Indian Digital Media Growth Story: The Reality

According to a report in economic times,the Indian online display advertising market is expected to grow about 32% this fiscal to Rs 430-crore, lower than the 38% growth it showed last year, says a study by the Internet and Mobile Association of India and research agency IMRB, shared exclusively with ET.

This decline of 6% in the Online media was largely due to a dip in spending of major corporates due to the recession and generally depressed markets in India (and the rest of the world) due to global slowdown.

Traditionally its been the Auto, FMCG, telecom,Travel annd education sectors who increased their online advertising spends. Online display advertising forms about 28% of overall online advertising whereas the remaining are classified and search-based advertising that form approximately 48% and 24% respectively.

FMCG and auto contributed about 9% and 11%, respectively. Online advertising by both auto and IT and telecom sectors grew by 40% and 41% on the back of a slew of new product launches and a clutch of new cellular service operators entering the fray this year.

That also brings us to the question, if internet advertising has greater accountability, more transparent and provides marketers and agencies with more control and the ability to get more bang for the buck.Then why have we not seen greater online advertising spends in a depressed market and recessionary economy.

Is is that we as digital marketers have failed to convince our clients about the effectiveness about the online media or is is that the "Digital Media Overhype" have been over marketed to such an extent that clients now feel that the digital media is a sort of panacea for all their failed product launches and shoddy distribution strategy ?

The answer lies somewhere mid way. More often that not we,as digital marketers tend to use the"accountability card to" to sell our digital media effectiveness, but we fail to deliver when statistics and click throughs are questioned, data is analyzed, sliced and diced. Display Ads we are told are for branding campaigns, and its the reach which matters...but as clients how do we measure effectiveness, pre and post purchase behavior,ineffectiveness of the landing page,bad copy, shoddy navigation by a simple dashboard which shows the number of clicks and impressions..

While Click through's can be an indication of overall acceptability of the product .. why should we as Digital partners are not able to scale up and add value to our metrics by providing more insights to our clients that that allow them to view the " Real Effectiveness " of the online media rather that the "Perceived Effectiveness"..like letting clients know the average page views per user from the " Display Ads", the top 10 pages in terms of "site stickiness" most visited internal pages, or how many users joined their facebook Community from the click through from the ads

While a Search Marketing based Campaigns(SEM) /PPC has an inbuilt accountability built into the system due to dynamic controls and process , either by an automated bidding system , that are more or less controlled by Search Engines . Its the display based advertising that has the maximum potential of making advertisers a a victim of the systems and process or rather the lack of them..

As digital Marketers we need to step away from our self induced stupor and stop believing that display ads are only for reach ..by making sure we deliver real value as digital partners and not only perceived value

Google Launches Limited Clicks for Subscription news

In a fight its most often the smaller guys blinks first,Specially when you know that you control the internet gateway. But in a fight between the gated community and free democratic information that signifies the web,it seems that Google has finally accepted concerns from a Rupert Murdoch Lobby by launching a new service that limits free News content to the users.

Google announced a new policy Wednesday that allows news publishers to limit the amount of subscription content that Internet users can access for free from Google News.

In the existing program called "First Click Free," Google allows participating publishers who offer a subscription-based news service to display the first page of an article that a user accessed through Google News for no charge. If the user then clicks on another link on that page, the user will be taken to a page that requires a registration or subscription.

will also begin to label paid content as "subscription" on its Google News service.

"These are two of the ways we allow publishers to make their subscription content discoverable, and we're going to keep talking with publishers to refine these methods," said Google senior business product manager Josh Cohen in a blog post. "After all, whether you're offering your content for free or selling it, it's crucial that people find it. Google can help with that."

After discussions with publishers, Google updated the program Wednesday to limit the total number of free clicks for pay news services to five per day for each user. Previously, users could access an unlimited number of subscription-based articles from Google News.

The move comes in response to to online newspapers and publishers considering whether to keep articles away from Google's news and Web searches. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp , which offers much of its content on a subscription-only basis, reportedly considered restricting Google from displaying its news articles.

This might have three implications for Publishers that prefers to be within the gated community

1) Users will move away to other sources. News is a commoditized item today and users ultimately would not hesitate to gravitate to other sources that would provide the same information

2) Open source standards of the web that thrives on user generated and user interaction via social media would completely move away from the " So called niche publishers" that treats their content as a holy grail of sorts. If you cannot involve your users with your news.. be prepared to loose your audience for good.You have lost them offline.. now be prepared to loose them online too !

3) Limiting or Restricting users access by creating "walls" around the web is akin to killing the patient ,rather than the diseases.. Instead of trying to treat Google as the sinner,publishers must learn to change the way they report online.. The same mistakes was done by many email providers when they got paid and finally their obituary was written in black and white .One of the Company that believed that users was ready to pay to get their email was 123India which believed that users would prefer to pay,rather than have a cluttered inbox, with banners and pop ups. By thinking this as a first mover advantage, the company foolishly went paid, by promising customized mailbox, a move that made them history ..(the site still exists.. but its in its dealthbed)

The internet was created free, will remain free specially for an item as commoditized as news.. The mandarins that run news papers and magazines can cry hoarse against search engines and lobby against everything free.. However they would be wise to understand that creating "Walls" will further alienate their users who has stopped reading news papers and magazines in the real worlds. By providing another " walled garden" be prepared to loose them online too !

Top 10 Searches in 2009

The year end searches from all the three search majors are now out and quite unexpectedly there has been no suprises, Michale Jackson and Spine Flu continue to dominate the web searches across all major search engines.

Google top 10 Searches for 2009

Fastest Rising (Global)

1. michael jackson
2. facebook
3. tuenti
4. twitter
5. sanalika
6. new moon
7. lady gaga
8. windows 7
9. dantri.com.vn
10. torpedo gratis

Fastest Rising in Entertainment (Global)

1. michael jackson
2. transformers
3. eminem
4. naruto shippuden
5. beyonce
6. peliculas id
7. paranormal activity
8. anime online
9. natasha richardson
10. poker face lyrics


Fastest Rising in Sports (Global)

1. real madrid
2. us open
3. ufc
4. sahadan
5. livescore
6. pacquiao vs cotto
7. wbc
8. pga tour leaderboard
9. confederations cup
10. l'equipe football

Bing Top Searches

1. Michael Jackson
2. Twitter
3. Swine Flu
4. Stock Market
5. Farrah Fawcett
6. Patrick Swayze
7. Cash for Clunkers
8. Jon and Kate Gosselin
9. Billy Mays
10. Jaycee Dugard

Yahoo Top Searches for 2009

1. Michael Jackson
2. Twilight
3. WWE
4. Megan Fox
5. Britney Spears
6. Naruto
7. American Idol
8. Kim Kardashian
9. NASCAR
10. Runescape

Yahoo also released a list of the top 10 business success-related searches, and yep, there’s Twitter — and Bing!

1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Hulu
4. Bing
5. iPhone
6. LinkedIn
7. Dollar Stores
8. Palm Pre
9. Rosetta Stone
10. Kindle