DIGI DISCOVERY

Digital proving to be a hope in turbulent times

With traditional media proving to be a tad too expensive during times of slowdown, advertisers have been turning to the digital medium, searching for a saviour in it to balance their ad spends in testing times. The medium might not have yielded as much as it was expected to, yet, however, as per industry estimates, it grew by 28-29 per cent during 2009, as opposed to 60-65 per cent in previous years (or worst come to worst 40-45 per cent).

What the slowdown brought to the medium were a host of new advertisers who had tasted blood and tried out digital as a medium to reach out to consumers. Marketers looking for a more measurable medium tried out digital as well. As a result of the whole exercise, they became more aware of the medium and most of them included digital in their spends pie, even though the budgets assigned were not huge.

The year 2009 saw General Motors allocate nearly Rs 1 crore for its online budget. FMCG brands, too, explored the digital medium in a big way. For instance, Coca-Cola India in August 2009 launched its campaign for Sprite first on the Internet. Pepsi, ITC Group, and Colgate Palmolive were some other FMCG brands that got on to the online advertising bandwagon.

For smaller agencies, it was boom time as they have a smaller base. They added quite a few new clients to their roster and hailed the uncanny combination of the digital medium and the unfortunate slowdown as a booster to their billings. The larger ones, however, more or less remained stable, if not plummeting.

What industry players have to say
Commenting on Ignitee Digital Solutions’ performance in the year gone by, its CEO, Atul Hegde, said, “Ignitee as an agency grew by 100-125 per cent. More clients and categories came in, apart from the steady inflow from the banking and financial sectors. I believe the slowdown has reduced the resistance levels of clients towards digital, and now that a marketer has tried this medium at least once because of the slowdown, he will keep coming back. This is the best part of digital being a medium, which in turn is great news for us. We are expecting another 40 per cent growth in 2010.”

Prasanth Mohanachandran, Executive Director - Digital Services, Neo@Ogilvy, observed, “The growth for the medium was like the Box Office collections for James Cameron for ‘Avatar’. For a $400 million budgeted movie, he collected record first week collections, though he was expecting to collect more. Banking and finance sectors reduced their spends by a huge amount due to the slowdown, which was not good for this medium, however, newer players were forced into this medium. The two categories that increased their advertising spends were the IT and telecom sectors. This is all the more because both these categories have a good understanding of measurability.”

On the way ahead in 2010, he said, “The year 2009 can very easily be called the ‘foundation year’ for digital as a medium, because a lot of media mixes changed as they accommodated digital for the first time. The year 2010 would see ‘real time search’ emerging as a key area, and a lot of media investment would be made in this area. In 2010, a lot of regulations also need to be looked at for helping this medium to keep growing. I believe online videos would be a big thing, too, in 2010 and consumption is bound to go up, overlooking myths of bandwidth problems.”

B Murlikrishnan, Director - Categories & Product, eBay India, noted, “For eBay as an e-commerce destination, it has been a fantastic year as consumers have stopped by and shopped, especially during Diwali. I believe a downturn is a good time to use e-commerce to reach out to the consumers. For us, Huggies was one of the brands that tried out the digital medium for the first time. They engaged the consumers by setting up online stores on the website.”

He further said, “As for a trend, Internet penetration in rural areas would see a lot of action and Tier II and III cities will show quantum jumps in Internet usage. In fact, the year 2011 would see Internet on mobile coming up in a big way and hence, marketers would turn towards this area. With the 3G auctions slated to happen by early 2010, by the end of this year we should see 3G reaching private hands and hence, more intensified activities on the medium.”

While every year is said to be the year of digital media, however, it was during the slowdown that more and more brands began exploring the digital medium and take the medium seriously. The automobile, education and telecom sectors have been the biggest investors in the digital medium and the reason, many believe, is not limited to slowdown alone. FMCG brands are beginning to understand this medium only now, which is bound to help further grow this medium. With the 3G launch, expectations from this medium are high.

Some interesting developments in 2009:

LinkedIn gets aggressive in India; appoints Hari V. Krishnan as Country Manager
Mauj Mobile & Mobixell partner for mobile advtg; Mauj claims 250 pc growth
With launch of Blazar, Quasar Media eyes over 20 pc market share
Yahoo! embarks on new India campaign from Oct 5; to turn focus on ‘Y!ou’
StarTV.in airs its first ad roadblock online for Tata Photon+
Microsoft-Yahoo! will be an alternative for advertisers, say media planners
Chandamama strengthens digital presence, launches local language portals
Bajaj Pulsar on aggressive digital drive
Makemytrip.com and Networkplay.in ink multi-year ad sales pact