Mobile marketers see value in being non-intrusive and sending customised ads on request.

Mobile marketers are becoming more sensitive to the fact that unsolicited mobile advertisements are a nuisance for mobile users. With the realisation that the mobile is a very personal device, they are now becoming more selective with the help of the 3Ps to simultaneously enhance the efficiency of mobile advertising— they are ensuring that the information is pushed to people at the right time, with their permission, and after personalising it.

For instance, you buy something from a retail store and want to be updated with the new arrivals. So you ‘invite’ information from the store on new arrivals and it will send multiple SMSs every month telling you what’s new. And you have the right to opt-in and opt-out.

Called invertising (from ‘inviting’ advertising), the move is aimed at ensuring a spam-free world for customers. Moreover, customers can become publishers, choosing to share what they have received with their social networks (viral spread).

“Invertising is one level above mobile advertising. It is information as content that people choose to receive, creating a direct relationship with the brand. So, advertising helps in acquiring new customers, while invertising is about reducing the incremental cost of contact while engaging with them,” explains Chirag Randeria, vice-president, mobility sales, Netcore Solutions (a mobile products and services provider which owns MyToday mobile media).

Such SMS ads tagged with opt-in and opt-out content are becoming a hit among advertisers as half of the mobile subscriber base uses SMS (only 3 per cent use the mobile Internet). Mobile marketing is a Rs 50-crore industry.

The results are there to see. Netcore, for instance, is doing campaigns for Meri Saheli. Western Railway (52,786 subscribers) also publishes regular updates on its services and new trains and facilities they are coming up with. Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) (110 subscribers ) used this interesting format when it launched its water purifie PureIt. Colgate (3,683 subcribers), Amul (3,893 subcribers) and The Economist (6,608 subscribers) also ran campaigns inviting people to subscribe to short SMS channels.

Invertising creates a hotline between the brand and the customers. It delivers to advertisers on a higher level because customers invites ads from the brands they like, the shops they visit and the companies whose products they buy. Randeria adds: “It supports ‘do not disturb’ call registry formula. It’s an accountable channel. Advertiser pay per subscriber or number of messages. In the coming months, we will also come up with permitted caller ring back tunes.”

A brand can take 20 per cent of its customer base — the most profitable ones, who are also the most vulnerable to competition — and build a daily relationship with them for just Rs 2 per customer per month.

Nielsen recently did a survey of over 2,000 subscribers of MyToday which reported that the average age of the subscriber group is 25 years and nearly 80 per cent belong to the premium segment. Seventy five per cent of the subscribers read every SMS that they receive, 40 per cent read all ads, and 30 per cent of them have taken action on the ads that they have seen. MyToday has worked with over 120 advertisers in the past year who have run more than 200 campaigns.

Naveen Tewari, CEO, mKhoj, a mobile advertising company, says: “While the Internet is being touted as the metric-based advertising channel, more than 40 per cent of contact information provided by audience in the post-click forms is incorrect.” mKhoj has advertised with 50 brands on invertising model. Unlike Internet, mobile number allows consumers to be uniquely targeted. It reaches the right target audience, comes directly on user’s mobile and there is no chance of getting the mobile number wrong.

Seema Sindhu in Business-Standard / New Delhi October 30, 2008, 0:28 IST

Tags: Business Standard, Mkhoj, Mobile Marketers

Mobile advertising is related and similar to online advertising, but reaches far greater number of members, who can be categorised based on various parameters

BANGALORE, INDIA: Of late, brands are going a step ahead in leveraging on value added services that are specific and measurable so as to reach audience, who may or may not have access to the conventional forms of advertising modes.

It is here that mobile advertising comes into the frame. Mobile advertisement, a subset of MVAS, is in its nascent stage but soon to become a rage as more and more players are cashing in on it.

In this backdrop, Abhay Singhal, co-founder and head, global ad sales, mKhoj, shares a few thoughts with CIOL.

Excerpts:

CIOL:  How is Indian market responding to mobile marketing and advertising?
Abhay Singhal: The mobile advertising market largely constitutes two categories of advertisers – the mobile content players or WAP sites on one hand and the brands such as FMCG, consumer durables, insurance and the like on the other.

Mobile advertising is related and similar to online advertising, but reaches far greater number of members who can be categorised based on various parameters such as handsets, network, geography and go even a step further to tap on the demographics collated and the psychographics inferred, leapfrogging other forms of media in terms of precision.

mKhoj has seen two billion impressions and adds close to 500 million impressions every month. Our experience of more than 100 ad campaigns underscores our hypothesis that mobile advertising is here to stay and is set to scale new heights.

We can infer from our data that this industry is in its infancy at the moment. Advertisers initially spend small budgets, however, once they are comfortable with mobile advertising and have experienced our efficient ad serving through precision targeting and advanced analytics they come back with much larger budgets.

CIOL: How has VAS market evolved, in India, particularly in the past one year?
AS: Mobile value added service in India is evolving rapidly and has brought revolution in the music Industry. Mobile advertising has begun to find its mention as part of MVAS services.

The market is in a stage of evolution and innovation is the key. Advertisers and service providers are entering the industry to tap the largely unknown potential so as to leverage the advantages of precision targeting and advanced analytics. The advertisers and the service providers are excited to develop and
incorporate the business models that are best suited for their requirements.

CIOL:  How is your service different from others’?
AS: The conventional media agencies used the traditional method of buying media, we have moved away from this business model by establishing a network of publishers. At mKhoj, we go a step further to tap on the demographics collated and the psychographics inferred, surpassing other forms of media in terms of precision.

Advertising on mobile is just a click away at mKhoj. We have the expertise of running over a 100 campaigns. We are modern in our approach and have evolved a business model that not only is an advantage to the advertiser but also to the publisher (the owner of the website who displays our ad when a consumer is surfing his website through his mobile).

The advanced analytics at mKhoj helps the advertiser to measure every action of the consumer. mKhoj recognises that each customer is different and leverages that uniqueness to customise the message they get resulting in dramatically higher ROI for the brands.

We give our clients tremendous flexibility in terms of call to action like click to call, click to video, click to lead, click to download and other degrees of interactivity.

CIOL:  With the entry of 3G spectrum and TRAI loosening its stand, what would be your future plans?
AS: We are excited about the entry of 3G spectrum, which promises to increase the Internet speed. The operators will push in more variety of plans and this would result in the increase of mobile usage. This would in turn result in bringing in high benefits to brands that would find mobile the only medium to reach their specific target audience.

CIOL: With more and more VAS players entering the scene and with lots of small players, how tough is the competition?

AS: Mobile advertising is the latest form of advertisement and we have an edge - the first mover advantage. While most of them are still figuring out how best to leverage the potential of the industry, mKhoj promises over 500 million impressions a month.

mKhoj, being the pioneer of sorts, has ensured that the advanced technology at mKhoj provides the advertisers the benefit of reaching its target audience in the simplest possible manner.

CIOL: Future initiatives of mKhoj?

AS: Social networking is the buzzword in India and mobile has been the best form to stay in touch. Mobile is a handy tool, which is with the consumer on a 24 hour basis. It’s a face to face rather than a one to many such as television or any other form of print medium.

mKhoj will soon launch specific offerings for advertisers and publishers, who want to leverage social networking paradigm. We are developing an exclusive strategy for devices such as iPhone like devices that are the future of smart phones in India. With social media and iPhone like devices being the buzz word mKhoj is not far off in being a part of this unprecedented growth.

Deepa Damodaran in Ciol / Monday, October 13, 2008

The $5780 crore VAS market is touted to be the way ahead for telecom industry

BANGALORE, INDIA: At an instance when every industry, across the world, is witnessing a southward journey, telecom industry is treading an offbeat path.

Indian telecom sector is witnessing a growth trajectory like never before. A recent Gartner study finds that, while North America has been the largest telecommunication market, Asia Pacific (APAC) will surpass it in terms of telecom revenue in 2008. North American telecom revenue is forecast to total $511.6 billion in 2008, a 4.5 percent increase from 2007, whereas, the APAC market is projected to reach $513.1 billion, in the same year, up 8 percent from that of the previous.

The mobile user base in India is increasing by the day and is estimated to reach 296.08 million this year (350 mn in 2009). And so is the number of mobile operators. With 3G ironing its, much deserved, way in, many more telecom players, including Videocon, Essar, Swan Telecom, Unitech, are all set to make their presence in India.

India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. But with the declining call tariffs, that have reduced from Rs 7.50- 1.06 lately, and ARPU, telecom operators are under constant pressure to retain its user base and sustain their revenue growth. So telecom operators are in look out for other means to keep up with the competition. Pankaj Sethi, president- corporate services- VAS, TTSL, says: “The share of SMS in the pie is declining among operators.”

Abhay Singhal, co-founder and head, global ad sales, mKhoj, says: “Of late, brands are going a step ahead and looking forward to value added services that are specific and measurable so as to reach those audience who may or may not have access to the conventional forms of advertising.”

Enters MVAS

Abhay Singhal, co-founder and head, global ad sales, mKhoj, says, “Mobile value added services have seen an unprecedented growth in India.” Revenue from MVAS is amounted to be $348.8 million by 2009.

Indian Mobile Value Added Service (MVAS) has come a long way from its early days of P2P SMS (Person-to-Person Short Message Service). Today MVAS portfolio includes graphics/wallpapers, ringtones, caller ring back tones (CRBT), SMS contests and games.

“Globally, mobile VAS can account for 25-30 percent of the total value of what operators generate, in advanced situations. However, in India, according to the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), it is at 10 percent currently and expected to contribute 20 percent of the mobile revenues over the next three years. The VAS industry in India is estimated to be at Rs 5000 crore and is supposed to grow to touch Rs 8000 crore by the end of FY ‘08,” Pankaj Sethi says.

Deepa Damodaran in Ciol / Monday, October 13, 2008

Mobile marketing is in its nascent stage, but emerging as a hot market in India

BANGALORE, INDIA: There is a new charter for mobile marketing, and it is, quite fancily, called mobile conversations!

Speaking today at ‘Mobile Conversations’, a conference on the role of mobile in a marketing campaign, Sreekanth Khandekar, director, Afaqs, said: “Mobile has become an extension of human body today. It is used for e-mail, web browsing and lots more. Everybody is excited by the personalised communication that the mobile offers and we have to look at the ways in which that potential can be realized.”

The conference dealt with three topics:
* Innovations in mobile marketing
* Integrating mobile in the media plan and
* The creative aspects of mobile advertising

Abhay Singhal, vice president-business development, mKhoj, pointed out: “India has the second largest base in mobile Internet consumption. However, only 5-10 percent of the total mobile subscribers use the Internet. Mobile provides one of the best interactive platforms and it is up to us to figure out how to make the maximum of it.”

Debasis Chatterji, director operations, Netxcell Ltd, added: “Mobile is not a competitor, but a facilitator for other mediums. It is emerging as the ’seventh’ mass media. Mobile marketing, is a nascent market in India, but is the best mode to cerate internal and external branding.

“Unlike text, voice has the potential to reach a mass audience. Text is a very huge market but voice marketing is picking up. Moreover, India, with 26 languages, is opening up a vast space for the latter segment.”

Debraj Tripathy, head, mobile marketing, OnMobile, said: “There are three modes: text, voice, and video or images, of mobile marketing. Voice is the best medium to reach out as this doesn’t have a language barrier unlike the other two, and marketing can be done according to the user’s profile.”

Abhijit Saxena, CEO, Netcore Solutions, said: “The biggest selling point of mobile ads is what marketers call ‘relevance’. Mobile advertising through text messages is extremely focused and optimized.”

Deepa Damodaran in Ciol / Friday, September 26, 2008

Entrepreneurship IS clearly divided into two phases — setting up and leading it to success, and the challenges in each phase are very different. You find yourself at a series of crossroads and making the right choice at each is critical.

The first challenge is to find the right partners - people who are willing to take on the risk of starting up, leaving the security of their high paying jobs and willing to take a plunge in their lifestyles.

Companies in India today are good paymasters, which makes finding people who are willing to join you and take on that risk is extremely difficult.

Once you have the team ready, the first thing that becomes a hindrance is the need for capital. How do I run my business, who is going to fund money and even if it is our own, how long will that money last — these become plaguing questions.

India today has very few seed and angel investors people who are willing to fund a business right from conceptualisation. Most funding today happens at second stage i.e. once the revenues start flowing in. What becomes a huge Catch-22 situation here is dividing your attention between building the business and looking for funding. Luckily, angel investors and VC’s are increasing in numbers and the entry of international VC’s is good news as they not only help you with capital but also with critical knowledge and access to potential partners.

Once you have the team and the funding in, the critical question is how do I take this business to success?

Naveen Tewari In Economics Times / 1 Aug, 2008, 0529 hrs IST,

The latest tussle for grabbing maximum eyeballs for advertisement will be fought on the mobile platform. The drop in the average revenue per user is forcing telecom and related industries to find new avenues for growth.

The value-added services industry is still fragmented and advertisement within it still remains a small revenue stream. Serious steps ,however, are being taken to increase this. One of these is the formation of mobile advertisement networks.

Mobile ad networks are just like ad networks on the internet. They comprise a publisher, an advertiser, agency and a technology platform provider. Consider the case of Mumbai-based mKhoj, a mobile ad network provider, which last week served its advertisement number one billion. On a monthly basis, the company serves 225 million ads on the mobile platform, has 300 partners and has worked with 42-50 brands. All the numbers have been achieved only in the last six months or so.

“These are certainly early days for a mobile ad network in India. Still, people do realise that because of the volumes this medium can generate, it is a huge opportunity,” says Naveen Tewari, CEO, mKhoj.

mKhoj has developed its own technology platform that, in real time, detects the type of handset that the user has, the type of service provider, the operating system the phone uses, location of the user and what is the user surfing. Based on this the company shows relevant ad to the user.

Tewari notes that the opportunity is huge. Firms such as Mobile2Win, Mauj, and others having worked for brands and created content for the mobile platform are coming up with their own mobile ad networks. The number of Indians using their mobiles to logon to the internet has increased from 16 million in 2006 to 38 million in 2007 (both GSM and CDMA).

For instance, Mobile2win has started talks with potential partners for the network and is entering into tie-ups with publishers and advertisers. “We have worked with over 100 brands. By creating a mobile ad network we would be just moving up the value-chain. Currently we are concentrating on building a technology platform,” said Rajiv Hiranandani, country head, Mobile2Win.

Some of the leading players on the internet are working towards getting the internet model on to the mobile platform. Some of the names that are targeting the mobile ad network space are Yahoo, Google, Nokia, AdMob, AOL and others. Of these, Yahoo has already announced the same for India as well.

Ritesh Nair, CEO, Interactive Avenues, says: “Over the last two years mobile advertisement has certainly increased. But providers should move beyond WAP and mobile internet-based advertisement. If the industry looks at other means as well like SMS, it is a huge opportunity.”

The other reason why the advertisers are excited about this medium is the accuracy and reach of this medium. The medium has the ability to provide targeted advertisement, which is not possible in any other platform. Another advantage the medium offers is that is remains constantly with the consumer.

Shivani Shinde in Business-Standard / Mumbai June 19, 2008, 0:40 IST