Digital Advertising Updates

Online advertising is still in a growth phase in India and what makes it even more challenging is the slow pace of innovation and high pace of copy cat models, few follow. Nothing is new, which most of you all didn’t know much about or were not aware of it much.

The ubiquitous Piyush Pandey gets a mention tag as he is normally the case on stories based on this hot theme (no offense to piyush here – I personally love his blog and admire how outspoken and creative he is on the topics of advertising.).

This topic, lets call it “Lack of advertising innovation in India” or “Why no advertising companies are taking innovations and creativity seriously” or “Where are Indian successful advertising startups with the perfect Midas touch in advertising’ has been touched upon umpteen times by media, bloggers (yes – I’m guilty too) and even in startup conferences and panelists too frequently.”

So assuming there’s practically or absolutely no contest and very little “Out of the Box” innovations happening in the Indian advertising scenario. I feel businesses are also at a blame for this as they try getting too much work for too little money, which hampers the output delivery process, eventually. I think we should move beyond the obvious and try to focus more on how to resolve the issue successfully.

As David Ogilvy, the father in Advertising once said, “I have always believed that writing advertisements is the second most profitable form of writing. The first, of course, is ransom notes”. For starters, I’d like to point to a recent post by Prahlad Kakkar who captured the essence of building a startup ad campaign quite well, or let’s say initiating the campaign from “Rags to Riches”.

By far, his Pepsi TV ad-commercial with the Big-B is one of the best and most lucid pieces of advertisement, I’ve ever seen on a creative ad process and rightly positioning them. I’d say we’re still early in the first decade and have a long way to go yet when it comes to the extra creativity process.

Meanwhile, I also wanted to talk briefly about the often quoted ‘Not Enough Creativity Output’ ratio issue. The way I see it, the lack of client funding is a classic stereotype problem in the Indian advertising market.

Let’s say that hypothetically speaking, I have some extra money lying around that I’d want to invest somewhere and I believe advertising and promoting my company or service online will get me more branding, visibility and returns as I saw that my competitor was doing it himself.

Now, without any significant planning, initiation and consultations and the expected probability of getting good returns on my investment, I start pitching for advertising companies who can deliver me practically “Everything for Literally Nothing.”

Indian Internet advertising, in its current form, is not a very viable market unless experts are handling it. So, the ballgame that I see right now is more concrete returns in this sector and first mover advantage in the future, if you are ready to invest yourself in the long term prerogative and give the chance to leverage your brand equity plans to experts than small time fly by night advertising companies to save up costs in the initial run.

But some of us may argue, that aren’t ad-companies supposed to be true creative builders and isn’t online advertising more like, invest and forget, as there is no guarantee of returns compared to realistic selling, some ask . I do not agree, that’s the reason I say it’s a classic David and Goliath problem. But we are forgetting the costs it takes to do a manual sales and repetitive follow-up procedures.  However in internet, the brand stays there, it’s how marketers push or pull the product to the people.

Here is one to Online advertising all the way.

Facebook, the worlds leading Social networking and information sharing site controlled by Mark Zuckerburg has a new firm-stand policy called Facebook Ultimate Company Insignia.

The Facebook Insignia is further broken down into three parts by Mark Zuckerburg CEO Facebook, who has divided the platforms into Graph, Stream and Platform.

1. Graph refers to the Social Graph measures and Facebook’s Open Graph initiative, wherein it shows how many people are active or a part of Facebook.
2. Stream represents the continuous flow of information and status updates between users successfully.
3. Platform represents the famous Facebook platform, through which information is shared and enabled amongst its users.

Mark adds that the arrows on the insignia can go in both directions or in multiple directions, signifying the fact that in Facebook, sharing and openness doesn’t go in or lead in one direction always. It can even go Viral and create an Identity branding strategy for individuals, companies and even peace organizations. This is the vibrancy and the dynamic nature of Facebook.

By helping people and organizations in this initiative we are helping in “Making the World More Open and Connected”, adds Mark Zuckerburg who even prides on calling it as the unofficial mission statement of Facebook.

Facebook s Mission

Facebook introduced the Insignia with a plan, to tell people that Facebook is dedicated to help up in opening and connecting the entire world, seamlessly and as many people together as possible, which thereby utilizes the Open Graph, the Stream, and the Facebook Platform successfully.

The mission has definitely transformed positively over the years. In 2004, Facebook which was simply known as “An online directory that connects people through social networks at colleges.”  Became “Facebook is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers.” in 2006, followed by “The company develops technologies that facilitate the sharing of information through the social graph, the digital mapping of people’s real-world social connections.” In 2008, it became a tool that “helps you connect and share with the people in your life.”

In 2009, pieces of the mission began to surface solidly, wherein Facebook officially declared itself as a platform through which “Facebook gives people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.”

We can conclude from this evolution, that Facebook is becoming more and more ambitious, transforming from a simple clustered network for your friends to a Combined utility platform to make the world more open and connected and thereby intends to keep opening up the platform and connecting the web through its successful platform.

We feel that Zuckerberg and his team plan to succeed in becoming the central connection to the entire world by this dynamic platform.

Experts in the Social media trends however feel that, Zuckerberg is wearing the insignia as a hood. But Zuckerburg bets to his non followers that he believes in the mission statement of Facebook with every fiber of his being, and nothing is going to stand in his way in making Facebook the leader in the pack in whatever they build.

VeriSign, Worlds leading service provider for Internet infrastructure services, recently released a list of “The most Powerful Pioneering” Internet service companies. This was calculated on the basis of impact these companies have made in internet development and serviceability to people. The top contenders are Twitter, YouTube, PayPal, MySpace, Alibaba, Baidu, Infosys and e-Trade.

The other winners in the .com leader’s space were followed by Internet application and service stalwart leaders like

• Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Proud Co-founders of Google.
• Jerry Yang and David Filo, Founders of Yahoo Inc.
• Steve Case, Co-Founder of AOL.
• Mark Zuckerburg founder of Face book.
• Jeff Bezos, Amazons CEO.
• Steve Jobs from apple Inc followed by.
• Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates himself.

VeriSign made this inauguration move to proudly celebrate it 25 years of Successful Internet Innovation.

VeriSign added that the .com winners were selected from a focus group of 75 people and companies who were nominated for the award and were then ranked by the jury panel members comprising of leading businesses, media-people, academicians and policy leaders as VeriSign believes that these companies and people together reflect the dynamic evolution of a successful consumer internet story of how a .com website has helped changed and made peoples life simple.

VeriSign CEO and President Mark Mc Laughlin proudly added, that “Over the past 25 years, the internet has strengthened communities, transformed economies and allowed people all over the world to come together”. This would not had been possible without the vision, talent and creativity of these companies and individuals.

The hundreds of millions of people who now use the internet daily for multiple purposes have to thank these trailblazers profusely for the Rich Online Experiences they enjoy today as Twitter, Google, Face book, PayPal, Cloud Computing were unimaginable back in 1985 when the first .com domain name was registered.”

Branding is all about Creation of Identity. This has created a new space in the advertisement model of a company. This trend is called as “Logo advertising”, wherein a company advertises and positions itself through a logo/image and communicates to people through the logo over what the company is all about.

Logo advertising is a crucial component in long term branding and identity formation of the company. The logo helps in communicating to the public, as to what the brand deals with.

Logo advertising is not an easy task as people opine. Industry experts add that logo should convey a resonance message through which trust generation should be generated easily in the mind of the consumer for a higher brand recall and association.

Let’s discuss a bit more as to what a logo is all about, A logo can be a symbol, trademark or a name which integrates text, image, object of different shapes and sizes that helps in easy recognition and association of a product as long as its catchy and appealing.

Few steps which can be included to make Logo advertising a success

1. The Brief or what exactly the company is all about.

The most crucial and critical component in Logo design, Here we sit with the client and discuss with him the Vision, Mission, Idea, objectives and requirements of his company, which will help us in designing an Ideal logo for the client. At the end of the day do remember, Its customer satisfaction not the repetitive Logo reworks that matters.

2. Research and Implementation.

After the brief analysis about the product and service from the client, comes the crucial part of Research or the information finding fact about the company, you are going to endorse. Find out what they specialize in and who their potential customers are and would be looking for in a logo which would help them in making realize in a flash as to what the company is all about.

Example, If you are working for a FMCG company then an obvious thing that could be included in the logo is an image of the company or product which tells the viewer that the logo belongs to a particular FMCG company. Try including a wide array of objects and ideas that you can integrate into the logo. There are instances, wherein the name of the company can even lead to a brilliant design of a logo, Greenpeace is one such example

3. Visual Research and Exploration

The visual research is the next step, wherein all actual and feasible research on the logo design, style, shape, and color, personality pattern is studied to design or give the logo its final touches.

Logo design can better be reinforced and designed better by understanding the competitors and type of logos they use to position themselves in the market. One key to be successful in the Logo designing business is to never work in boundaries, Be “Out of the Box”, oriented and exhibit your expertise and Ideas. This helps in establishing yourselves as well as the company you are working for, and thereby help you stand out in the competition.

Eg-) The silver crocodile- Lacoste, is what comes to peoples mind when they see an image of apparel with a crocodile.

4. Sketching, Designing and Conceptualization

This is where you start making rough sketches of your design. It is the phase where for the first time you have to work using your creativity. During this phase the designer draws the skeleton of the logo using all the research material that he has collected over a period of time. Some designers use a sketchbook for this purpose; some prefer napkins, while some simply straight away start using the computer

5. Using a computer

At first is not always the advisable thing to do. When the designer creates various sketches and thinks about various concepts that could be integrated into the design, a designer’s mind is almost never idle and hence the constant flurry of ideas continues all day long, and this will be a little hard to implement or take down on a computer. You could come up with designs anywhere, from professional studios to your favorite park or even a coffee shop. Once you hit upon what exactly you are looking for, you will probably immediately realize that and this is just the right time to take a break.

6. The Presentation

Here the designer showcases his final work to his client. It is important that your presentation is highly professional and provides the client with all the details. It is your prerogative whether you want to showcase all the logo designs that you have developed or whether you want to just showcase the finalized designs that you had chosen and forms the crucial part to brief on how you went through the whole process of his logo designing and advice the company on how the logo could prove to be the best ideal choice or you can simply show the company what you have designed and leave the final decision up to your client.

All said and Done, Logo advertising is all about smartly advertising your Business in the minds of the consumers.

Google, worlds leading search engine portal and leader in Video sharing services via youtube.com, has unveiled the launch of their next successful product venture. This time its “Google TV”, which Google say will enable people to watch, browse

TV programmes and websites from their much preferred source, the Television.

Google opines this will help in creating the next revolution in TV Media space, which currently has a few established channel sponsors by adding a whole new lot of multiple entertainment channels from both the TV and web if integrated successfully.

Currently powered by Google’s Android software and Chrome Web browser, Google TV can be successfully accessed by enabling web-enabled routers in their televisions which is inbuilt in SONY or installing the router boxes from Logitech to existing TV sets.

Logitech routers serve as an added advantage by featuring the inbuilt computer keyboard, which will act as Google TVs remote control, whereby people can search or browse on Google on the screen home page in the TV as they do in the Internet.

Salahuddin Choudhary, Product manager Google TV, adds that “Because Google is built on Android, Chrome etc which are open platforms; they are just exhibiting a fraction of the features what they can do”, thus we believe that by Giving People the power to experience and feel the TV and Web on a single screen, Google TV promises to turn the Living room TV into a new platform for Innovation by the way of Internet and Cable integrated into one powerful entertainment network.

Google TV is slated for a 2010 end release all over the world.

Yahoo, Popular search engine and display ad network portal headed by Mrs. Carol Batz, has acquired “Associated content”. The website was a freelance new and health information site which was started in 2005 by Luke Berry. Associated content is a low-cost news and advertisement network, which relied on nearly 400,000 freelancers to share their expertise, opinions and views on a variety of subjects ranging from general news, health awareness, Global environment etc.

Yahoo opines the acquisition of “Associated Content”, is going to help them supplement its regular lineup of stories, news which are in active conversation amongst its users. This move helps to make it all the more successful for Yahoo as it is tying up with Fulltime Independently produced information by reporters, which is not typically covered by traditional media outlets.

Yahoo is even planning to bring a complete makeover in the “Associated Content” Website, shortly.  Associated content is happy with the offering, as it opines it will help them target more Unique Visitors on a per month basis. It currently draws anywhere between 16-16.5 million visitors per month. This is nearly 2 million more than “The new York times” website, which has healthy traffic audience of 14 million.

Carol Batz, CEO Yahoo said that “Combining Yahoos world class editorial team with Associated Content makes us a game Changer in the Contextual and Behavioral Content.” We will create revolutionary and retention based content on what our users want, care and are active a lot on. This will help us create a venue as a publisher, wherein we directly help an advertiser to engage with the consumer in our network. This will help in building an enriching consumer experience, which will eventually result in higher brand retention and new consumer creation. This makes us one of the best reason, on why we are the most visited Destination Online sums up Batz.

Facebook worlds leading social networking site, is no longer the favorite of people alone. It’s now the advertiser’s most preferred single source advertising medium, which very recently prided itself on serving nearly 177 billion display ads in a matter of just 3 months in the United States of America (U.S.A) from January to March 2010.

This figure is way ahead of Yahoo, which was initially the best display ad publisher network with an estimated traffic of 132 billion ads followed by Microsoft with a moderate 61 billion ads on their respective websites. Comscore adds further that, this data does not include ads which Yahoo and Microsoft delivered to their content networks.

Facebook currently caters to a wide audience in ad serving, as people spend much of their leisure time in facebook, and are active in it a lot. This was a first mover advantage to Facebook as it started airing the right contextual display ad in its network, which started attracting people in scores.

This trend has also reflected a new growth in small and medium range advertisers by way of single source of Advertising, thereby increasing demand of the channel, adds Linda Abraham Chief Marketing Officer, Comscore. The top advertisers in Facebook currently are Toyota, Ford motors, Verizon Communications and Zynga.

Experts add that Facebook is closing the gap by competing with established Internet ad-giants, Wherein Facebook is helping advertisers by publishing ads nearly 16 .3% of the 1.1% trillion display ad inventory. This is an achievement in itself for Facebook which has made a revolution in itself by the way of Single source mode of advertising.

Low cost Advertisers are not worried as they know that Facebook is helping them generate good results, but will single channel advertising work out in the long term, is the dilemma Medium and large scale advertisers are facing currently.

The best answer to it is Optimum Mileage factor, use the channel till it works best!

Steve jobs led Apple Inc, which very recently boasted a successful, audience accepted product called iPad, has added one more successful service in its kitty. Touted by Apple as iAd, It is a 4^th generation mobile advertising platform, which Steve says will be the new revenue generator, as it simultaneously helps developers and publishers to build applications for the iPhone, iPod and the successful iPad.

Steve jobs, who was exuberant about the service offering adds that, “We were not the first to it, But we will be the best, in what we do”, referring to iAd, which noticeably competes with Google’s mobile advertising service. Steve went a step further by adding that mobile advertising is still in its nascent phases. He firmly believes on making revolutionary contributions in it by the way of implementing iAd network.

Steve jobs, adds that the biggest challenge for Apple is to capture and beat Google in mobile advertising segment. Google acquired Admob, which they literally snatched it from our hands. But we brought another small but good company called as Quattro, which has helped us a lot. Now with the iAd coming in, Apple will have a breakthrough as Steve knows that people are more comfortable searching in an iPad than a phone. IPad boasts of “Getting you into every corner of the internet…They don’t exist on PCs. This is a new phenomenon that is occurring on the iPhone for the first time in history.” adds jobs.

iAd differentiates itself from other mobile ad-networks by its built in embedded style in the operating system. There is a multiple option of interaction and video content on the application itself. Jobs knows that “People will be a lot more interested in clicking on these because they don’t have to find their way back to the application once again.” Apple will tie up with developers and host the ads, wherein the earnings will be split on a 60:40% basis.

Very recently Apple provided an advertising example, in which the advertisement is like a mini-application that opens up when a user clicks on a banner wherein he can download wallpapers, play free games or even buy games. Steve is expecting the service to be a gala hit, as he calculates that by summertime the iPhone will be generating nearly one billion ad impressions in a day, as a user on any given day will spend nearly 30 minutes in his iPhone and even if we just serve one ad every three minutes, there’s around 100 million iPhones we are serving to, which will be generating nearly one billion ad impressions a day which is quite sizable traffic.

Google better start revamping up, sums up Steve.

Zapakdigital launches Zapak Social connect which Arun Mehra, COO of Zapak says will be a pioneer in providing social media branding and advertising to leading top brands in India and around the world through interactive social network games.

Zapak.com known in the market as the largest online gaming webspace is also a much preferred publisher for social networking games. Zapak has an impressive list of brand tie ups in their closet with biggies like NDTV imagine, HUL, M&M, Neo sports etc present in their social gaming and branding network. Zapak with their social media gaming strategy has fortified its foothold as the market leader in the space.

Charles Theodore who will be heading this niche service added that “We have exhibited tremendous success by providing innovative brand solutions to clients in the gaming space and taking most of our advertising games/applications on the social media platforms. We have a strong understanding of creating applications, brand engagements, virals on Social media through games and thereby cater to our advertiser’s needs and requirements.”
Social media branding and advertising has the ability to engage and retain the customer on a never before heard scale in comparison to other forms of advertising and PR tools. Zapak has just fortified on it through their Social media gaming and identity branding service. This has helped leverage brands like Axe, Mahindra & Mahindra etc vault to the top.

Zapak.com’s social marketing connect offers social gaming, application and contest gaming in social networks, which thereby helps in premium positioning of the product, and equally ensures the Online reputation management or positive buzz marketing for brands keep happening continuously.