mobile advertising

Reshaping Mobile Advertising: AdScholars at E4M Screenage Summit

The sixth edition of the E4M Screenage took place in Mumbai on November 29, 2023. With mobile marketing taking center stage as the topic of discussion, the summit attendees included professionals in digital marketing, business leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs, and other areas of the advertising industry. 

ADscholars Co-partners at E4M Screenage

ADscholars were the proud co-partners of the E4M Screenage. The conference explored the core of mobile marketing in depth. Our CEO, Srikanth Rayaprolu was a member of the panel discussion on the subject of “Mastering Mobile Advertising and Crafting Digital-Age Ads.” The panel explored the changes in consumer behavior and brand pivots to mobile-first strategy. 

As the panelists discussed, mobile transformation has become a primary tool for observing how brands are expanding beyond traditional one-way communication. Their discussion shed light on the transformation of mobile in India, mobile market penetration, and mobile advertising consumption over the last few years.

Brands are moving beyond traditional one-way communication through mobile transformation. The panel discussion shed light on how mobile has transformed in India, the mobile market penetration, and mobile advertising consumption.

The Panel Discussion

The stellar panel featured industry leaders from diverse verticals: Shweta Jain, Chief Business Officer, Luxury, Reserve & Craft India & South Asia, Diageo; Tejas Chaudhari, Performance Marketing, Lead e-commerce, Unilever; Priyanka Gandhi, Associate Director, Integrated Marketing Communication & Ecommerce Marketing, Colgate-Palmolive; Siddesh Kerkar, Head of Marketing, Aditya Birla Finance Udyog Plus, Aditya Sun Life Insurance; Suyash Dongare, Head of Digital Marketing, VIP Industries and Srikanth Rayaprolu, CEO and Co-Founder, ADscholars. Nikhil Kumar, Vice President India, Southeast Asia & Middle East, mediasmart, was the session chair for the panel discussion.

 

Speaking on the subject, Srikanth Rayaprolu emphasized educating brands on the importance of mobile advertising and related things to tap into the landscape. Since the attention span on mobile has reduced, building gamification ads and keeping user engagement high on mobile has become essential. He also explained how brands need to ensure the ads that reach their potential audiences need to be interactive, fast-loading, and engaging. On an ending note, Srikanth underscored how ADscholars has been educating brands about ethical mobile ad practices. Furthermore, he suggested that there is a huge opportunity for mobile advertising in the future.

A Memorable Conclusion

ADscholars was honored to have been nominated for the Maddies Awards for Best Use of App/Games for Marketing. The team ended the event on a very positive note, taking back fond memories and influential connections with professionals from the industry.

AdScholars Enters Strategic Partnership With Kidoz In India

AdScholars has partnered with Kidoz, a leading COPPA & GDPR compliant contextual mobile advertising network that safely reaches over million kids, teens, and families every month. The partnership will allow Kidoz to scale its business solutions in India in addition to other markets. AdScholars is unlocking a strategic market with this emerging partnership in India.

By leveraging AdScholars’ programmatic expertise, Kidoz will be able to offer multiple activation options and unique experiences to consumers on their preferred platforms. Kidoz is a global leader in monetization for publishers and their unique monetization solution enables app publishers to safely monetize their apps with relevant ads.

The mobile ad tech developer’s leading SDK platform and direct programmatic connections reach over 400 million kids, teens, and families monthly across 5000+ apps. Kidoz Contextual Ad Network helps the world’s largest brands such as Mattel, Lego, Crayola, and many more safely reach and engage kids across top apps all over the world. With this platform, brands can reach out to Young dads and Moms to promote their products, especially focusing on FMCG brands.

AdScholars’ CEO Srikanth Rayaprolu said,

We are delighted to introduce innovative ad tech solutions to the Indian market. We have partnered with Kidoz in the other markets for quite some time and the advertisers’ response to the campaigns has been phenomenal.

He added,

Kidoz provides unique ad inventory for brands to showcase their ads to children between the age group of 4 years to 16 years. Additionally, this inventory allows brands to reach out to young parents too. We’re truly excited about the future with the launch of the Kidoz ad inventory in the Indian market.  

Eldad Ben Tora, President and GM EMEA at Kidoz Inc. said,

India represents one of the largest growth potential audience segments in the Kidoz network and we are excited to partner with the Adscholars team, whose leadership, proven track record with the Kidoz product, and awareness and expertise of the Indian advertising market will bring the Kidoz Network to leading marketers looking for innovative ways to reach kids and parents.

 

Ogury and The Trade Desk Partner To Offer Programmatic Mobile Advertising

Ogury and has announced a direct integration with The Trade Desk, both being leaders in advertising globally. Through this integration, media buyers can now have access to Ogury’s high-performance, privacy-protected mobile advertising capabilities. 

This direct collaboration will enable agencies to create Programmatic Guaranteed campaigns, leveraging Ogury’s curated inventory, data targeting capabilities, and global presence to run ads more effectively, in accordance with an industry-wide trend toward Supply Path Optimisation.

Interesting Read: The Trade Desk & Lifesight Partnership: What It Means For Indian Marketers!

Thomas Pasquet, CEO, Ogury said – 

“We’re glad to work more closely with The Trade Desk, one of the world’s leading DSPs. Programmatic buying represents an important part of our revenue. With this direct integration we’re simplifying the life of media buyers, allowing them to easily get access to our unique solution based on quality inventory and relevant targeting, with user privacy in mind.”

In this collaboration, The Trade Desk can take advantage of Ogury’s following integrated solutions: 

1. Expanded reach across mobile settings, with inventory available in both apps and on the mobile web.
2. Brand-protection tools, such as pre-bid fraud prevention.
3. Personified Targeting, which is not dependent on cookies or IDs, leverages proprietary data to target custom-defined, qualified leads at large. 
4. Direct access to Ogury’s partner inventory, with the purpose of lowering campaign costs.
5. Ad placement via a portfolio of completely on-screen formats that show all of the ad’s pixels for the duration of the ad’s exposure period.

Interesting Read: Clean Rooms Explained: How Marketers Can Prepare For Cookieless World

While Ogury transactions have been accessible on The Trade Desk for some years, this new direct integration enables media buyers to quickly activate new types of partnerships like Programmatic Guaranteed. 

Media buyers may now use a variety of buying strategies to obtain Ogury’s data-enriched impressions. Similarly, publishers in Ogury’s ecosystem gain from increased demand for their advertising inventory, which The Trade Desk’s brand and agency clients provide.

Also Read: Trade Desk Partners With Choueiri Group For Better Programmatic Access In MENA

 

Explained: Why Facebook thinks Apple’s iOS 14 privacy push will have a severe impact on business

Apple and Facebook are fighting again but this time over ads and privacy. Sometime next month, it is expected that Apple will roll out its iOS 14 updates with a privacy change. Apple will explicitly ask its users if they wanted to be tracked by a specific app. A simple question, with a potentially serious consequence. Facebook warns that these privacy changes can lead to a more than 50% drop in its Audience Network advertising business.

IDFA And The Privacy Changes

Apple assigns IDFA or Identifier for Advertisers to an iPhone across apps. This tracking mechanism is basically their cookie and advertising platforms rely on the data to target ads. App and gaming companies rely heavily on such data and show ads via Facebook’s ad platform, Audience Network.

This identifier was always present by default for iOS users but Apple’s new privacy change means that users cannot be tracked by default anymore. Many advertising industry insiders believe users will refuse data tracking permissions if given a choice. This means no data for ad targeting which eventually will make ad placement a task. Fewer ads on Facebook’s Audience Network will lead to less revenue for publishers.

Why Is Facebook Unhappy?

Facebook Audience Network is one of the ad placement options for Facebook. This placement depends on ad placement within the app. The app owners monetize this placement. The data from IDFA works with Facebook’s SDK, a tracking mechanism.

Facebook has alerted advertisers of reduced targeting and campaign measurement ability as well as publishers especially working with Facebook’s Audience Network of the fall in revenue by 50% and warned that the impact could be more. In a blog post, it said, 

Like all ad networks on iOS 14, advertiser ability to accurately target and measure their campaigns on Audience Network will be impacted, and as a result publishers should expect their ability to effectively monetize on Audience Network to decrease.

Ultimately, despite our best efforts, Apple’s updates may render Audience Network so ineffective on iOS 14 that it may not make sense to offer it on iOS 14.

Facebook also commented that it is less likely to affect its own ad business but will seriously dent small publishers and developers’ revenue using Audience Network. Audience Network represents a  smaller part of the overall revenue pie.

What Steps Is Facebook Taking?

Facebook has outlined the steps to be taken to ensure that its advertising business is in line with Apple’s requirements. However, this will limit the scope of targeting ads effectively to iPhone and iPad users.

• Facebook will not collect IDFA by making a change to its own apps on iOS14. They will spare them from having to ask for data-tracking permissions from the users.
• Facebook asks businesses to create a new ad account dedicated to running app install ad campaigns for iOS 14 users. The current account that targets previous iOS versions along with Android users is to be maintained.
• An updated version of the Facebook SDK will be released to support iOS 14 which will limit the data available to businesses for running and measuring campaigns. This update will be rolled out before Apple releases the iOS14 update.

Facebook’s tone has always been mild but remarkable to openly challenge Apple. In a blog, the company said,

“We understand that iOS 14 will hurt many of our developers and publishers at an already difficult time for businesses. We work with more than 19,000 developers and publishers from around the globe¹ and in 2019 we paid out billions of dollars². Many of these are small businesses that depend on ads to support their livelihood.”

Why Apple’s Move Is So Significant?

iOS makes up just 25 % of the total global mobile market and the remaining is dominated by Android but the former is a more monetizable operating system as the iPhone users are from better economic strata. Therefore any change in the policy can have a great impact on the ad and developer business. 

Read more: Facebook Debuts Shops In Its Mobile App, Instagram Expands Checkout Feature

 

Top 10 Emerging Indian Ad Tech Startups You Should Know About

The market for advertising technology is expected to record exponential growth between now and 2023.

-CMO Adobe

Just as advertising is the business of making advertisements, ad tech is the business of using technology to make advertisements faster, quicker, and efficient. The business is driven by powerful algorithms and data points.

The Adtech ecosystem consists of two major entities – the advertiser (Demand-side) and the publisher(Supply-side). Adtech helps advertisers and publishers achieve their goals in harmony by providing solutions that meet the demands of both parties. 

Learn more: A One-stop Guide On All You Ever Need To Know About AdTech In 2020

The Growing Ad Tech Trends

The year 2020 is full of technological advancements – Artificial Intelligence, data-driven marketing, and much more. Digital commerce is going strong and growing, leading to new paths such as mobile, programmatic, analytics, data management, and more. With new tools and technologies emerging every year, marketers can choose from a plethora of options across digital marketing to connect to a new audience and promote their products.

According to Emarketer’s survey, by 2020, digital ad spending will be 50% of total advertising. The statistics prove that there is a shift from the traditional medium of marketing to digital platforms.

Here are six significant ad tech trends in 2020 that will change the advertising world

1. Programmatic Advertising: 

Programmatic advertising is becoming a star strategy, and businesses spend almost $60 billion every year. It is projected that programmatic transactions two-thirds of digital display ad spend around the globe in 2020.

Programmatic needs to resolve many challenges before realizing its true potential, such as in the absence of the cookie, the industry needs to search new ways for retargeting and personalization, keeping customers’ privacy in mind. Meanwhile, first-party data is essential in the success of programmatic advertising. Lack of transparency, ad fraud, and efficiency are vital concerns that need to be addressed adequately.

The largest programmatic markets are the U.S, China, and the U.K with a double-digit Y-o-Y growth rate. Indonesia, Brazil, and India will be the fastest-growing programmatic digital ad market in 2020.

There are top three auction type segments for the global programmatic advertising display market which has gained momentum are :

• Global programmatic advertising display market by open auction: Buyers are allowed by publishers to participate in the public sale. It is likely to be the leading segment in the programmatic market with more number of buyers entering the digital market that allows publishers to get the best price for their inventory.
• Global programmatic advertising display market by automation guaranteed: Publishers are allowed to reserve inventory while keeping the price fixed. The inventory in this segment is premium advertisement such as the Super Bowl, or pre-launch page of a website and the growth prospects for automated guaranteed are big. It is forecasted by 2021, 88% of all digital display ad spending will flow via automation.
• Global programmatic advertising display market by invitation only: It is a private marketplace limited to buyers with an invitation only. The growth driver for this segment is more control over ads that are being run, and the relativity of ads is high due to which advertisers are ready to bid high to get the ads placed.

2. Mobile Advertising: 

Mobile advertising continues to take share with substantial gains over the last five years. A report by a research firm Berg Insight forecasted that the global mobile advertising market is expected to grow at the compound annual growth rate of 43%. Another eMarketer report projects that mobile ad spending will reach $400bn by the year 2023, up from $286bn this year. The numbers say it all! It is evident that the industry is growing and projects to represent  80% of global digital ad spend. 

A lot of in-app is driven by gaming. A spike in gaming is witnessed during COVID with 1.2 billion weekly mobile game downloads. Buyers are eyeing a vast opportunity to reach a diversified audience within the data-rich environment. There is an exponential growth of in-app advertising. Comscore research says that 75% of digital users consume all their social media, lifestyle, travel, news, and utility content using mobile apps. 5G will also be a considerable contributor to boost mobile-in app advertising, opening doors of opportunity and creativity for advertisers. With technologies such as OM SDK and app-ads.txt rolling out, the industry is moving towards a cleaner and more measurable environment.

Consumer time spent on media is shifting towards mobile, and eMarketer reports India and Thailand will witness the fastest mobile advertising growth in 2020.

3. Video Advertising:

The video will remain the key driver and cannot underscore its role in 2020. With large-scale events postponed and ad budgets cut down, marketers rely on video advertising as effective means across platforms. It is projected to account for 31% of the overall display ad spending next year.

Verizon research shows, almost all (96%) advertisers will be investing in at least one video ad format this year, and more than three-quarters say they plan to invest more in premium video content in 2020. The reason is ROI.

Advertisers and marketers plan to invest in shoppable and interactive emerging video ads formats. With shelter in place and people continue to work from home, there is a rise in digital and mobile usage with  CTV and OTT becoming increasingly dominant. Verizon research states.36 percent plan to invest more in Connected TV ads, while 30 percent intend to increase their spend on mobile video. USD 70 billion ad spend from linear is shifting towards OTT channels. Major companies are keen to take advantage of the changing scenario with the right technology.

4. Digital 360 services:

Marketers are focusing on areas like the personalization of media and content marketing. Voice and visual searches are playing a huge role in the ecosystem, and marketers are developing new techniques to enhance it. Many companies are offering 360 digital services that include social media marketing, SEO, content marketing, analytics, automation and transparency, and many more.

TheDrum indicates that by 2022, the global digital software industry will grow by $74.96 billion. CMO predicts that around 87% of marketing budgets will be spent on digital marketing by 2022. 

Another fastest growing digital marketing trend is interactive content – click on, swipe, or interact with online. Outgrow states 93% of marketers rate interactive content as highly effective at educating the buyer. The cutting edge technology like augmented reality and 360-degree videos offer a dynamic, engaging, and immersive experience.

5. Influencer Marketing:

The influencer marketing industry is set to hit USD 15 billion by 2022. With a high ROI, the industry will witness tremendous growth in the coming years.

Influencer marketing is in the early stage, but its usage growth is impressive. Less than one third (27.9%) marketers have been using influencer marketing for over three years, 20.9 %have been using for less than a year, and 7% have never used it. Reach and engagement is critical factors in an influencer mix and there is a negative correlation between engagement rate and followers. Most marketers prefer micro-influencers, typically followers between 10,000 and 100,000.

 

In the series of Global View For AdTech Start-Ups, we bring you ‘Top 10 India-Based Ad Tech Start-Ups’ -a curated list of promising start-ups from industry-main anchors to up-and-comers leading the advertisement industry in India.

Company: ADZ Junction

Founder:  Ashok Nain

Category: Digital Services, Ad- Affiliate Network, Mobile Advertising

Geo-Markets: India, Dubai, U.S.A

What they do: ADZ is the brainchild of Ashok Nain started with Mobile advertising and expanded the business to video and web gradually. Their services also include Digital Strategy, Content, Development and Marketing, and Search Marketing. Since its inception, the company is focused on delivering high-quality traffic to clients who have scalability issues and help them to identify their targeting audience, especially in Mobile advertising. 

How it’s changing adtech: 

• With its innovative advertising solutions and strategies, the company has built a robust affiliate marketing platform that can assist clients in real-time tracking and analytics.
• The 360-degree digital provider has 100+ clients from various sectors with a business of over USD 15 million and is developing technology – a real-time traffic buying SMS platform.

“We introduced real-time bidding, Mobile in-app advertising, rich media, and many other innovations to overcome clients’ problems of quality traffic generation. We have now a separate mobile division by name of AJ Mobile, where we encourage clients to work exclusively on mobile campaigns.”

The company successfully launched a digital campaign for  Dr. Lalpathlabs, an established company in the healthcare sector. Here is a short case study:

Challenge: 

• Expand its online market reach and user base
• Identify digital channels to generate revenue.
• Being completely behind in digital marketing and competing with emerging players in the healthcare sector.

Solution:

• Provided brand awareness strategies for different online channels.
• Established a full-fledged and cost-effective affiliate marketing channel.
• Established a brand development strategy and marketing campaign to rise above the competition.
• Successful digital campaigns resulted in 3X monthly transaction growth.

Founded: 2015

Headquarters: Gurugram (With offices in Mumbai, Bangalore, and Dubai)

 

Company: Aristoma

Founder:  Kumar Nishanth

Category: Online Digital Services

What they do: Aristoma, a 360-degree marketing incubator, offers services to increase customer reach using online mediums with some brilliantly creative and engaging ideas. Its portfolio includes top clients such as Diesel, Sportmate, CII, CREDAI Chattisgarh, Goldbricks, to name a few. All its endeavors have resulted in 100 percent growth.

How it’s changing adtech: 

• Aristoma is all about helping brands grow with a mantra “Commits, Creates & Connects” with expert result-oriented ideas and making advertising a better experience for advertisers and consumers. 
• The company advises in Brand Management, Email Direct Marketing, SEO, and  Social Media Planning to help businesses to get the most out of their marketing campaigns.

Founded: 2015

Headquarters: Raipur 

 

 

Company: DigiVigyan Marketing

Founder:   Amit Verma

Category: Digital Services, Digital Display Advertising

What they do: A dynamic full-service digital marketing agency that provides clients with multiple solutions through different marketing verticals- Website Management, Search Engine Optimization, Search and Display Advertising (Pay Per Click – PPC), Native Advertising, Online Reputation Management, Amazon Marketing Services, and Social Media Marketing.

How it’s changing adtech: 

• DigiVigyan offers world-class digital advertising solutions to businesses to achieve their digital marketing goals.
•  The company offers services such as creating landing pages with attractive ad copies, banners, and other optimizations to meet the marketing needs of businesses on various social media platforms. It has worked with renowned ad agencies like Dentsu, M&C Saatchi, to name a few. 
• The bootstrapped adtech company is now working towards being the go-to digital marketing agency worldwide after capturing the market across the country.

Founded: 2018

Headquarters: Delhi

 

Company: Do Your Thng

Founder: Ankit Agarwal

Category: Social/ Influencer, Influencer marketing platform

What they do:  DYT is a leading Influencer Marketing Agency and a shared economy for digital assets. It acts as a platform to create space for brands to connect with the largest team of nano, micro, and mega influencers.

How it’s changing adtech: 

• DYT is an online community that offers content creators an entry in the market and connects brands to the influencers depending on the campaigns. The active users through the app can promote the brand and earn for each post made, whereas the brand can find a safe and secure marketplace to discover the right influencers for their product.
• DYT operates on a broker based model where a percentage of the total spending is charged to maintain the platform. In a short period.
• The phenomenal fundraising and affable work culture have made DYT one of the fastest-growing startups.

Funding: 

The tech platform raised $150K from angel investors and plans to use it for further expansion and growth. Previously, the company has also raised an undisclosed amount from angel investors and intends to raise more funds in the future.

“DYT within months of its operation has successfully worked wonders for brands such as Mastercard India, Havells, etc., thus bringing engagement for the brands. With increased investor interest, we plan to expand the team, improve the technology, and go further with the associations.”

-Ankit Agarwal

An exciting campaign with Havells:

For the new digital-only campaign #BeardKyunHoWeird with Havells, the company selected 60 creators from the male grooming niche by using the technology to find people uploading their selfies with the beard and spelling about male grooming.

Challenge:

• To increase user engagement for the launch of the new range of BT 9000 beard trimmers with digital platform-only campaign #BeardKyunHoWeird.

Solution:

• Selected 60 creators. Each Instagram creator had a follower range of 1,000 to 85,000.
• Creators created unique and compelling content on how the new Havells trimmer helps in male grooming.
• The 20 days campaign got more than 100,000 engagements, reaching 500,000 users.
• The campaign attracted traction and engagement rate of 10% with authentic creators.

Founded: 2019

Headquarters: Gurugram

Company: EMIAC Technologies

Founder: Divya Gandotra

Category: Digital Services, Social Media Marketing

Geo Markets: United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, South Korea, Russia, Ukraine, Vietnam, Singapore, and UAE, among others.

What they do:  EMIAC is a perfect blend of innovation and technology determined to serve businesses in front of their target markets. Their principal services include Content Development, Paid Marketing,  and Web Design and Development. The leading digital firm has 1200+ clients, 2900 projects across 30+ countries.

How it’s changing adtech: 

• EMIAC offers an array of services from content development and full-service digital agency to paid social media marketing and blog outreach. It is a top-rated digital marketing and content development agency on the world’s popular freelancing site Upwork that adds to their credibility and goodwill.
• What differentiates them from the crowd is an excellent record of delivering projects on time, offering personalized products and services, premium quality services, and providing it at competent prices.

“We are the game-changers, trendsetters, pioneers, and revolutionaries with a passion for creating an ideal digital future where everyone is connected.”

Founded: 2017

Headquarters: Jaipur  (With offices in U.K and U.S)

 

 

Company: Globale Media

Founder: Bhavesh Talreja

Category: Mobile Advertising, brand safety/ verification, programmatic advertising

What they do: Globale media offers an integrated marketing platform that maximizes revenues by bringing in direct advertisers and showing relevant ads that best fit the user audience using banners, interstitial, videos, social, and native ads. The company specializes in digital marketing for all major kinds of app verticals including gaming, e-commerce, lifestyle, utilities, social, education, entertainment, and others on CPM, CPI, and CPA cost models. Publishers can access to the full feed of available campaigns as well as real real-time tracking and automation to multiple devices with programmatic GLOBALE API. It excels with a reach of over 500+ direct publishers, 1000+ live campaigns over 120 countries.

How it’s changing adtech: 

• Globale media has developed a marketing program primarily for the mobile age. 
• Globale media has been sincerely providing “ transparency on inflation level and not just on the click level.” The company is aggressively pitching for its recently launched product keyword search traffic where revenues have increased 3x from quarter-on-quarter and are expecting to multiply the revenues by 10x in 2020. 
• In the next five years, it aims to be among the top ad tech marketing companies in India, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

“We provide app marketers with 100 direct in-app traffic sources with transparency so they get device ids on each and every click and have a clear knowledge about where the app is running. In terms of impact, the advertisers can use these device ids to run their re-engagement campaigns and make sure the users are coming back to the app and ultimately spending more within the app.”

-Bhavesh Talreja

Founded: 2017

Headquarters: Singapore (With offices in India and UAE)

 

 

Company: mCanvas

Founder:  Vishal Rupani

Category: Mobile Advertising, Video Interactive ads, Programmatic Advertising

What they do: mCanvas is a subsidiary of Affinity and is the brainchild of Vishal Rupani, from vision and inception to revenue generation and scalability. mCanvas is a storytelling mobile ad platform that uses phone sensors to create compelling and interactive brand narratives.

How it’s changing adtech: mCanvas is the first and leading Indian company that has addressed critical issues of mobile marketing: Banner Blindness, Poor Viewability, Accidental Clicks, and Lack of Storytelling. The mobile advertising platform uses four kinds of advertisement formats: Scrollers, Stickers, Spotlight, and Streambox. 

• The company recently integrated with Adobe advertising cloud that will enable advertisers to buy experiential rich media content and interactive video ads. 

“In light of the steady increase in the demand to make ads programmatically available, we are happy to integrate with Adobe Advertising Cloud DSP. We have spearheaded programmatic advertising in the rich-media mobile ad industry, and we will continue leveraging its power to offer our innovative solutions.”

-Vishal Rupani

• The company has a reach to at least 60million Indian smartphone users and follows the cost per video (CPV) model for videos and cost per engagement(CPE) for rich media. Sensory Rich media content is produced for VR and AR as well.

“Augmented reality (AR) has become a buzzword in the online tech space. It has shown great promise even in the mobile ad space, and brands have been quick to incorporate AR into mobile-led ad campaigns that have proven to enhance user engagement.”

One of the best examples is  of Frooti – #TheFrootiLife

Challenge: To build a brand recall with its primary target audience -Millennials around the drink during summertime.

Solution: Using face detection technology, the rich media campaign encouraged users to start the front camera and catch the falling mangoes in the augmented environment. This campaign created a massive impact on the users with this ‘WoW’ ad experience.

• Another segment that has been strongly transformed by brand experiences in the mobile ad industry is voice-enabled interactive mobile ads that have created a lasting impression.

“Personalization of marketing & advertising messages is not a luxury but a necessity.,”

-Vishal Rupani

Here is another case study of Mercedes-Benz GLC that has used speech and sound recognition technology in mobile ads. To promote their latest feature, Mercedes -Benz User Experience (MBUX) used a smart multimedia system and in-car voice-activated assistant.

The mCanvas interactive mobile ad uses real-time speech recognition technology, and the voice bot in the ad would respond to the questions, recreating the actual experience a user would have in the car.

Founded: 2014

Headquarters: Mumbai

 

 

Company: Streamlyn

Founder:  Naveen Kumar & Raja Chakraborty

Category: Programmatic Advertising, Brand Safety/ Verification

Geo-markets: Asia, Europe, MiddleEast, North America, MENA, APAC, and other 25+ countries.

What they do: Streamlyn works for both publishers and ad buyers to sell and buy ad space respectively. It works as an agency as well as a supply-side platform.

How it’s changing adtech:  The one-stop advertising solution provider, a publisher focused media agency connects advertisers with the target audience via the right publisher.

“The aim was to help online publishers, particularly small and medium-sized ones, grow their revenue and the audience.”

-Naveen Kumar

• Streamlyn has an in-house ad server and algorithm to help analyze and optimize the monetization depending on the solution provided by the team to assist the client with high ROI and eCPM and uses cutting edge technology –POE (Programmatic Optimization Engine) and Anti-Fraud algorithms. 

• Streamlyn offers its proprietary product ‘ BidsXchange,’ a smart advertising portal deploying machine learning for small and medium-sized advertisers that allows them to upload ads and select their desired publishers based on the target audience interest.
• Another additional revenue source for publishers is In-image advertising, a novel concept that helps achieve an edge over competitors with Streamlyn’s Header bidding wrapper tags.
• It generates content in regional languages and is known as the best optimization partner for vernacular publishers.  It has partnered with Google to support vernacular publishers and increase their revenue.

Founded: 2015

Headquarters: Singapore (With offices in India and U.S)

 

Company: Tarsan

Founder:  Tarun Nayyar

Category: Mobile Advertising, Affiliate Marketing

What they do: Tarsan is a leading performance-based Mobile media agency that caters to top-level clientele globally like Airtel, Paytm, M&C Saatchi, CyberAgent, to name a few and delivers performance & branding campaigns and SMS/email/voice/solutions. It is known for the execution of marketing plans on mobile.

How it’s changing adtech: 

• Tarsan has an in-house platform, AdMenu, that gives clear and quantifiable value to each advertising avenue, enhancing the ROI on ad spends as well as boost transactional value. It provides transparent information regarding the placement of ads on various platforms via GAID or IDFA.
• Many transactional campaigns are carried out on E-commerce platforms, but the company charges only for lined traffic by experienced customers, whereas the payment depends on CPR, CPT, and CPI.
• Transparency and accountability are their top priority, and with the unique capability to gather information about mobile devices, it has been successful in creating a database of publishers and marketers.
• It maintains a five-layered security policy for data protection. The company aims to become a 360-degree performance-based mobile marketing agency and enhance the AdMenu platform and convert it into a revenue generation opportunity.

“We never store data; we just identify people according to their device id. The information given to us is all in concurrence from the publisher and advertisers.”

Founded: 2012

Headquarters: Delhi

 

Company: UrPopular

Founder:  Siddharth Sinha & Kumaresh Bhatt

Category: Micro-Influencer Marketing, Measurement and analytics

Geo-markets:  India, Southeast Asian countries, MENA countries, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.

What they do: UrPopular is India’s largest network of micro-influencers who are paid to post on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and Twitter with 240 million+ organic reach across these platforms. They have a pan India reach of 240 million+ and creators in 11 languages.

How it’s changing adtech: 

• The tech firm is democratizing organic marketing in India and helping brands to create ROI based campaigns.
• It adds new ways to drive ROI for brands with its cost per view and cost per reach micro-influencer campaigns. The tech company has developed algorithms to understand the outcome of the campaigns and brands can acquire efficiency and measurability in their campaigns. 
• Their mantra is  “Create, Amplify, and Measure.” This case study of McDonald’s ‘A ful-filling campaign’ is a perfect example to understand it.

Challenge: McDonald’s wanted to destress students from exam fever, and their McSaver Meal + Free French fries exactly intend to do.

Solution: UrPopular got their 11 young and enthusiastic influencers to cheer up and whip off the post-exam chronicles within the outlet by creating Insta stories, videos, fun boomerangs, and before/after stills. 

These custom creatives pushed organically delivered,

• 1 million + reach with a 17% engagement rate.
• Rs.1.9 cost per engagement.
• 1.4 million impressions.

“UrPopular brings measurability and scale to the campaigns by working with India’s largest pool of microinfluencers and nano influencers.”

Founded: 2017

Headquarters: Mumbai

Closing Words

“In this industry, tomorrow is never the same as today. To gain long-term success in AdTech, you have to play fair, don’t be afraid of experiments, and never stop trying”

-Anton Ruin, Epom

Ad Tech is no rocket science, but it is of significant advantage to brands as it allows integrating various tools in a single system. It is an amalgamation of advertising, creativity, technology, and innovation. The automated process and joint workflows enable more precise target marketing resulting in relevant and compelling ads. The new norms,  tried and tested solutions along with reliable platforms helps to keep information safe and avoid any ad fraud. With significant changes and improvements over what advertisers and publishers used to have earlier, adtech is growing as an industry. However, it still requires more work and expertise to handle the challenges and resolve for good.

Read more: Evolution of Digital Advertising: Happy 25th Digital Advertising And Many More To Come

The Impact of M&A deals in AdTech Amidst COVID-19 Pandemic

The year 2020 is facing global problems like pandemic, race riots, or recession. In the early days, many advertisers have pulled back in many areas because of the fear and uncertainty but surprisingly the projected slowdown on the ad spend is minimal, pointing towards a stable and steady growth in the future. The stock performance of adtech and mar-tech companies have performed well despite the crisis. Adtech is witnessing a consolidation phase but how effective will be dealmaking in this pandemic is the next obvious question. Read here to know more.

Dealmaking In Pandemic

Luma Partners’ Terrence Kawaja, ad tech’s top investment banker pointed at Adweek’s NexTech 2020 Virtual Summit that dealmaking dropped to almost half in the pandemic where many of them were legacy deals which were already in pipeline pre-COVID. The dealmaking was substantially down in Q1 and Q2 and is expected to further reduce in the third quarter due to short-term lack of confidence owing to the current crisis. However, dealmaking activities have picked up again and will see more toward the end of 2020. Kawaja also said,

“Based on our pipeline and what we’re seeing in the marketplace, buyers are back in and looking for deals.”

Where are we seeing these new activities coming from?

Kawaja provides key insights on a potential impending wave of industry consolidation and 5 market segments that are driving M&A deals – Connected TV, Identity, Mobile App, Audio, and what he termed ‘Programmatic End Game Consolidation’ and further elaborated on it.

1. Connected TVs:  CTV is over a USD 100 billion market that is growing rapidly and by next year it will be 50% addressable. CTV viewing was up in the pandemic and there is a shift in consumer viewing from linear to streaming mainly due to the loss of live sports. USD 70 billion ad spend from linear is shifting towards OTT channels. Major companies are keen to take advantage of the changing scenario with the right technology. With an accelerated shift to streaming, CTV deal activities are picking up.

2. Identity: The core to 360-degree marketing witnessed many privacy regulations and data restrictions from big tech like Google Chrome turning off cookie to Apple’s IDFA deprecation, presenting challenges like limiting targeting in the open-web and measurement. At the same time, there are opportunities like first-party data and resurgence of contextual targeting. Large companies position for privacy-centric data capabilities and predict strategic opportunities in consumer data deal activities.

3.Mobile App: Mobile advertising continues to take share with substantial gains over the last 5 years. A lot of in-app is driven by gaming. A spike in gaming will be witnessed during COVID with 1.2 billion weekly mobile game downloads with people having more time in hand in the lockdown. The latest challenge that companies are trying to sort out is the IDFA deprecation in the iOS 14 update. Deal activities will continue in mobile apps provided there are new opportunities.

4. Audio: Podcast has undergone tremendous popularity in the last 5 years with 104 million monthly podcast listeners. The monetization has grown even faster and is still in the early years that has the potential to grow further. The rise in podcasting is driving many more audio deals. Many substantial deals have already happened mainly by Spotify and are expected to continue.

5. Programmatic End Game Consolidation: Every industry goes through three generic phases: new company formation, maturity, plus rationalization and consolidation. However, in the adtech industry, the process is “on steroids”. Thousands of companies initially flood the adtech market with an abundance of venture capital and easy market entry, and with early successes follows a rush of IPO’s. Large consumer data companies take advantage of the large, matured, and growing market for scale and profitability. Kawaja says the net consolidation in ad tech started in 2015 and further adds,

“We’ve been on that rationalization push for the last five years.”

He sees this is the final phase -the end-game-of consolidation soon which will be accelerated by the pandemic which will get to fewer players with larger spend and lower-tech rates. 

“This will clean the ecosystem with fewer players that are more sustainable with a better market cap. Consolidation on  DSP side – Trade desk with 20 billion market cap is the evidence for the final phase.”

If his projection comes true then there will be some activities after a long pause in the deals. Following that, the M&A  sprint is likely to exit the industry.

 Read more: A One-stop Guide On All You Ever Need To Know About AdTech In 2020

IAS Partners With Pinterest Over Fraud And Viewability Measurement Reporting

Digital ad verification provider Integral Ad Service( IAS) has partnered with Pinterest to able to deliver marketers access to viewability and fraud measurement reporting that covers its mobile in-app campaign.

IAS mentioned that its reporting includes standard Pinterest ads and video ads for in-app inventory, all updated on a daily basis.

This new integration will help advertisers to have access to viewability and invalid traffic monitoring and reporting across promoted pins and videos as well as Independent, third-party reporting by IAS and a global measurement that allows a holistic view across any brand’s entire Pinterest campaign.

With this announcement, Pinterest is observing an all-time high level of user engagement as well as people are searching for creative solutions to ‘life-at-home’ in this pandemic. The searches on the platform for “work from home” are up 1,411% and searches for “children’s activities” are up 4,055%, globally.

IAS also noted that 82% of users access the platform via mobile devices, and it is even more significant for advertisers to measure mobile campaigns on Pinterest accurately.

With measurement being critical to evaluating and optimizing ad quality and related media spend, Lisa Utzschneider, CEO of IAS said,

“IAS is excited to partner with Pinterest to offer marketers a mobile viewability and fraud measurement solution that works in-app, where people are engaging.”

“This partnership helps provide the transparency that marketers need to optimize their campaigns on the popular network.”

Read more: IAS Issues Threat Alert Regarding The Latest Digital Ad fraud Scheme

Guide On EVERY Type Of Digital Ad Out There. Case Studies Included.

What is Digital Advertising?

Digital advertising, paid advertising, or paid marketing is an online advertising model for advertisers to target potential buyers based on their interests or intent. This Digital Advertising took birth on October 27, 1994, when the online magazine ‘Hotwired’ decided to set aside a portion of its website for advertisers to raise some money. The banner ad space had a message in rainbow font, “Have you ever clicked your mouse right here? You will.” From 1994 to 2020, digital advertising has come a long way. In 2021, the amount spent on worldwide digital advertising is estimated to touch USD 375 billion (emarketer report estimates) with Google, Facebook, and Amazon, the three largest advertising platforms contributing to 43% of the market share. Here we have provided 10 best digital advertising ideas in 2020 post coronavirus (COVID-19) but be prepared to make changes in your sales funnel to meet global digital challenges. Digital advertisers get ready for a new normal in digital advertising in 2020. After all, change is the only constant in life.

Increase in Online Spending Over the Years

Ad spending in the digital advertising market has been showing an upward rise since 2018. From USD 283 billion in 2018, it is expected to reach around USD 517 billion in 2023.

The Importance of Digital Advertising

There is a wealth of available data to impact your online advertising decisions. With digital spends getting closer to traditional ad spends, it’s without doubt, every company or brand must have a strong online presence. Very large companies with more than USD 10 billion in annual revenue spend around 11.6% and companies with annual revenues between USD 500 million to USD 1 billion spend around 8.5% of their marketing budget on digital advertising.  Some of the 2019 big digital ad spenders are Comcast (USD 5.75 billion), Proctor & Gamble (USD 4.39 billion), Amazon (USD 3.38 billion), AT&T (USD 3.52 billion) and Samsung Electronics (USD 2.41 billion). While on one hand, ad spending increased, on the other hand, the demand was augmented by the addition of ad platforms.

 

• More money is being spent on digital v/s traditional advertising channels with digital ad spend expected to reach 60.5% of total media ad spending by 2022.
• India’s digital ad spend grew at a rate of 24% (2018 to 2019), becoming the fastest-growing digital advertising market in the world, followed by Russia at 22.5%. Both are home to large populations of increasingly digital and mobile users.
• Marketing budgets range from 8% to 16% of total revenue (B2B Products 8.6%, B2B Services 8.7%, B2C Products 9.8%, and B2C Services 15.6%).
• In many countries, 85 percent of internet users are accessing the internet on mobiles.

Types of Digital Advertising

There are different types of digital advertising available to a company or product or brand. The best ad campaigns are often a mix of two or more types of paid marketing or digital advertising. From Display Ads to SEO to PPC and more, here are the top 10 online advertising options available to a digital advertiser to execute a winning ad campaign.

1. Display Advertising

What is display advertising?

Online display advertising means advertising a company or a product on websites. Display advertisements run across any website that wishes to monetize their content by selling ad space on their page. Display ads are mostly image-based ads shown on web pages within the Google Display Network (GDN is a network of websites that allow space on their web pages for Google Ads) or on a search result page. It is used to redirect the user’s attention to the company’s product. Display ads can be paid for based on three different metrics: cost per thousand impressions (CPM), cost per click (CPC), and cost per action (CPA), also known as cost per conversion.

How is the Display ad used?

Online display ads on a website, can be on the top, bottom, or right side of a page depending on the web page layout. The types of online display ads are banners, landing pages (LP’s), and popups. The types of banner ads online that appear on Google Display Network are Flash, animated GIF, and Static Banners. The most popular Display ad options are Google Shopping (allows shoppers to browse a variety of products based on their search query) and App Campaigns. The types of online Display Ads include Overlay ads, Interstitial ads, Rich Media ads, and 360° Display Ads.  Display advertising and paid search advertising are the two most used forms of online advertising.

Why is display advertising important?

• Display ads are more affordable and reach a larger audience. They are used by advertisers to promote clothes, hotel chains, public events, etc.
• Website visitors who are re-targeted with display ads are 70% more likely to convert on your website.
• Display network offers advertisers contextual targeting by keywords, placement targeting by sites, topic targeting by relevance and demographic targeting based on age, gender, preferences, location and language.
• 90% of agencies and marketers believe that display ads help with branding.
• It leads to increased website traffic, and increased sales.
• These display ads can be effectively used by businesses of all sizes.

Coke’s most successful Display Ad case study

When Coca-Cola’s popularity decreased among Millennials, the brand developed the ‘Share A Coke’ campaign specifically for a Mexican audience to raise awareness and increase sales and brand love. For the campaign, Coca-Cola found the top 100 searches on YouTube and created short ads with the names of the most-searched artists, athletes, and trending YouTubers. 

Coca-Cola’s website received almost two million visits during the campaign, and more than 51 percent of them came from mobile devices. View KPIs increased by 4,000 percent, and the cost per view decreased to 2 percent ofthe initial estimated budget. Additional metrics included

• 1.7 million users reached
• 81 million media impressions on display
• 175 million social media views
• 3.2 million views for the TV commercial
• CTV average of 3.98 percent during the campaign
• 80 percent of target reached
• 51 percent of website traffic from mobile devices
• 44 percent of Mexico shared a Coke
• Awareness increased 11%

 

2. Native Advertising

What is Native Advertising

Native Advertising called ‘recommended content’ or ‘promoted stories’ is a monetized type of advertising on a website except slightly differing from display ads in a way that attempts to mimic the format of the publisher’s content. Native advertising comprises 6 main types of ads online: in-feed (which is ad units in a content stream), recommended links, sponsored search results, promoted product listings, traditional display banners with native content, and custom integration. Most of the native pricing is on CPM basis for the campaigns.

How is the Native ad used?

Since Native advertising is designed specifically not to look like an ad, it is almost everywhere and hard to ignore. It’s designed to look like and blend with the rest of the content on the page. As a result, users interact 20-60% more with native ads than traditional banner ads. As per Google Ads, in the last four years, the search for native ads has been growing in numbers. You may notice this ad type at the bottom of a blog or a FB post. It could appear as ‘recommendations’ or ‘other people also liked’ with suggested examples for users to click on.

Why use Native Advertising?

The in-feed content in Native advertising, can include videos, animations, or carousels of images. When native ads take on the looks of the content around it, they actually become non-disruptive ads. They are found in social media in the form of sponsored posts. Also, since these ads are interactive they are the best for brand building through trust by engaging with a customer. It is an up-coming ad type mostly used by new media companies. Today native ads constitute about 20% of all advertising revenue.

The Native ad case study

• Campaign:  Asian Beauties from Neverblue
• Ad Copy: Would you date an Asian Woman?
• Campaign period: Mar 30, 2019 – Apr 7, 2019
• GEO: USA
• Total spent: $934
• Total Revenue: $1397
• Net profit: $463
• ROI: 50%

 

The advertiser worked in two stages:

– In the first stage he started with a CPC campaign to get at least 50 impressions for each ad zone. After that, added these zones to the blacklist regardless of the CTR (by clicking Zone Limitation «Exclude» in the account settings) to redirect traffic to zones that weren’t tested yet. Started with $50 and got $58 for 11 conversions. So, the profit was $8. Then decided to scale this campaign to CPM.

– In the second stage he created a CPM campaign and targeted zones with the CTR higher than 0.7% (Zone limitation “Include” in the personal account). Then he blacklisted all the under performing zones. After all the testing, he had 8 zones, with two of them generating 80% of the profit. He spent $884 and got $1339 for 255 conversions. The profit — $455

3. Search Advertising

What is Search Advertising?

Search advertising or search engine marketing (SEM), or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is the process of advertising on search engines. Search ads are text ads displayed on Google’s search result page. Worldwide Google handles over 75,000 search queries per second. It enjoys a worldwide ranking as #1 search engine, ahead of its competitors Yahoo, Bing, and Baidu. Thereby, moving up one spot in Google’s search results can increase CTRs by up to 30.8%. Google shows your ad in the same format as other search results except that it earmarks it as an ‘Ad’. SEM is mostly combined with SEO (Search Engine Optimization is the organic and not paid form of advertising. Here, advertisers use SEO tactics, like creating keyword-friendly content, back linking, meta descriptions, etc.).

How is the Search Advertising used?

There are two search ads formats, viz. text ads and product listing ads.

• Text ads appear as ‘Ad’ above or on the right side of an organic search.
• Product listing ads (PLAs) mostly seen on e-commerce websites, show the image, price, description and link of your product when a potential customer is searching for a product based on a keyword.

These advertisements are found on search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. They are purchased based on the most relevant keywords a potential buyer uses to search for a product or service. However, recent shifts in PPC strategies are showing an increase in PLAs and ‘Semantic search’ (find meaning and or intent in the words) slowly replacing a direct keyword search.

Why search advertising?

• Paid search advertising allows advertisers to place their products/service in front of people who are already looking for the product/service.
• Since the ad is shown to potential customers who are searching for a similar product or service, there is a high chance of the user clicking on your product and converting it into a sale.
• With Google searches at 3.5 billion per day, search ads reach a larger target audience.

Case study of a Search Advertisement

• Client: Automotive Industry
• Goals: Reduce cost per sale from Google AdWords & Reduce monthly spend while generating more online sales.

The advertiser began with identifying the highest value conversion points, restructuring the account to only target keywords and products that would best drive the selected conversions. By understanding the way consumers buy, they could target consumers looking for specific products. They allocated an additional budget towards increasing the bids, to increase the average search position, earn a larger click share, and win the highest value auctions.

The Results:

• Increased Online Sales by 73% vs. prior year
• Deduced Cost Per Sale by 57% vs. prior year

 

4. Social Media Advertising

What is Social Media Advertising?

Social advertising is the use of social media sites to run an advertising campaign. By Q4 of 2019, the total number of social media users had crossed earlier estimates to reach 2.95 billion users worldwide. In 2020, that number is expected to surpass 3 billion.

How is the Social Media advertising used?

As per a recent study by Statista, the social media advertising segment amounts to USD 105,863 million in 2020 and is expected to have an annual growth rate (CAGR 2020-2024) of 6.0%, resulting in a market volume of USD 133,756 million by 2024 (not taking into account the recent coronavirus (COVID-19) implications on global trade).

The Social Media Platforms available for Advertising        

Most marketers are using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter in their marketing campaigns.

The other emerging platform is TikTok with 500 million active users worldwide. As per CNET, by end 2019, TikTok crossed 1.5 billion downloads, becoming the third most downloaded non-gaming app of the year, after WhatsApp and Messenger. Facebook and Instagram followed in fourth and fifth places. While grocery retailer Kroger was the first to run an ad campaign on TikTok, famous brands like TacoBell are now using TikTok.

Social ads charge advertisers on a CPC, CPM and other basis. However, the pricing will depend on the different types of ads like photo ads, video ads, stories ads, carousel ads, slideshow ads, messenger ads, collection ads, snap ads, tweet ads, sponsored content, etc. Here is a quick cost comparison between the three top platforms to give you an overall idea of pricing but of course your company, your product and your brand will determine the ad budget and the social media platform allocation to maximize the profits and return on investment (ROI).

Why is advertising on social media sites important?

• 97% of marketers use social media.
• 78% of marketers using Social Media outsell their peers.
• Social Media ads help to build brand awareness.
• The social media ad spend has risen to USD 89 billion in 2019.
• It helps to build a clientele henceforth bettering Brand Loyalty.
• Improves conversion rate.
• Reduces marketing costs as it is cheaper than traditional marketing.
• Rise in search engine rankings.

Case Study of Bajaj V’s Social Media Ad

• Campaign: SonsOfVikrant
• Objective: Promote Bajaj V – The Nation’s Bike

A ten day social media campaign run by Bajaj Automobiles, touched the minds and hearts of the whole nation as INS Vikrant one of India’s aircraft carriers was scrapped and its steel was melted and used to create the Bajaj V.

Result: Bajaj V gained 0.7 Million USD worth of free media coverage in just one week of the launch. It created 160 million impressions, reaching out to 32 million overall. And the most important one, Bajaj sold 11,000 bikes on the first day of launch. It got 984,862 views on Youtube and more than 23,000 views on Facebook.

5. Video Advertising

What is video advertising?

Video advertising is a process of running online display ads that have video within them to promote a company, product or website. These ads play before, during or after a video stream on the internet. 57% of marketers are now including video marketing in their digital marketing strategy. 

How is the Video advertising used?

There are different video ad formats. The main ad formats used by YouTube, the largest video hosting platform, include TrueView Ads, Non-skippable video Ads, Bumper Ads, Outstream Ads, YouTube Masthead Ads. For more details, read about YouTube here. Video ads can be purchased on a cost per mille (CPM) basis, but are also typically priced on a cost per view (CPV) basis, allowing advertisers to pay for the ad only if someone watches or interacts with it. 

 Why is video advertising gaining popularity?

• Being the most engaging form of online content, video ads have higher recall.
• Video will remain a key driver of advertising expenditures on display, projected to account for 31% of overall display ad spending next year.
• More than 50% of consumers like to watch videos of the brands they support.
• In 2019, video ads saw an increase in ad spending mainly in the fashion and retail industry.
• Almost 88% of video marketers are happy with its ROI.
• As per a study by Forbes, videos get shared 1,200% more than text and links combined.
• Mobile ads on YouTube get the viewer’s attention 83% of the time.
• Everyday people watch 1 billion hours of video on YouTube.
• 90% of the potential buyers have discovered new products on YouTube
• Companies and brands like LEGO or Coca-Cola have started uploading video content on their respective brand channels.

 

Case Study of a Video Ad

• Campaign: Meri Maggi
• Goal: Brand image

A classic example of a video ad used to regain brand image was by none other than Maggi Noodles. When the product got banned in India in 2015, its sales dipped from INR 250-300 crore a month to in between 5%-10% in various states.

In November, when the company re-launched Maggi after the five-month ban, it had 10.9 percent of the market share, which climbed to 35.2 percent in December. The relaunch campaign did include press ads and an extremely touching video launched across different platforms.

6. Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

What is PPC advertising?

Pay per click (PPC) ads are ads that advertisers only pay for when a user clicks on them. PPC ads are usually text ads but sometimes includes a small image. Google AdWords and Bing Ads both use a pay-per-click model.

How is the PPC advertising used?

This type of advertising is used to direct a potential buyer to your website. It is important to have a PPC landing page that is optimized for conversions. Google has now removed PPC ads from Right Hand Side so they now appear on the top of the page only.

Why PPC advertising?

• PPC marketing is done through Google Ads, the worlds’ largest search engine thereby boosting the traffic to your website.
• It can deliver a large number of impressions and clicks because of the large amount of traffic, especially on Google, leading to an increase in sales.
• This type of advertising is highly successful if the advertiser has rightly focused on relevant keywords and the quality of the landing page for a higher quality score.
• Advertisers can make changes to optimize the campaign to improve the quality score which helps to increase the ROI.
• Helps to control the ad budget.
• Can improve brand recognition with remarketing.

 

Case study of a PPC Ad

• Campaign: Dental Clinic, London
• Goal: To increase the number of leads their ads were generating while lowering the cost per lead.

The strongest USP of this UK clinic, was the doctor a native Polish speaker. So the marketing team targeted the niche audience of Polish speakers living in London close to where the clinic is based, to create ads and select keywords in the Polish language pointing to a dedicated landing page. Constant refining of the keywords and target audience was required.

Results

• In the first 50 days, the number of conversions increased considerably, up 409% from 20 to 107.
• Conversion cost came down to £7.41 from £44 (when client managed own campaign)
• The conversion rate also improved — up over 207% — from 4.38% to 13.44%.

 

7. Remarketing Advertising

What is retargeting advertising or remarketing?

Remarketing (or retargeting) is a type of online advertising that allows you to serve targeted ads to people who have already visited your website earlier. A remarketing ad allows you to strategically position your ads in front of the target audience as they browse Google or its partner websites, to increase brand awareness and to remind the user to make a purchase.

How do retargeting ads work?

It is a cookie-based technology that follows the user around the internet, by serving ads on the websites and platforms which the user visits most often in order to remarket to him/her again. Retargeting is required since almost 98% of users leave the website without converting on the first visit. Thereby, these 98% users need to be reminded or targeted about a product /service of interest once they leave the website.  Here’s how retargeting works:

Why Retargeting Ads?

• Retargeting increases the conversion by 150%.
• The average CTR (Click Through Rate) for Retargeting Ads is 10 times more than display ads.
• Remarketing Ads have a CPC (Cost Per Click) which is 50% that of the PPC search ads.

Case study of a Retargeting Ad

• Campaign: Jabong 
• Goals: To increase transactions by acquiring more high-quality customers who are more likely to convert or make a purchase & to improve app activation rates to drive traffic to the Jabong.com mobile app and control user acquisition costs.

Jabong the e-commerce website has successfully used Facebook’s dynamic ads to retarget potential customers by showing them products they have looked at on both Jabong.com’s website and app, allowing the brand to customize ads to every individual.

Results

By Personalised Acquisition using “Retargeting” and creating custom advertisements Jabong was able to:

• 2X increase in customer acquisitions
• 5X increase in app activation rates
• 40% lower user acquisition cost on mobile app
• 30% lower cost per order

 

8. In-game Advertising

What is In-game advertising?

In-game advertisements are ads that may exist within computer games on desktops/PC, mobiles or tablets. In-game advertising is a digital advertising strategy provided by game developers to boost their revenue. Game developers earn money and get paid by showing the ads to the users.

How does In-game advertising work?

The ads which become a part of the user experience in a 3D game setting through virtual objects, such as, billboards, posters, or bus stops, help to improve the game app engagement and also the retention rates.

The different types of in-game advertising include –

• Dynamic In-game advertising that can be inserted or removed in real-time, inside of Console and PC video games is charged on CPM or cost per thousand impressions pricing model.
• Console Integration in the form of square tiles in the Xbox Live dashboard has a higher CPM rate.
• In the Static In-Game Advertising model where advertising is programmed directly into a game, it is normally a flat fee anywhere starting with USD 50K.
• Advergames are developed for the purpose of promoting a company, brand, or product which can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

 

Why the growing popularity of In-game Advertising?

• 62% of smartphone owners install games within the first week of purchasing a new phone.
• Games can be designed with the sole purpose of advertising a brand.
• It offers advertisers an option to position the product in the game, to reach the right audience with the right message.
• Market for in-game advertising on all devices in the US alone, to touch USD 3 billion in 2019.
• The ad spend in all games grew by 16% in 2019.
• Retargeting in gaming apps is generating revenue uplift of over 50% among paying users.

Case study of an In-game Ad

• Campaign: Nike Epic React

Nike named their shoe ‘Epic React’ and created a game named React Land to promote this new line of shoes in four cities. This was Nike’s idea to use gamification to attract a young target audience. After putting on a pair of Epic Reacts and creating an avatar, the player is transported to React Land, a virtual world where he/she navigates as the main character by running on a treadmill and using a handheld button to jump. In the 3-minute game, players can choose to explore a floating metropolis in China, a super soft panda land, the Fuji Mountain, a view of Santorini, a jumping frog in France and many more. After the success of this ad, Nike announced a share value increase of 7%, putting it back in direct competition with Adidas in the sneaker market.

9. Email Advertising

What is email advertising?

Email ads are interactive ads that appear in the Promotions and Social tabs of the email inbox.

How do email ads work?

Email ads are ads sent to a user via the web mail. It can include an image, video, or embedded forms. These ads are cheaper than most others. It aims to create leads, to enhance relationship with the customer, to encourage loyalty, and to grow repeat business. 

Why Email Advertising?

• Email ads help to reach affinity audiences.
• Can customize the target audiences in Display campaigns by applying keywords.
• Offer an option of automated targeting to reach potential customers whom you wouldn’t otherwise reach, at around the same cost per person.
• You can reach people on the Display Network basis demographic categories, like age, gender, income, hobbies, etc.
• Dynamic remarketing ads are possible but the targeted Gmail ads must have a minimum of 100 active visitors or users within the last 30 days for your ads to show.
• This ad type is good for promotions, new features, and discount offers.
• An Email ad looks organic prompting the user to click.

Case Study of an email advertising campaign

• Campaign: Wok to Walk
• Goal: Local customer creation, Brand Awareness

Wok to Walk, a health food company, sent a newsletter with a subject line that invited recipients to call, make inquiries and order a meal. This email generated an open rate of 18.1%. Next step they checked the statistics and selected email subscribers who didn’t open the previous email.

The same email was sent – but the subject line was changed to better suit this new segment by including a phone number, making it easier for people to call even if they didn’t open the email. This second email received 7.7% additional subscribers, resulting in a higher level of email engagement.

10. Mobile Advertising

What is mobile advertising?

Today with mobiles becoming a quintessential part of our lives, mobile advertising is growing in importance. Mobile advertising is placing ads to run specifically on mobile devices such as cell phones, smartphones, tablets, and wearable technology with the use of enhanced campaigns. Marketers often combine mobile advertising with other digital advertising channels like display advertising, search advertising, social media advertising, and video advertising.

How do mobile ads work?

Mobile advertising is targeted. It allows the advertiser to personalize the content for a specific audience. When Samsung wanted to promote its Galaxy S6 smartphone, they created an interactive mobile ad for people to experience what the company was talking about with a demo on their smartphone. The other winning mobile ads are Ruffles potato chips, GAP remix logo launch, Nissan Rogue SUV launch, and Starbucks. 

Why is mobile advertising or mobile marketing important in 2020?

• Global mobile ad spending in 2019  reached USD 190 billion.
• In India, mobile ad spending is expected to rise from approx. USD 460 million to USD 1.73 billion in 2021.
• 29% of the time is spent on desktops and 71% on mobile devices
• 80% of internet users own a smartphone.
• 70% of B2B buyers increased mobile usage over the past years.

Case Study of a video ad

• Campaign: Pay Attention
• Goal: Create Awareness

In 2018, cosmetic brand Avon India aimed to raise awareness about breast cancer among women in India through its #PayAttention campaign. Avon had a breast self-examination (BSE) video for women to help them identify the signs of breast cancer.

Results

• 15 % SOV and awareness in breast cancer
• Reached over 1 billion people of India at USD 25k
• On social media, Avon reached out to 917 million on Facebook, 101 million on Twitter, 109 Million through PR stories and 29 influencer videos with 36 million impressions.
• #PayAttention was top trending hashtags around Breast Cancer Awareness in India.
• 200,000 interactions were created on FB and near 185,000 interactions on Facebook posts.

Conclusion

The coronavirus (COVID-19) has disrupted our world, our thinking, and our way of doing business. This impact will surely be felt by every company, big or small. Once the global crises passes, there will be renewed spending on digital platforms to adapt rapidly to the new normal. This new normal stage requires new advertising strategies and new execution plans across all channels. With a fair idea on paid advertising, it’s time to get ready to leverage the right ads for your company or brand when the time is right. How to establish new goals to maximize the ROI, how to rework ad budgets, how to re-prioritize the channel amplification, how to pivot from the standard content marketing plan, how to target all devices buyers use, are all questions a digital advertiser will need to be prepared with. There will never be a right or wrong answer but always an in-between that is the ‘right fit’. We have only put you on a fast track to think on the right lines to restrategize your digital advertising campaign. Time to work on it further!

 

Summary

Coronavirus (COVID-19) will bring about deep changes in digital advertising. Ad revenues, social media, e-commerce will impact Google Ads, Social Media ads, affiliate earnings and publisher advertising earnings. Digital advertisers will require to get ready for a new normal in paid advertising from 2020. In this blog, we have tried to contain maximum information and some relevant statistics on digital advertising. There will never be a right or wrong answer but always an in-between that is the ‘right fit’. We have only put you on a fast track to think on the right lines to restrategize your digital advertising campaign. Time to work on it further!

Project Agora Partners With Taboola For A New Native Content Solution- ‘Explore More’

Publishers have a new tool in their monetization kitty with the launch of Project Agora’s new Native Content Solution, Explore More.

Over 15,000 websites use Project Agora’s Native Content feature in partnership with Taboola to drive revenue, increase engagement and page views, and acquire new customers.

What is Explore More?

‘Explore More’ is designed to make mobile users, who are visiting the publisher’s site directly from social media and apps to stay longer and re-engaging them before they exit with the relevant content recommendation.

Explore More serves organic and sponsored content. However, they feature 70% organic content which increases organic re-circulation and improves revenue.

How Beneficial is it? 

Explore More has impressive results on smartphones and Tablets.

On Smartphones, it brings 60% uplift in RPM (Revenue per Thousand Pageviews) and 100% uplift in Organic CTR whereas, on Tablets, it brings a 45% uplift in RPM and 30% uplift in Organic CTR.

How to Use it?

It is simple to use for publishers already working with Project Agora by just adding the Explore More feature to the website. Project Agora’s expert team will undertake all the processes, and there is no work needed from the publisher to start seeing immediate results. 

Project Agora’s Publishers such as protothema.gr, alon.hu, a1.ro, alwatanvoice.com have already upped their game by implementing Explore More on their mobile websites

Dimitris Tsoukalas, Regional Director MEA, Project Agora said,

“More than 19 of Project Agora’s publishers, in the Middle East and Africa, have already upped their game by implementing Explore More on their mobile websites. In their battle to retain users for as long as possible and increase ad-revenues, Explore More is a no-brainer, quick win for publishers.”

Also Read: Project Agora Co-founds the New EMEA Video Advertising Platform- Union