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Naveen Tewari
Chief Executive Officer and Founder,
InMobi
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| "Mobile advertising has come a long way and its future is bright. Adoption of smartphones and tablets in emerging countries will drive its reach tremendously. Large brands are increasingly dedicating bigger portions of their digital advertising budgets to mobile as there is now a better understanding of the platform and its benefits." |
Naveen Tewari, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, InMobi is responsible for the overall strategy and vision of the company. His view on the growth of the mobile ecosystem was the foundation stone on which InMobi was built. In this interaction with exchange4media’s Rahul Dubey, Tewari speaks about his India plans and the opportunities and challenges that lie before the mobile advertising industry.
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| Q. |
You compete directly with Google and other global internet and mobile giants. What has been your key area of focus and strategy so far? |
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| A. |
We have a three-pronged approach towards our strategy, which is to establish global scale, reach along with continuous technology innovation. Initially we started off by establishing ourselves in emerging markets of Asia and Africa and then entered the developed markets of North America, Japan and Europe. We have ensured deep penetration in these markets and today reach close to 500 million users across the globe. This reverse market strategy has already differentiated us from our competitors.
Further, as we are primarily a technology company, our focus will always be on technology innovation. We have developed rich expertise in data utilisation, with over 50 terabytes (TB) of data analysed per month to target users across multiple dimensions such as behavioral, contextual, location based information, etc., thus ensuring higher engagement with users. Through our engaging, rich media ad units created on our mobile advertising platform, Sprout, we ensure superior user experience and high interaction. |
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| Q. |
Which industry verticals are aggressively looking at mobile advertising? Who are your major clients? |
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| A. |
With increasing adoption and reliance on smartphones and tablets, iOS and Android-based game developers have become very active mobile advertisers. Large brands from sectors such as CPG, automobile, telecom and retail have started spending a sizeable portion of their marketing budgets on mobile. Some of our major clients are Amazon, P&G, Macy’s, Samsung, Ford and Audi. |
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| Q. |
Mobile advertising is highly underpenetrated. What is the current market size for mobile advertising in India? Where is it expected to reach in the next three to five years? |
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| A. |
Mobile advertising, especially display advertising, is a new concept in India but its adoption has gone up considerably in the last couple of years. India is a $35-40 million market for mobile marketing and is only growing. The global mobile marketing industry is expected to reach $60-80 billion by 2014. |
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What is your major source of revenue among different mobile ad formats available? |
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Currently, a major part of our revenue comes from standard MMA (Multi Media Ad) banner formats as well as rich media advertising or HTML5 formats, which is growing rapidly. We have a huge focus on developing innovative rich media ad formats specific to industry verticals which embed components such as location, lead generation, coupons, etc. into their ads. These ad formats will also drive revenue in the future. |
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| Q. |
How is the Indian mobile ad business shaping up for InMobi? |
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| A. |
In India, we are a leading ad network even though mobile advertising is still quite nascent here. The adoption of new technology and use of smartphones and tablets is growing rapidly here. India is also now on the map as far as global brand advertisers are concerned. Although India has been playing catch-up in the past as far as developers and apps were concerned, the scenario is fast changing. This holds tremendous potential for us. |
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What are the key challenges for mobile advertising in India? |
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| A. |
Majority of Indian users are still on feature phones that have limited capabilities. However, mobile users in urban areas are rapidly adopting smartphones and tablets. So while currently there is a big challenge in smartphone penetration and the reach of ad campaigns through them, it is something that will not be so much of an issue in the future.
Local brands today are not aware of the potential of mobile advertising. To increase awareness, we will have to educate potential local clients. Another challenge that affects scaling up of ad networks is the technological capabilities required to process and analyse the massive volumes of data that is captured every second. |
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| Q. |
Going forward, which areas will be the key growth drivers for the industry and InMobi in particular? |
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| A. |
Mobile advertising has come a long way and its future is brilliant. Adoption of smartphones and tablets in emerging countries will drive its reach tremendously. Large brands are increasingly dedicating bigger portions of their digital advertising budgets to mobile as there is a better understanding of the platform and its benefits.
Apart from this, what will drive growth for the industry and InMobi are innovative technologies that can effectively segment, target and track users, engage rich media ad formats with scale using our Sprout platform and provide advertisers, app developers and publishers the right tools and platforms to help drive growth in the future. |
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"Social media is very big when it comes to promoting deals and it already accounts to five per cent of our revenue. This is why we invested in a shopping cart, so that people can actually buy by clicking on the Facebook page."
Ankur Warikoo-CEO-
Crazeal.com, Groupon’s India wing-4/9/2012
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"We are more focused on investing on TV content and also access such content through digital platforms, PCs, tablets, smart phones. It will be more about how we are creating more content on the digital platforms. We are not only interested in increasing our TV content, but making the same content available on different platforms. These are the two areas of focus for this year. "
Benjamin Grubbs-Executive Director - Interactive Media-
Turner Broadcasting System Asia Pacific, Inc-2/21/2012
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"Lifestyle as a category is worth almost $45 billion in India and is growing at 15 per cent every year. It is slated to touch $100 billion by 2015. We have been going through this transition for the last 12 months and are now a pure play e-commerce company, dealing with lifestyle products. The trend has worked well for us and we see ourselves growing to be the largest lifestyle e-commerce portal in the country. Our revenue is doubling every 4 to 5 months."
Mukesh Bansal-Founder & CEO-
Myntra.com-2/2/2012
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"We continue to invest in the best of innovations. Consumer trends change over a period of time... We made sure our products have deeper relationship with Facebook and Twitter, we're in partnerships with them. There's a huge amount of traffic coming in from social networks, which is incredibly important. We think social is not necessarily a destination, it's a behaviour. What we think about offline, we try to replicate it online. There are verticals, but behaviour is pervasive. As long as we help people create a social graph of their own and tap into it and share their content, that's an enriching experience."
Nitin Mathur-Senior Director - Marketing-
Yahoo India-1/17/2012
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"If we look at media on the whole, we have paid media like banner ads, SEM; owned media like websites, Facebook channels; and finally, earned media where others talk about a brand based on the positive influence they have, which could be as a result of brand engagement, prizes, giveaways and so on. So IndiBlogger essentially plugs that gap where a brand sees that it needs more earned media, since it surely carries a lot more trust and credibility."
Vineet Rajan-Head - Client Strategy-
IndiBlogger.in-12/19/2011
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"We are seeing the most movement as well as innovation in retail, BFSI and Automotive segments. Simply put, segments with high retail involvement, propensity for repeat transactions and risk of commoditisation (consequent need for increased brand affiliation) are the most active."
S Monteiro & S Guha--
SapientNitro-12/7/2011
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"What gets measured gets managed. Measurability is a major advantage with the web. We get to observe the results from specific marketing campaigns. However, grey areas still creep in while understanding close linkages between mass media campaigns and the end-results."
K Vaitheeswaran-Founder & CEO-
Indiaplaza-10/19/2011
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"Spends are going to increase as consumers are spending more and more time on the digital medium. Now what marketers are grappling with are the numerous options available in digital media… There is also an e-commerce boom… Digital is going to be the way advertising is going to happen. With the medium evolving, every advertising person has to be a digital professional. The future of advertising is digital."
CVS Sharma-Director-
Arc Worldwide India-9/5/2011
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"I think measurement in any business is really important. In fact, as ensuring targeted audiences and driving customised marketing campaigns starts becoming increasingly important, digital will emerge as a hugely powerful medium. However, a critical aspect that brand owners must realise is that in addition to measuring the immediate outcome, they need to evaluate the efficacy of digital media in the long term as well. This is because the true power of the medium is that it allows for long term brand conversations that eventually create brand engagement with the end consumer."
Neville Taraporewalla-Country Director-
Advertising and Online, Microsoft India Pvt Ltd-8/16/2011
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"Mobile advertising in India is still nascent. It stands at about Rs 100 crore. But at the same time it is a growing market, with dramatic growth rates, doubling year over year. The reasons behind the mobile market growth in India are external to the advertising environment. The mobile advertising market has evolved from a stage of mobile Internet being used for email access, to being used for social, to now being used for accessing various kinds of content – from news to sports to games."
Anuj Kumar-Chief Executive Officer-
Affle-7/20/2011
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"2011 undoubtedly shall be “the year of tablets”, under all possibilities this is a great opportunity for marketers and the end user. This will take Advertising 2.0 to the next level to the extent the end consumer himself would say, “I don’t mind ads because they pay for my attention by giving me valuable content (discounts, free downloads, etc.) for free”. To me, this is what marketing on mobile Internet means - where the end user himself wants to see content provided by marketers!"
CR Vinay-Founder & MD-
Customer Centria-6/29/2011
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"Building an umbrella around the content is the key here. Throwing TV online is not the solution. Instead, you need to look at how to extend the offline content, and build things up around it."
Benjamin Grubbs-Regional Director-
Turner Interactive-5/31/2011
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"Digital is not about numbers. Digital is about interaction. It allows you to experiment, and take feedback from the audience. If you are not getting good feedback, then you can quickly reverse directions, and change the state."
Romi Mahajan-Worldwide Director-
Microsoft-5/18/2011
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"The internet allows things to be instant, quick and convenient. The confluence of these three drives the web; the future is in services not retail. Logistics is a major stumbling block holding back retail. On the other hand, taking off for a services brand is very easy. With a retail brand, customer satisfaction happens outside the store. It's hard to ensure a good experience. Services on the other hand are going to grow much further."
Sharat Jain-Founder & President-
RechargeItNow-5/5/2011
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"Social, email, mobile are all important and you can’t club all of them into one slot and expect an agency to do it along with TV and print. However, in digital, one part of the campaign feeds clearly into the next part, and if clients experiment a little they can earn great gains."
Chetan Asher-CEO-
Tonic Media-4/12/2011
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"Neil Hudspeth, Regional Digital Director Asia Pacific, Leo Burnett, spoke to exchange4media while on a visit to Delhi. He talked about the reason why he believes that the investment in, and engagement with, digital media is going to accelerate in 2011. Digital is now integrated into video, into outdoor and print, particularly through mobile, which is growing exponentially. Technology is important, not for the wow factor but because it is a part of people's lives."
Neil Hudspeth-Regional Digital Director Asia Pacific-
Leo Burnett-3/31/2011
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"The people selling ‘likes’ are behaving like door to door salesmen, talking about the price of a ‘like’. It’s nonsense. It’s like saying that I will put up one hoarding on the highway, and guess what? A lakh or more people are seeing it every day. What value is that actually adding though?"
Chris George -Founder & CEO-
EBS Worldwide-3/15/2011
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"Most IT marketing is not about selling just technology, because what you’re actually selling is a business decision; you’re selling technology for transformative purposes. So it’s not just about capturing eyeballs…Instead of selling a box of software and walking away, you first need to sell a vision, like the smarter planet initiative, and then find a way to fit the vertical, and then actually demonstrate the value that you are providing to your partners."
Susan Jain-VP Marketing-
IBM India-2/22/2011
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"I believe that being a customer-centric industry, life insurance needs to aggressively leverage the digital space to increase customer connect; drive awareness; leverage data for analytics and tailored and customized services and products and build a reputation for the brand. This is especially relevant to create a positive perception about the brand to the consumer and enrich the overall brand experience. This is a strategic focus for Max New York Life which is helping us build increased loyalty towards the brand."
Anisha Motwani-Dir & CMO-
Max New York Life Insurance-1/25/2011
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"So the thing that we are most careful about is to match expectations from both ends, and create a high value ecosystem where we carefully screen out a lot of advertisers to ensure the best experiences for our members. In a way, a deal on offer from Deals And You is not just a discount, but also a recommendation. We carefully curate the best experiences, create packages for our members, like putting together a deal from a restaurant, and a taxi service and a club to create a full experience for a Christmas date."
Gaurav Kachru-CEO-
Deals and You-12/22/2010
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