The Internet medium is becoming an area of growing interest in the advertising industry. The digital marketing and media experts are making a close scrutiny of how the major online properties are stacking up as advertising mediums. But the major stumbling block is the general lack of info on where to advertise, how to advertise and how much it cost... Through this feature, exchange4media attempts to address the information need of the marketing and media specialists on the advertising opportunities available on India's hottest portals.

In the current scenario, the leading portals including indiatimes.com, yahoo.co.in, rediff.com, msn.co.in, sify.com and hindustantimes.com roughly covers nearly 80% of the Indian Internet audience and hence the online advertising too. According to Sudhir Nair, General Manager, Grey Interactive, "MSN scores with the MSN Messenger ad spots, which gives very good clicks. Yahoo has an overall good property to advertise upon, monster banners on Yahoo gets you good clicks. Rediff being the early entrants have their own loyal user base and a variety of content, which becomes very relevant for the campaign. Same is the case with Sify. Indiatimes has gained massive ground with good campaigns and offline promotions." Hindustantimes.com too has become aggressive in terms of luring advertisers and catching up with rest of the Net majors.

Online Traffic
There has been no authenticated comprehensive online traffic research attempted in India. So for most of the user traffic stats, one has to rely on the data provided by the individual online majors. According to Deepak Chandnani, Country Head of Yahoo says, " We have 27 million user registrations on the Yahoo! Network from India, and half of them use Yahoo! India. These users consume an average of 1 billion page views a month which translates to an average of 3.3 crore page views a day on the Yahoo! Network from India."

Traffic Stats:

Yahoo.co.in Indiatimes.com Hindustantimes.com Rediff.com  Registered  users 13.5 millions 5 millions NA 21.3 millions  Monthly Page  view 1 billion 7.4 billions 55 millions NA  Unique users NA 9 millions 4 millions NA

Source: As per company claims

More than 4 million unique users visit hindustantimes.com every month resulting in 55 million page views a month with users spending more than 18 minutes on an average on the portal. As a result of its strong news content, the portal receives maximum hits between 9-10am on weekdays. Indiatimes.com, the horizontal portal from the Times Group, enjoys 744 millions total page impressions with 72 million visitors spending an average time of 19 minutes and 5 seconds.

Internet is more of middle and upper middle class youth oriented media which is quite evident from the profile of the indiatimes users. Almost 82% of the indiatimes users fall in 18-36 years age group category. More than 80% of the users have a monthly household income of Rs.10,000 plus and 83% of them are graduates and above. Rediff.com has an impressive registered user base of 21.3 millions, perhaps higher than any other online brand if we go by rediff's claim.

FAQs

Unique User Diference between a Hit and an Impression/Page view? A unique user is somene who accesses a Web site at least once a month A hit is a single call for information from a page on the Internet. Generally a few hits are registered to create a single page. One fully downloaded page is known as an impression. When referred to as an ad impression, one impression is a single viewing of an online advertisement

Ad platforms
Almost all the major portals in India offer a wide range of channels/sections to cater to the varied needs of their users. But the properties such as chat, e-mail, messenger and home page are most popular among the Indian Internet users like their counterparts world over.

Popular Ad Platforms Home Page Chat E-mail Dating Business

On Yahoo, mail is the most popular property accounting for about 50% of the page views. The other popular properties are chat, greetings & messenger. Whereas on hindustantimes.com, most of the traffic is drawn towards the top stories, cricket, cinema, business and sports sections.

Indiatimes offers a wide variety of channels ranging from chat, dating, e-mails, SMS, publication sites like economictimes.com and timesofindia.com, entertainment, cricket etc. Msn.co.in and rediff.com too provides the similar kind of content.

Consumer Targeting
The Internet is an excellent media to advertise in order to reach out to the best prospective consumers by way of targeting through parameters such as demographics, surfing habits, geographic location and time of usage. It helps to develop effective advertising modules which are target oriented.

Yahoo.co.in offers this consumer target facility. For example, if a personal finance company wants to communicate to women in the age group of say 25-40, Yahoo.co.in allows the advertisers to identify all the users who have registered as women in that particular age group. Similarly, the portal provides geographic location targeting where the users can be tracked according to the IP address corresponding to the location. Chandnani says, "If a Pizza outlet wants to communicate to users from say Delhi, then only the users who log in from Delhi will be shown the ad banners."

In the same fashion, advertising campaigns can be planned according to the time of usage. For example, if a tea /coffee brand wants to communicate to users between say 9 a.m to 11. a.m. and 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. to induce consumers to have a cup of tea/coffee, the advertising banners can be scheduled accordingly.

Besides yahoo.co.in, other portals too provide this facility to choose your customers with minimum wastage.

Ad Tools
Generally, most of the major portals provide similar kind of ad tools with few innovations thrown in. Sanjay Trehan, General Manager-Internet of Hindustan Times Group says, "Hindustantimes.com offers the banner ads (static and dynamic), sky scrapers, rich media ads and other advertising options include sponsorships, e-mail blasts and innovative promotions around brands. In terms of advertiser preferences, 70% goes for banner ads, 20% opt for brand promos and rest of the 10% prefers sponsorships. "

Yahoo.co.in too has a comprehensive marketing tools package to match the diverse needs of the marketing communications. A quick live demo of the same can be seen by clicking on http://solutions.yahoo.co.in Besides, the regular ad options, yahoo.co.in offers roadblocks, integration with content, wallpapers, signature on e-mails, contests and community buildings etc. For some more innovative online advertising on yahoo, visit http://in.promos.yahoo.com/gallery/

Online Ad Rates
The advertising rates on online platforms for tools such as banners etc. are measured in CPM which stands for cost per thousand impressions. Yahoo rates for its various ad modules vary from Rs.150/1000 impressions to Rs.350/1000 impressions. Whereas hindustantimes.com has the rate of Rs. 450 CPM.

Indiatimes.com, which offers a complete bundle of Times Group's publication brands based online properties also such as timesofindia.com, economictimes.com, filmfare.com, and feminaindia.com, charges Rs.200 for non-targeted and Rs.250 for targeted per 1000 impressions for impressions less than 500,000. For impressions more than 500,000, the rate goes down to Rs.150 for non-targeted and Rs.200 for targeted ones per 1000 impressions. But the catch is minimum 50,000 have to be bought. The innovative tools attract a hefty premium such as 100% for the eye blaster and 200% for the site capture/takeover.

Ad Rates:

Rates Yahoo.co.in Indiatimes.com Hindustantimes.com Cost per thousand impressions (In Rs) 150-350 150-250 450

Source: Company ad rate cards

Among other ad tools, hindustantimes.com charges Rs.50,000 and above per month for sponsorship opportunities. Indiatimes.com offers mail shots (digital mailers) @ Rs.2 per mailer for less than 200,000 shots and Rs.1.50 per mailer for more than 200,000 shots.

Majority of the advertisers availing the benefits of advertising on these leading portals belong to FMCG, Durables, Automobiles & Automotive products, Financial Products, Travel and IT industries.

Ad Billings
Again like traffic stats, there is no authentic source of information about billings from advertising on these portals. The advertising on indiatimes.com is estimated to be between Rs. 15-20 crore on an annualized basis as claimed by Rajesh Sawhney, COO of Times Internet. Hindustantimes.com claims that its ad revenue for this financial year is expected to be Rs. 3 crore. On the other hand, rediff.com has reported revenues of Rs.8.7 crore in the period July-Sept 2002.

Ad Billings

Indiatimes.com Rediff.com Hindustantimes.com Total revenues (In Rs) 15-20 crore (Current annual projections) 8.7 crore (Period July-Sept 2002) 3 crore (Current annual projections)

Source: As per company claims