MxMIndia

Tag: Times Internet

  • As a part of this alliance, select content from SCMP will be published on Times of India's digital, mobile and web platforms

    Times Bridge and South China Morning Post announce strategic partnership

    By A Correspondent

     

    Times Bridge and the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) have announced a strategic partnership.

     

    As a part of this alliance, select content from SCMP will be published on Times of India’s digital, mobile and web platforms, and Times of India will be SCMP’s primary partner in India for content syndication.

     

    Said Margot Ling, GM, Greater China, Times Bridge: “It brings us immense pleasure to be a part of this unique alliance. In this era of connected worlds, Indian readers are always on the lookout for news from across the globe, and this partnership will enable them to easily access content from Greater China, due to Times of India’s high reach.”

     

    Added Gary Liu, CEO, SCMP: “As an independent, English newspaper reporting on China, India is a natural market for SCMP,”. “In our increasingly interconnected world, this partnership will give Times of India readers further insight into China and will continue to expand SCMP’s global reach.”

     

    Said Puneet Gupt, COO – News, Times Internet: “As the leading digital news platform in India, Times of India is dedicated to bringing both local and global insights to its readers. This strategic partnership with SCMP creates a gateway for our readers to understand more about Greater China via our digital platforms.

     

     

  • The Times Internet- DMAasia report throws up some interesting data from the CMO perspective

    Customer engagement key focus for 45% marketers

     

    By A Correspondent

    Times Internet, in association with DMAasia, today released a report titled “The State of Indian Digital Marketing- a CMO Perspective 2017-18.” The second edition of the comprehensive online study was conducted by surveying a group of over 150 marketers from leading brands across verticals including real estate, pharma, FMCG, auto and retail. The report underscores their learnings for the year gone by and highlights their priorities and predictions for the year to come.

     

    Key Highlights:

    • Content marketing displaced social media marketing and emerged as the top strategy for marketers in 2017, as per 57% respondents
    • Social media marketing saw a 30% decline over the previous year as only 36% of surveyed marketers cited it as a strategy that worked well for them in 2017
    • Over 42% of the surveyed marketers allocated more than 25% of their total marketing spends on digital marketing in 2017
    • Securing enough budgets for digital marketing and measuring ROI remained the two of the greatest challenges faced by marketers in 2017 at 32% and 27% respectively
    • With regard to the frequency of measuring ROI on digital marketing, weekly and monthly measurement remained the most chosen options at 38% each
    • Almost 30% of the marketers said consolidating their content marketing strategy would be their key focus for 2018, closely followed by measuring ROI at 27%

     

    Commenting on the findings of the report, Gautam Sinha, CEO, Times Internet Limited said: “As we move forward at full throttle toward a more digitally inclined audience, marketers need to have a keen ear to the ground, to identify the trends and evolved mediums that their customers prefer. Our report goes on to capture the finer nuances that have been shaping how this environment is changing. We hope that our intensive research, in collaboration with DMAasia, culminated in this report, helps marketers in India stay ahead of the game and align their strategies and budgets accordingly”

     

    Added Vatsal Asher, CEO, DMAasia: “We are delighted to launch the second edition of the “The State of Indian Digital Marketing- a CMO Perspective 2017-18”, an exhaustive and in-depth study unveiling insights from over 150 CMOs across 15 verticals. The report, which has been curated in partnership with Times Internet, serves as a guide for marketers to prioritize efficiently to ensure growth and enhance customer experience. As revealed in the report, content marketing has taken centre stage, promising exciting times ahead.”

     

  • Regional language users will account for 75 per cent of India’s Internet user base by 2021

    Times Internet study highlights changing lingual face of digital India

    By A Correspondent

     

    Times Internet has released a study titled ‘The Changing Lingual Face of Digital India’ highlighting the rapid shift of digital users towards regional content consumption. With this study, Times Internet has attempted to validate the rising trend of online content consumption across the eight most widely consumed regional languages in the country. To map the magnitude of this trend, online content consumption patterns of over 90 million netizens were evaluated, unveiling many future possibilities and the impact of content in regional languages.

     

    Key findings include:

    – Out of the 90 million+ surveyed digital users, more than half are non-English readers and more than two third of Hindi readers are also reading English

    – Regional languages have surpassed English with a 66 per cent share in overall content consumption

    – Across all regional languages, News as a genre sees the highest content consumption at 67 per cent, followed by Sports at 17 per cent and Entertainment at 16 per cent

    – Among female users, Gujarati language sees the highest online content consumption at 44.78 per cent

    – Results of the study highlight that content consumption in regional languages among younger audiences is fast growing, with consumption among Indians in the 25-34 age group being the highest

     

     

  • It is a multimedia campaign led by TV, print and digital, being launched nationally

    MensXP unveils inaugural brand campaign

    By A Correspondent

     

    MensXP, the online men’s lifestyle brand from Times Internet, has launched its maiden brand campaign.

     

    Speaking about the campaign, Pratik Mazumder, CMO, Times Internet, says: “Our first campaign ‘Welcome to the Newhood’ celebrates the man you chose to become. Role of a man in the society has evolved with time. From just being an alpha and brute sect, the definition of being a man is broadening. There is no one way manhood can be defined. Its codes are ever changing. We aim at positioning MensXP as the lifestyle destination for this new-age man.”

     

    The campaign has been jointly conceptualised and executed by creative and digital agency, From Here On communications (FHO) and Times Internet’s in-house creative team.

     

    Said Angad Bhatia, COO, Indiatimes Lifestyle Network & Founder, MensXP: “We at MensXP explore the codes of manhood and pursue the most interesting stories of and around men. From the ones who break stereotypes to the one who make new ones, we engage them all.”

     

    Added Rajesh Aggarwal, CEO, FHO: “The team was thrilled about the brief because here was a product/brand that was all about relooking the stereotypical codes and labels associated with manhood and relaying the ethos in a way that portrays the realities of new age manliness, this is a clutter breaking campaign amidst the cacophony.”

     

     

  • Is content marketing the new frontier? Are digital marketing agencies up to it with client goals? A study by DMAasia & Times Internet throws up some interesting findings

    The CMO view on Digital Marketing

     

    By A Correspondent

     

    Leading brands are refocussing on digital assets as the atomic unit of marketing. Digital Asset Management – Digital Assets, that are traditionally under the IT budget, today account for 30-40 per cent of the digital marketing budget. As digital continues to transform, it is forcing marketers to re-think their omnichannel approaches, personalisation led by analytics or disruption like chatbots and virtual reality – a key priority for marketers in 2017.

     

    Meanwhile, Content Marketing and Distribution is the centrepiece of the Digital Marketing strategy, with the budgets on content marketing and distribution estimated to double in the next two years. Also, Social Media Marketing along with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) accounted for a lion’s share of the CMO’s ‘Always on Budget’.

     

    These and many more insights were unveiled by DMAasia and Times Internet on Thursday in Mumbai in a study titled ‘Digital Marketing in India: A CMO Perspective 2016-2017’.

     

    The study also yielded that 40 per cent CMOs are not satisfied with the contribution of agencies as they do not manage to deliver in conformity with their marketing goals and growth prospects. Consequently, in house marketing asset creation movement is gaining momentum and will see surge over the next few years unless agencies reinvent their models.

     

    At the launch, Gulshan Verma, CRO Times Internet Limited and President of the DMAasia Insights Council said: “With this study our goal was to understand what the marketers were thinking and help them learn from their community. By speaking to over a hundred CMOs in the country, we realised that ultimately the core goals of marketing haven’t changed – reaching the consumer, engaging with them, and making them a loyal customer are still essential to all marketers. Digital will continue to be very important in the years to come to achieve these goals and what is interesting is the way marketers are approaching it. We hope this report will be useful to the marketing community.”

     

    Commenting on the release of the report, Vatsal Asher, Founder and CEO DMAasia said: “The report reveals the contribution of digital platform in the overall marketing mix and shares an insightful road map for the coming years. Basis current trends & sentiments, this report aims to help businesses understand, analyse and make decisions by being an indispensable guidebook to sail through the abundant choppy marketing waters.“

     

    We reproduce here the Executive Summary of the report:

    Through the years what has remained consistent has been the marketer’s concern. With the evolution of technology and the tools and the increasing clutter, prioritisation and choosing the correct strategy is of paramount importance.

     

    When we undertook this survey, our goal was to understand what were the digital priorities of those who make brands – the Marketing Officers. We spoke to 115 marketers, only to realise that for each of them the only priority was building their Brand and Product Portfolio.

     

    Today, digital plays a critical role in every aspect of marketing – whetherit is about awareness, customer engagement, acquisition, and product development.

     

    As the mobile screen became the first screen of India in 2016, it is rapidly changing the way we consume media, interact with others (including brands)and how we live our lives today.

     

    Companies today, work hard to create brand awareness and an experience,seamlessly in the offline as well as the online world. Thus, the marketers’ today have two critical roles to play:

     

    1. Strategic Role – Impacting the consumers in the digital medium by creating the same brand association and customer engagement in the offline andonline world. Facilitating a consumer’s journey through the life-cycle of discovery to consumption and most importantly recommendation.

     

    2. Execution role – Supporting marketing initiatives done by the Brand Managers using traditional marketing and supporting business goals of generating leads/ sales.The strategic as well as executionary level roles that CMOs play today, put them under a lot of pressure. Many marketers have started allocating a large share of their budgets to spends on Digital. This is primarily due to a better measurability and the “higher Return on Investment” (ROI) vis-à-vis traditional media options. This is a double-edged sword as this is skewing spends towards performance marketing, directly compromising on brand awareness and top of the funnel initiatives.

     

    As per a recent IMRB International study, the share of digital in the total marketing spend is at 12% in India. However, our discussions with the 115 top marketers in the country suggests a much higher digital share, averaging 50 –55% of the entire marketing budget. We also found that for some of the new age online retail firms, digital marketing spends were as high as 75-80%.It is critical for marketers to set their marketing and media buying goals in line with their business objectives. Each marketing dollar must be back-calculated to derive top, middle and bottom funnel objectives,factoring drop-outs at every stage. This is the first step towards measuring ROI.

     

    Focusing on wrong measures can often be a challenge as marketing objectives are constantly revised alongside the business objectives. Leading brands are refocussing on digital assets as the atomic unit of marketing.Digital Asset Management – Digital Assets,that are traditionally under the IT budget,today account for 30-40% of the digital marketing budget. As digital continues to transform, it is forcing marketers tore-think their omni channel approaches,personalisation led by analytics or disruption like chat bots and virtual reality – a key priority for marketers in 2017.

     

    Building on digital assets is the content that engages with the customer.Content Marketing & Distribution is the centerpiece of the Digital Marketing strategy,with the budgets on content marketing and distribution estimated to double in the next two years. The marketing mavericks we spoke to believe that content distribution will be50% of the content marketing budget.

     

    Social Media Marketing along with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) accounted for a lion’s share of the CMO’s ‘Always on Budget’.

     

    What was interesting to note was that Influencer Marketing and Video Virality did not live up to the expected hype in 2016. This was predominantly due to limited execution.

     

    What we overwhelmingly heard was that Influencer Marketing was hijacked by Social media, while they attributed the failure of video virality to limited investment in distribution.

     

  • The programme will enable digital agencies, marketers and specialists access native and digital advertising across the Times Internet’s universe

    Times Internet launches ‘Partner Program’ to boost digital growth for agencies

    By A Correspondent

     

    Times Internet has announced the launch of the ‘Times Internet Agency Partner Program’. The programme is designed to empower independent full-service and digitally focused agencies all over India. From certification to recognition, from technical knowhow to client satisfaction, it will empower professionals to discover new ways to grow their businesses.

     

    Said Gulshan Verma, Chief Revenue Officer, Times Internet while talking about the launch, “Today more than 400mn Indian users are on the internet, making it the platform of choice not only for the largest marketers, but also for hundreds of thousands of businesses that operate it. They depend on partners like AdGlobal 360 and Logicserve to aid their operations. They also depend on partners like Spiral Content Solution to create content that resonates with the consumers. We are very happy to have them as the founding partners of the Times Agency Partner Program”

     

    Speaking on their association with Times Internet and the Times Internet Partner Program Rakesh Yadav, CEO Adglobal 360 said, “AGL has seen good value for its clients by running certain types of campaigns on Colombia. This new innovative platform from TIL has good future and we want to leverage it for the benefit of our clients. We believe that as platinum partners, we will be able to offer to our clients, the best this platform can offer.”

     

    Speaking on their association with Times Internet and the Times Internet Partner Program, Prasad Shejale, CEO Logicserve Digital, Co-Founder Couponraja and Compareraja said, “Today, content is the king; so reaching the content consuming audience is the key. Hence, the right content partner is important and TIL inventory backed by Columbia came as an obvious choice. Colombia helps us with reaching the content consuming audience and influence them. Its flexible interface and premium inventory supports in making the campaigns a success. The interest level targeting enables us to reach out to a wider range of consumer. Colombia is a smart marketing platform for native ads and Logicserve Digital is very excited to be partnering with TIL to deliver great value to our digital media clients.”

     

    Speaking on his association, Rajan Srinivasan, Founder and CEO Spiral Content Solution said: “Scatter is happy to partner with Colombia. This works really well for our clients as we bring together the best in the content creation and content distribution through Scatter and Colombia respectively. Because even the best content means nothing if it can’t be discovered.”

     

  • Samayam apps for Android can be downloaded online and can be accessed on the mobile web too

    Times Internet unveils digital news & infotainment brand ‘Samayam’

    By A Correspondent

     

    Times Internet (TIL) unveiled ‘Samayam’ – a news, entertainment and lifestyle content destination available in Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam languages. ‘Samayam’ has been created to bridge the gap between users looking for quality content in their very own languages and trustworthy platforms providing them.

     

    Samayam is available as an android app, on mobile web and also on desktop. With the launch of Samayam, Times Internet’s language offerings are now available across eight languages – Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Gujarati, Marathi and Bangla – in addition to English.

     

    Speaking on the launch, Puneet Gupt, Head of News Business at Times Internet, said: “We are really excited to launch Samayam. Mobile led media landscape is evolving rapidly in India and we hope to become the destination of choice for millions of Indians and Indian diaspora users across languages and platforms.”

     

    Samayam apps for Android can be downloaded online and can be accessed on the mobile web too. Once a user sets a default edition or makes a language choice, subsequent visits to Samayam would directly take the user to his/her default edition.

     

  • Interesting data thrown by the Facebook & Times Internet CEOs at the 11th IAMAI marketing conclave

    Fear of Being Offline & other digi-facts

     

    By Dyanne Coelho

     

    The first Indian Facebook employee, Kirthiga Reddy, now Managing Director, Facebook India left quite an impression on the audience with her talk entitled ‘Winning in a mobile first world’ at the 11th Marketing Conclave organised by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI). FOBO or the Fear of Being Offline is a new term that is picking up in this day and age, she said. On Mother’s Day, India had the second highest ranking in terms of interactions with 1.8 billion interactions on the network. The older generation did exactly the same things we do, she explained, the only difference is that they did it in a different way.

     

    63 percent of young people would prefer to give up TV rather than their phone, she said of a study. 62 percent of young people feel lost if they are not connected to social media. An IAMAI-BCG report estimates that by 2020, a whopping 500 million people will be connected to the internet. Back in the day, your kirana shop owner knew exactly what you needed when you walked into his store. That personalisation is missing today with the advent of the mass media, Reddy explained.

     

    Satyan Gajwani, Chief Executive Officer, Times Internet, backed her up saying, “Technology allows the platform of digital advertising to enhance and create advertisements targeted at certain consumers. Hence we are seeing the growth of native advertisement, which breaks clutter and stops disruptive ads.”

     

    “Facebook is constantly and consistently integrating virtual reality. Innovations on the creative side of the real estate industry has provided enormous boost to virtual reality concept. Brands are focusing on reaching out to consumers in a personalised and creative manner. And the digital platform provides the best solution,” Reddy said. Out of 1.44 billion people who are on Facebook, 1.2 billion connect to it on a mobile device; she informed highlighting the genesis of a mobile-first world. There is also a growing trend of visual communication, Reddy added. First it started with text, then photos and now the world of video is expanding. Reddy cited the example of Facebook’s feature that allows a user to watch videos without sound on the mobile phone. The feature that is one of the latest, plays a video without sound as the user scrolls through his newsfeed. This will allow users to watch videos on their phones even during a seminar or meeting at work, she joked. Marketers ought to strive to drive awareness and retarget their audience, she said. The ‘cookie’ the dominant web metric used to track customer behaviour online will soon be ditched as it doesn’t correctly evaluate business results, she explained. This is the mobile first world and if we don’t adapt, we will be left far behind, she said.

     

    There are 150 million smartphones users today, and that number is expected to go up to 500 million by 2018. Digital is the new advertising paradigm, Gajwani explained. The internet is driven by smartphones and the amount of digital content being created is skyrocketing. “The 300×250 size banner doesn’t have the same impact today, spots don’t have the same impact either,” Gajwani said. Smart and targeted advertising and marketing with precise solutions is what will drive the numbers, he added. We ought to be enablers and educators of what’s working and what is not. “The opportunity to get creative is here and is bigger than ever before,” he concluded.

     

  • Celebrating the spirit of music and life, Gaana.com unveils 'Bas Bajna Chahiye Gaana' campaign

    Gaana.com launches first musical brand campaign

    By A Correspondent

     

    Gaana.com has launched a unique musical campaign for its brand promotion. The brand has strategically chosen the content marketing route for this musical campaign.

     

    The recently released music video on YouTube has already fetched over a million views and in the coming few days, TVCs supported by a high decibel media plan will also being rolled out.

     

    Gaana.com has been serving out music across genres and preferences for the past two years. The recently launched Gaana 5.0, with a slick black theme and hourly playlist feature, has already led to a 20 per cent increase in average time spent by users.

     

    ‘Bas Bajna Chahiye’ campaign will further give a push to the app. It is a first-of-its-kind content marketing initiative that promotes the website as a brand. The song reflects the various moods and occasions where “Gaana” plays a role and even uses the word ‘Gaana’, as an integral part of the music video.

     

    Commenting on the occasion, Pratik Mazumder, Vice President & Head Marketing, Times Internet said, “Being the category leader in the music streaming space, we felt that the brand name itself provided the opportunity to define the category and therefore we took this route. In this musical campaign, we have emphasized on the fact that all moments & situations in life can be made awesome with music. ‘Jo bhi situation to make it awesome’ with gaana.com, Bas Bajna Chahiye Gaana”. We roped in some of India’s most talented musicians to create an amazing song for us which we shared with our users. The tremendous response has only encouraged us to take this forward and convert this in to a full-fledged campaign & launch it across different media vehicles.”

     

    The campaign has been created by M&C Saatchi and will be the very first multimedia campaign for Gaana.com that will run across TV, Print, Outdoor, Radio, Cinema and of course digital media. Over the next few months, more such videos, centered around the theme will be released.

     

  • Ad Age India will work with thought leaders across the industry to deliver value to its readers. Earlier, the publication had a licensing arrangement with the Exchange4media group.

    Ad Age enters India with Times Internet

    By A Correspondent

     

    Times Internet (TIL), the digital arm of The Times of India Group, has inked a partnership with Advertising Age to launch Advertising Age (Ad Age) India. Earlier, Ad Age had a licensing arrangement with the Exchange4media group. Ad Age is only the second international ad & marketing publication to enter the country, the first one being Campaign of the Haymarket Group of UK. The Paprika group (Time Out) had plans to bring Ad Week to India a few years back but those were aborted. The Times of India group already publishes Brand Equity, a weekly A&M pull-out with The Economic Times, and is the representative of the Cannes Lions and Spikes Asia festivals.

     

    Ad Age is the leading source of news, intelligence and conversation for the global marketing and media community. Ad Age India will combine the authoritative status of this marquee publication with the rapidly growing and evolving Indian media and marketing ecosystem to create a vibrant platform for the industry. In addition to a comprehensive coverage of the strategic topics, insights, news, trends and ideas across the region; Ad Age India will work with thought leaders across the industry to deliver value to its readers.

     

    The alliance is a part of the Times Local Partners (TLP), a business unit of TIL that partners with global digital companies across publishing, product and platform to help them launch / grow in India, APAC & ME. Ad Age joins the growing TLP portfolio, which has already rolled out the Indian editions of Askmen, Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Techradar, Remodelista, ReadWrite, Business Insider & IGN.

     

    Talking about the partnership, Puneet Singhvi, Business Head, Times Local Partners, said, “We are very excited about bringing Ad Age to India. Ad Age has achieved an iconic status amongst the media and marketing community globally and we look forward creating a strong platform for the fraternity through Ad Age India. We are confident that Ad Age India will soon become a marketing communication brand to trust and the one that the industry follows. We also plan to roll out the regional versions of the highly revered Ad Age Lists soon.”

     

    “India has emerged as one of the world’ fastest-growing ad markets with a vibrant and innovative community of advertising, media, and marketing leaders,” said Allison Arden, Vice President and Publisher of Ad Age. “Ad Age is thrilled to join with Times Internet in bringing our distinctive global news, intelligence, and insight to Indian readers.”

     

  • The joint social initiative seeks to encourage users to exercise their core right as a citizen of world's largest democracy, India: to remember to vote

    TOI, Twitter partner to develop social news hub

    By a correspondent

     

    Timesofindia.com and Twitter have joined hands to delight users with a unique integration named ‘Tweet to remember’. The joint social initiative seeks to encourage users to exercise their core right as a citizen of world’s largest democracy, India: to remember to vote.

     

    When a user tweets “@timesofindia [city name]” (like “@Timesofindia Delhi”, they will be guided through a process that easily enables them to add the date for their vote to their calendar on their phone or desktop.

     

    In addition, TimesofIndia.com has developed a Social News Hub, in partnership with Twitter & Frrole. It leverages trend analysis and sentiment analysis via algorithmically filtered tweets to display the latest trends and sentiments around candidates and parties, according to users, with real-time data and millions of data points. The data is beautifully presented with dynamic visualizations, sorted by day or week. The platform offers a new lens to understand the Lok Sabha elections, bringing community feedback as a source of news.

     

    Speaking on these partnerships, Satyan Gajwani, CEO, Times Internet, said, “The social conversation is a new component in today’s news cycle. As a news outlet, Timesofindia.com is always looking for ways to bring new information and new value to its users. With Social Hub, we’re bringing a new perspective that hasn’t been readily visible before, and with Tweet To Remember, we hope to better enable the thriving democracy that powers India.”

     

    Rishi Jaitly, India Market Director, , said, “Twitter is the world’s leading mobile, real-time information network where users follow, share and experience content that is live, public and conversational. During this election season, the Twitter platform has become a vital source of daily information, conversation and communication for citizens and political leaders alike. We applaud Times Internet for innovating on our platform with “Tweet to Remember” and ensuring its audience can use Twitter to add its polling date and additional details to their calendars.”

     

  • HappyTrips promises to explore unknown locations, and currently tracks 200 Indian and 100 international destinations

    Times Internet launches travel portal HappyTrips.com

    By A Correspondent

     

    Times Internet (TIL), the digital arm of The Times of India group, has launched a travel portal HappyTrips.com.

     

    HappyTrips attempts to be a platform helping users plan their next trip, discover amazing hotels and restaurants, things to do as well as providing them with fun facts all around the world.

     

    “We are excited to announce the beta launch of our latest venture HappyTrips.com. HappyTrips is special because it feels like a magazine, but is powered by a robust backend data platform, storing millions of related data points. Upfront, the user sees easy-to-navigate cards with curated guides, itineraries and lists to help them find the best of a city they’re exploring,” said Satyan Gajwani, CEO of Times Internet.

     

    HappyTrips intends to be the go-to destination in the travel category with curated travel advice and actionable-and up-to-date information to inspire readers. “Our featured lists and guides help filter through the noise and find the best places to stay, eat, party, or find something to do”, said Puneet Gupt, Business Head of HappyTrips.com

     

    The site covers close to 200 Indian destinations as of now and another 100 destinations around the world.