying firm Maxus, which buys on behalf of Hero Group, says: “Cost per audience is always a better measure in cinema advertising. It’s an ideal way of moving ahead, as long as it is implemented well.”

     

    The cost of in-theatre advertising works out about eight times cheaper than mass media, say media buyers. Theatre operators are allowed 18 minutes of advertising per movie screening.

     

    The buys can be segmented for consumers in tier II cities – at PVR Talkies, or at the high-end PVR Premiere, or at the luxury cinema Director’s Cut.

     

    Mr Dutta says the rates are flexible and would vary: “If Hero wants to advertise in our theatre in Baroda, rates will obviously be lower. If they want to buy screen time on theatres in Juhu in Mumbai, we will charge more.”

     

    PVR operates 179 screens across 24 cities. The move targets 28 m viewers in a year across PVR screens.

     

    Below-the-line advertising and promotions are common for most cinema and multiplex players. India’s largest carmaker Maruti, for example, had used sound technology to promote the launch of its new Zen model, while toothpaste brand Close Up had run a promotion where seats were sold only for couples.

     

    In 2011-12, cinema advertising contributed 13.5 per cent, or Rs61 crore, to PVR’s revenue of Rs492 crore. The company is projecting Rs85 crore in advertising revenue this fiscal. The concept could catch up among rival multiplex players as well.

     

    Source: The Economic Times

    Copyright © 2012, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. All Rights Reserved

     

  • 50 comics to go live on Tata Sky this week and 120 by September

    Mogae to launch talking comics

    By A Correspondent

     

    Mullah Nassrudin
    Akbar-Birbal
    Vikram-Betaal
    Krishna
    Raavan

    Mogae Digital has announced that its pioneering product, Talking Comics, will go live on Tata Sky later in July. The video stories will be carried on Actve Wizkids and will be promoted on the default channel.

     

    “Talking Comics gives a video experience that does not take away from the pleasure of ‘reading’ a comic. Mogae has invested the last 4 years into creating original world-class IP in the comics’ space, specifically for mobile devices. Today we have over 50 titles and over 2,000 stories created entirely at Mogae Studios. But with newer opportunities opening up on DTH, we have spent over 18 months creating this new genre of Talking Comics,” said Tanya Goyal, Executive Director of the Mogae Group.

     

    Talking Comics were actually created to give a video experience to comics on mobile. “The file sizes are kept light. There is a nice voice-over, good music, some animation, plus all the text as in a normal comic … all of which gives a more wholesome ‘reading’ experience,” she added.

     

    Stories from Tenali Rama, Mullah Nassrudin, Akbar-Birbal, Bheema, Krishna, Vikram-Betaal and Krishna series will go live in the inaugural round. Yudhishtra, Duryodhan, Arjun, Karan, Bheeshma, Raavan, Guru Nanak, Sai Baba and  Gautam Buddha will be unveiled in September. Stories from the Bible and a series of Ghost Stories will be launched early next year.

     

    “Our illustration quality and the detail that has gone into each frame is unparalleled inIndia. We were the first to ‘create’ comics for mobile on Indian mythology, history and folklore. Earlier comic creators like Amar Chitra Katha created comics for paper. When taken on to mobile, these comics were heavy and difficult to download. In our case, each story has 12-14 frames … no more … so that the comic is easy to download, and easy to scroll. What’s more, we port each frame to 48 different sizes so that 95 per cent of all mobile devices receive the comic in exactly the screen size of the device,” explained Ms Goyal.

     

    The mobile versions of all comics are in UAT at most mobile operators and will go live this quarter. Mogae is in talks with other DTH operators too for the Talking Comics.

     

    A branded new humour series, created in partnership with a leading TV channel, is being currently worked upon as a Talking Comics product and the launch is slated for September.

     

    Later this year, Mogae will be launching a mobile-greetings product and over 2,000 animation based cards have been created.

     

    Mogae Digital is part of the Mogae Group, co-owned by Sandeep & Tanya Goyal, erstwhile JV partners of ad agency Dentsu India.

     

  • The award function at Rashtrapati Bhavan, presided by the President of India, Hon Pratibha Patil

    Bhaskar’s Brain Hunt gets 80k qualifying entries

    By A Correspondent

     

    Brain Hunt 2012, an initiative of Dainik Bhaskar Group, was a national level creative contest based on ‘out of the box thinking’ for young Indians. It set a benchmark with a response of 80,000 entries that qualified for the contest.

     

    This follows earlier initiatives like Junior Editor 2011 which was recognized for ‘Largest Writing Competition’, with 67,130 entries by Guinness World Records, Limca World Record and India Book of Records.

     

    To participate in Brain Hunt 2012, the contestants had to complete 16 activities featured in the workbook specifically created for kids between 6 to 16 years of age. Questions like ‘What if ‘Bapu’ was alive today?’, ‘After a series of inventions like iPhone, iPad and iTunes, what’s next and why?’, ‘What 10 things would you like to take with you on your journey to moon?’ are example of the questions the kids had to answer.

     

    The 80,000 qualifying entries included a letter written to the President which shared the kids’ ideas on ‘How can we makeIndia even a better country’. The winning letters were handed over to the President at Rashtrapati Bhavan during the award ceremony.

     

    Vinay Maheshwari, Vice President- Sales and Market Development, Dainik Bhaskar Group said: “The journey which started with a mere idea turned into some beautiful masterpieces of the imagination of 6 to 16-years-old kids, giving a new dimension to every challenge on which they were tested.”

     

    He added: “The reader engagements are carried out with a sole objective of engaging and involve our readers to strengthen the relationship. The group has successfully raised the bar with constant innovations and simultaneously reaching out to almost all household with its smart engagement proposition. Our upcoming smart reader engagements will now put higher emphasis on participation and contribution of both children and parents through such initiatives provided by Dainik Bhaskar to nurture their hidden talents.”

     

    The award function at Rashtrapati Bhavan, presided by the President of India, Hon Pratibha Patil was also attended by Dr Bharat Agrawal, Executive Director, Dainik Bhaskar Group.

     

  • This report provides advertisers, agencies and major players of the digital industry detailed Profile Cards and various rankings of the Top 112 largest US digital agencies

    AKQA buy takes WPP to the top in digital: RECMA

    By A Correspondent

     

    Following the AKQA (a creative agency specializing in interactive marketing) acquisition by WPP, RECMA is pleased to announce the update of its latest USA report: the Top 112 digital agencies (published in July 2012).

     

    This report provides advertisers, agencies and major players of the digital industry detailed Profile Cards and various rankings of the Top 112 largest US digital agencies (based on staff figures 2012). These detailed Profile Cards and hierarchies are increasingly required by international advertisers seeking to consolidate their digital account regionally or globally. RECMA is read and used by 85 global advertisers, which appreciate our objective, homogenous and accurate information

     

    By investing $540 million, WPP bought one of the last independent digital jewel and has taken the lead in the industry. The RECMA report reveals the AKQA profile and the reasons why WPP offered such a package to Ajaz Ahmed and Tom Bedecarre.

     

    Now the question is which are now the last independent digital leaders in the USA left on the shelves to be acquired and which group holds an overly limited share of the industry and needs to reach the necessary competitive size?

     

    The table below shows the new WPP leadership in the USdue to the addition of the 600 US AKQA staffers. Previously WPP share was of 20.2, slightly behind Publicis 20.5.

     

    USA- Digital market shares July 2012
    Rank
    2012    		 DIGITAL
    STAFF    		 7 Group  owners and 61 agencies Digital shares
    1 8 328 WPP USA (8 agencies) 21.7%
    2 7 864 Publicis Groupe USA (7 agencies) 20.5%
    3 6 672 Interpublic  USA (12 agencies) 17.4%
    4 4 698 Omnicom Group USA (7 agencies) 12.3%
    5 1 370 Aegis Media USA (3 agencies) 3.6%
    6 1 099 Havas USA (1 agency) 2.9%
    7 825 DentsuAmerica (1 agency) 2.2%
    7 436 Independents USA  (23 agencies) 19.4%
    – 38 292 Top 112USAdigital agencies 100%

     

     

  • What excites kiranawallahs is the huge margin they get

    Kiranas dump big brands for high margin Bharti Walmart wares

    By Sagar Malviya

     

    A few months ago, Dhananjay Jain, a grocery owner at Vidisha Road in Bhopal, decided to stock two alien brands – Right Buy and Members Mark – because they offered much higher margins than national brands and had lower price tags. Today, these floor cleaners, tea and cornflakes brands contribute nearly 20 per cent to his monthly sales.

     

    Many of his consumers may still have no idea where these brands priced 10-30 per cent less than those of Hindustan Unilever, Dabur and PepsiCo are sourced from. Well, they come from the world’s largest retailer, Walmart.

     

    Mr Jain gets these brands from a Best Price Modern Wholesale outlet – run by Walmart’s joint venture with Bharti Enterprises – just two kilometres from his store.

     

    Walmart is not allowed to sell directly to Indian consumers yet, but its brands across some three dozen categories have started sliding into Indian homes, as its cash-and-carry venture becomes a hit among grocery shop owners.

     

    “The idea is that the reseller should make more profits by selling our brands than he does by selling national brands,” said Arvind Mediratta, chief operating officer of Bharti Walmart. He said the firm’s private labels adhere to all the quality norms despite their lower price tags.

     

    Bharti Walmart operates 17 cashand-carry format Best Price Wholesale outlets, selling products to licensed neighbourhood stores, schools, offices and large enterprises. It has more than 3 lakh members, who own grocery stores.

     

    The firm launched Right Buy and Members Mark after phasing out its earlier brand Great Value, which is now restricted to Bharti’s Easy Day supermarket chain.

     

    So far, Walmart has developed a network of 100 suppliers to make private label products ranging from groceries, home care and personal care products to apparel and stationery. And it may soon get into categories such as soaps, shampoos and detergent. “We are planning to add several more categories in coming months and open over 10 outlets by next year,” Mr Mediratta said.

     

    Company officials say its brands already control 20-22 per cent share in most categories at its members’ outlets. Some shop owners even say they have stopped stocking national brands. “In categories such as floor cleaners and dish washing, we have stopped stocking national brands as consumers just want the lowest priced products in these segments,” said Mohammed Fayaz, a storeowner at Guntur in Andhra Pradesh, where Walmart has opened two wholesale outlets.

     

    What excites kiranawallahs is the huge margin they get. For instance, a 500ml bottle of Walmart’s toilet cleaner brand sports a price tag of Rs55 but is available to a kirana owner at Rs37. That makes the retailer’s margin a whopping 48 per cent. National rivals such as Reckitt Benckiser’s Harpic and HUL’s Domex are sold at Rs58, with the grocer earning 12-15 per cent margin on an average. Bharti Walmart also provides 10-30 per cent higher margins than national brands on tea, colas and juices that allow shopkeepers earn 10-30 per cent higher margins than national brands. Consumer products companies have been increasingly fighting private labels of modern retailers.

     

    In fact, private labels outsell several national brands in home care and packaged food categories at the outlets of retailers such as Future Group, Reliance Retail and Aditya Birla Group.

     

    FMCG companies didn’t feel too threatened because modern trade accounts for just 7-10 per cent of their total sales. But now, with Walmart’s private labels finding place in consumer companies’ largest sales channel – the country’s ubiquitous neighbourhood stores – this trend could become a headache for them.

     

    “As Walmart and other similar players scale up their cash-and-carry operations, given the price consciousness of the Indian consumer and the fact that kirana stores are here to stay, it is likely that this trend will start to worry large consumer goods companies,” said Siddharth Bafna, partner at advisory firm Lodha & Co.

     

    Not everybody agrees. The chief executive of a leading consumer products firm, however, said such private labels would not challenge big brands in evolved categories such as personal care. “There are always some categories, especially commodities, that are more prone to losing out to private labels because of pricing. However, several brands in the personal care segment that keep innovating aren’t threatened by private labels even in markets where modern trade is evolved,” the person said, requesting anonymity because Walmart is one of its partners.

     

    Some shopkeepers say it’s not easy to make people try new brands. “We are able to convince some consumers to opt for lower priced Walmart brands. But there are still many consumers who want to buy popular brands from national companies even if the price is higher,” said Jas Karan Singh, a store owner in Amritsar, where Walmart opened its first cash-and-carry outlet four years ago. Private labels accounted for around 7 per cent of Bharti Walmart’s annual sales of Rs 1,876 crore last calendar at over Rs 130 crore.

     

    Worldwide, the US retail giant is performing well despite the slowdown. For the fiscal year ended January 2012, it increased net sales by 5.9 per cent to $443.9 billion and ranked first on the 2011 Fortune 500 list of the world’s largest companies by revenues.

     

    Source: The Economic Times

    Copyright © 2012, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. All Rights Reserved

     

  • This has not only opened up the market but also pushed up rates

    Jaya TV stirs up rights market for Tamil films

    By Sangeetha Kandavel

     

    Jaya TV and a few other rivals of Tamil television leader Sun TV are making a hitherto-unseen charge toward bagging the TV rights for big-ticket Tamil movies, for long the preserve of the Kalanithi Maran-owned Sun TV. This has not only opened up the market but also pushed up rates.

     

    Jaya TV, the mouthpiece of the ruling AIADMK party and a distant rival to Sun TV, has virtually stirred up the market in the past few days by bagging two top titles. Last week, it acquired the rights for the upcoming Rajnikanth-starrer ‘Kochadaiyaan.’ On Monday, it bought another big-ticket  movie – the upcoming Suriya-starrer ‘Maatraan.’

     

    The previous Rajnikanth movie, ‘Endhiran,’ was produced by Sun TV, which had then called it the costliest Indian movie ever made. Jaya TV was never known to indulge in the buying of TV rights, something that’s a key part of Sun TV’s content strategy. But KP Sunil, vice president of Jaya TV, said that after a lull of six years the channel has started looking at Tamil movies aggressively. “We are looking are acquiring more such movies and it will be a mixture of big and small ones,” he added.

     

    The onslaught by Jaya TV and others comes after what has been a challenging year for Sun TV. Once she came to power last May, chief minister J Jayalalithaa floated a government-run cable service called Arasu to counter the ground distribution support that Sun TV enjoyed through another Maran-owned company. Cases were also filed against the then Sun TV COO Hansraj Saxena on charges of defrauding producers while purchasing movies for television.

     

    Maran and his brother, former Textiles Minister Dayanidhi Maran, have been under the lens of the Central Bureau of Investigation on allegations that Aircel’s former owner C Sivasankaran was arm-twisted to sell his company to Maxis founder T Anandakrishnan, who in turn invested in Kalanithi Maran’s Sun DTH.

     

    For those reasons, a challenge in the market for TV rights of movies has been expected for more than a year now. It’s only now that Jaya TV is in “full swing,” as a top official of a rival Tamil channel, wishing anonymity, put it. Executives at Sun TV and Star Vijay could not be reached for comment.

     

    The challenge isn’t confined to Jaya TV. Star Vijay has since last year has picked and chosen key titles it wants to buy. It has ended up with movies such as ‘Avan Ivan’ (directed by National Award winner Bala) and even ‘Nanban’ (the remake of ‘3 Idiots’), for which it is said to have paid record sums.

     

    Even Zee Tamil, a relatively late entrant in the Tamil entertainment market, has got onto the movie buying bandwagon. It has acquired the rights for the Simbu-starrer ‘Vettai Mannan.’ A Ficci-Deloitte report pegged the South Indian media and entertainment market in 2011 at Rs18,740 crore, 70 per cent of it coming from the Tamil and Telugu markets. TV accounted for Rs10,630 crore and films Rs2,110 crore.

     

    Political commentator Gnani Sankaran puts the trend down to clout. “Whichever party has political clout, they tend to bag satellite rights. When the DMK were in power, Sun Pictures was doing it,” he said. It isn’t as if Sun TV is struggling to buy anything. Being the TV network with the deepest pockets, it is still lapping up movies, being by far the biggest acquirer of movie rights. It recently got the rights for ‘Naan Ee’ as also the much-awaited Ajith-starrer ‘Billa 2.’ Sun TV has announced it will spend Rs200 crore on its movie library this year (this includes all languages in which it has a presence). This is a steep in crease from Rs80 crore last year. One reason for the significantly higher allocation, two industry executives said, could be because it anticipated competition to push up prices.

     

    Source: The Economic Times

    Copyright © 2012, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. All Rights Reserved

     

     

  • Daimler Commercial Vehicle has awarded its India Mandate to Lowe Lintas

    Lowe wins Daimler commercial vehicle mandate

    By A Correspondent

     

    Chennai-based Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV) has concluded its prolonged pitch process with the appointment of Lowe Lintas and Partners, Chennai, as its marketing communications partner.

     

    According to GV Krishnan, Executive Director, Lowe Lintas and Partners: “This must have been one of the most awaited pitch results of recent times. We are thrilled to have been given the mandate.”

     

    DICV went through two rounds of presentations before shortlisting agencies. Top 5 agencies were shortlisted and were in fray for the business.

     

    Mr Krishnan said: “The Indian trucking segment is in rapid evolution mode, and BharatBenz (as DICV’s trucks will be known in India) is uniquely poised to lead this revolution. As the pioneer of truck manufacturing, DICV will seek to assert its leadership through customer-oriented products and services. It feels great to be able to partner DICV from virtually their roll-out stage.”

     

    Joseph George, Chief Executive Officer Lowe Lintas and Partners added: “This is a significant win for our Chennai office. It will be an interesting challenge to the agency’s ability to strategize and persuasively communicate the rich, inspiring story of DICV. And with recent wins out of our Kochi and Bengaluru offices too, am particularly pleased with the way our South operations are performing.”

     

  • Although mobile internet promises a bright future for Indian languages, the growth is slow and requires much evangelizing

    Slow and not-yet-steady…

     

    By Robin Thomas

     

    India is a country where majority of the people don’t speak English and its media – print, television and radio, specifically – have a larger share of local language content. But the same cannot be said about the internet, at least now. The internet in India is still, by and large, dominated by the English language content. According to the ‘Internet World Stats’ 2010 report, after English, Chinese is the second widely used language on the internet followed by Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese and German. These results, perhaps, assure India that there is immense scope for Indian language content to not only flourish, but also increase user interactivity.

     

    Take for instance, i-Cube report 2011 by IAMAI-IMRB which states by December 2011, there were 121 million claimed Internet users. There are 90 million (70 mn in urban cities and 20 mn in rural villages) users that use Internet at least once a month (active Internet users). Of the active Internet users in urban cities, 26.3 million access Internet through their mobile phones. This has been the most recent change in the access behaviour and it is expected that this trend will continue to grow in the immediate future.

     

    BG Mahesh

    Mr BG Mahesh, Founder and MD, Oneindia.in observed: “Whatever is happening in print and TV will happen on the Internet. The language pie is far bigger than English in print and TV. English will also grow, but the language pie will be very large.”

     

    Even as the internet consumption rapidly grows, the Indian language content has also been evolving over the years. According to industry estimates, the search volume in Indian languages is less than 2 per cent of the total search that takes place online. The online growth of Indian language consumption is mainly said to be because of video consumptions.

     

    Hemant Jain

    Mr Hemant Jain, Senior Vice President, Hungama Mobile pointed out the need for relevant language content and the need for increasing access of language content to the consumers. “I believe that not only there is a need of content in local languages, but more importantly the content should have local context for it to be more relevant for the consumer. The challenge in increasing access to content in Indian language includes the standardization of fonts and internationalized domain names, an issue the Indian government is already working on. The two biggest challenges I foresee are bandwidth infrastructure to deliver ease of access and local language to drive mass adoption.”

     

    With online video touted as the next big thing for content consumption in Indian languages, there has been an increase in the Indian language video content found online, which may be due to the fact that video has more takers than written content.

     

    Some steps are said to be taken to increase local language content for instance, Raftaar, a Hindi language search engine developed by Delhi-based research firm Indicus Analytics, debuted earlier this year. Local language newspapers have gone online: webduniya.com offers content in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam. Malayala Manorama is another local language paper offering news online in Malayalam language.

     

    “There was a time when we saw 85 per cent of our traffic was from NRIs. Post 2007, we saw the page views increasing from India, now we get over 60 per cent of our traffic from India. The broadband penetration, mainly due to BSNL, has helped the growth of internet in non-urban India. Also, most schools have internet in their curriculum. So children lead the usage of internet at homes and other members have felt they might as well use the internet” added Mr Mahesh of Oneindia.

     

    As far as search in Indian languages is concerned, there have been efforts to localize the content. Google, for instance, in search has ‘transliteration’ which allows users to type Indian languages using Latin text. Google also has search options in the Indian languages and is said to be working proactively with the government as well as content companies in India to come out with a solution that would increase Indian language consumption on larger scale.

     

    Lalitesh Katragadda

    Mr Lalitesh Katragadda, Head of Products, India-Google, pointed out the need to solve the language consumption problem in order to increase the number of internet users. “We are going to rapidly run out of users if we don’t solve the language problem, which is making the internet work for Indic users. The challenge is that the Internet for the next 3 billion users will not be built by websites alone, or by monetary interests, which has driven the Internet for the first billion and a half. The Internet for the next 3 billion users will, by force, have to be built by the users themselves. For example, AdSense allowed a way for people to monetize their content, which got the content ecosystem to flourish and so on.”

     

    Mr Arpan Chatterjee, experienced online media professional and consultant with webdunia.com stated: “Lotof work is happening on this front, with Indian language search engines and Google having Search in major Indian languages. Major social networking sites are also now getting into Indian languages. But the availability of quality Indian language online content is still limited, except for some news portal of large Hindi or regional newspapers.”

     

    Arpan Chatterjee

    Also monetization of language content is a challenge today as there is not enough language content, and as a result, there is little or no language consumption online. There is a need to drive up language content in the online space. According to Mr Mahesh, not only is the government support crucial for this development, but the publishers too must take steps to help increase language consumption. “One needs a lot of patience and sustaining power to do well in the Indian language space. There are many opportunities in this space – ecommerce will be a reality in the language space in the coming years. With mobile internet becoming big one can think of providing various language services for the massive mobile user base in India,” he added.

     

    Nevertheless the growth of consumption of Indian language content may take some time as the broadband penetration in India is still very low. Another avenue, as pointed out by Mr Mahesh is, to look at is the mobile, as it is believed that the next phase of the internet explosion will come from mobile. Mobile, which is one of the highest penetrated devices in the country today, is expected to not only expand the internet usage, but also bring in more user participation which may result in the development of more Indian language content.

     

    Mr Chatterjee is of the view: “With more than 70 per cent penetration in mobile phone connections in India , and internet on mobile touching close to 100 million users, with more than 40 per cent being only mobile web users – only accessing the web through mobile. Mobile is the medium which can drive Indian language usage to a new level. Even in countries like Bangladesh, mobile payment solutions have helped get into interiors of the country.”

     

    With multiple devices now opening up opportunities – smart phones, tablets, and so on which are likely to spur language consumption online and mobile, government support is again is equally crucial, believe industry players. Access to mobile internet must be made at affordable rates especially with the arrival of 3G. “Mobile internet browsing is pathetically slow in India. 3G has arrived, but it is not affordable for majority of the users. Affordable, fast mobile internet plans and font support will change the mobile internet scene in India” said Mr Jain.

     

    Although the Indian language content in the online space has evolved over the years, it is said to be witnessing a slow adoption of its content especially from publishers mainly because of monetizing challenges. Digital players believe that like print, television and radio, Indian language consumption in the online space will also grow faster and soon have bigger share than the English language. One of the main reasons for this to happen is estimated to be because of the expansion of literacy rates and the increasing broadband and mobile penetration. ” India, with a much larger youth population, needs to put more focus on language online content and use mass channels like education portals, government services websites into multi lingual formats to drive language usage,” concluded Mr Chatterjee.

     

  • Group M survey findsSingaporeconsumers have a clear preference for accessing the Internet from a mobile device over a PC or other stationary computer

    Singaporeans prefer accessing Net from mobiles over stationary PCs: Mindshare

    From the MxM Infodesk

     

    Consumers in Singapore have a clear preference for accessing the Internet from a mobile device over a PC or other stationary computer. This is the prominent finding from a study that Mindshare has released of the latest round of the GroupM 3D Survey, which surveyed almost 2,200 consumers. 3D is the only scale agency survey that looks at brands, media touch points and consumer attitudes in a single study.

     

    3D is GroupM’s proprietary research study. It is the most comprehensive single source study in Singapore, covering brand relationships, social dynamics (based on attitude statements) and media consumption in the context of total brand communications. These three dimensions are the essence of 3D.

     

    The survey in Singapore covers 2,189 respondents aged 15 to 54 years, and also includes an additional 300 affluent respondents (with personal income above 6,000 Singapore dollars).

     

  • Kapil Batra, Subrato Mehta and Abhishek Dey join as Senior Creative Directors

    Creative talent moves to Eleven Brandworks

    By A Correspondent

     

    In a growing trend within the Indian advertising industry, creative talent and clients are making a focused move towards smaller agency set-ups. The latest to make the move are Kapil Batra, Subrato Mehta and Abhishek Dey who have joined Eleven Brandworks as senior creative directors.

     

    Prateek Bhardwaj, Founder Director, Eleven Brandworks, said: “Adding depth to the talent pool has been a priority for us. These additions are another step towards building a robust creative organization.”

     

    For Kapil Batra, who has been Creative Director (copy) McCann Delhi for close to 5 years, “the move to Eleven Brandworks is an exciting challenge. With the freedom the small set-up offers, comes the responsibility of winning and managing substantially-sized businesses while producing outstanding creative products.”

     

    In his decade long experience Mr Batra has handled the Perfetti portfolio (Chlor-mint, Big Babol, Happydent & Alpenliebe) and worked on General Motors, Greenlam Laminates, yatra.com, Usha Fans, among others. His work has been applauded by the jury of Clio, Cannes, The One Show, Adfest, Fab Awards, Spikes, The Work, Goafest and MirchiKaan.

     

    While clients appreciate the direct interface and attention from leading creative/planning resources, the creative think tanks enjoy the flexibility these outfits offer. Commenting on his recent move, Subrato Mehta said: “Smaller set-ups are bringing like-minded people together and offering greater freedom of thought as well as a relief from mundane systems.”

     

    Mr Mehta moved to Eleven Brandworks after a 4 year stint with Dentsu. In his 22 years in the industry, he has worked with agencies like Ogilvy & Mather, Lintas, JWT and Triton. Winner of many prestigious international awards, he has worked on brands like Canon, Honda, J&J, ICICI, Reid and Taylor, SAB TV, Kinetic, HDFC and  Manchester United Cafe, to name a few.

     

    Abhishek Dey moved from Lowe Lintas, Mumbai to Eleven Brandworks. Mr Dey has been in advertising for the last 11 years.  Having worked in Rediffusion DY&R, McCann Eriksson and Publicis before his stint at Lintas, he has worked on brands like Tata Tea, ICICI Prudential, Bajaj Motors and Lifebuoy. On the way he picked up a few awards at Indian shows like ABBY, Goa fest and some international shows like Clio and Adfest (Pattaya).

     

    Welcoming the new team aboard, Sampada Chaudhari, COO, Eleven Brandworks said: “Increasingly clients’ businesses are moving faster and getting more demanding. There is a shift in preference to independent agencies, as they are fleet footed and create fresh work. Our new creative talent will help create a dynamic creative pool to manage and acquire exciting businesses.”

     

    Seconding her view, Vivek Suchanti, Partner, Eleven Brandworks added: “The independents have been able to attract some very good talent, with open structures, great work environment and partnership/ownership models (more like the consulting firms), they have become true brand custodians taking on the onus of performance of their work.”

     

    Also Sambit Mishra, currently Senior Creative Director (copy) at Eleven Brandworks, Delhi moved to Mumbai to partner Abhishek Dey and Aneesh Jaisinghani, currently Senior Creative Director (art) Eleven Brandworks, Delhi will team up with Kapil Batra.

     

    Eleven Brandworks is a full-service creative agency based out of Mumbai and Gurgaon. Some of the clients the agency handles are Tata Mutual Fund, Big FM, Star Plus, Times Group, Nokia Maps(Navteq), NDTV Goodtimes, Modi Ilva (Artic Vodka), Archies, Hallmark, and Homex India.