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E-Business
Issues
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ADVERTISING
ON THE NET — BARRIERS AND ROADBLOCKS
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In
offline media selection, each media vehicle is debated
and torn apart before being used. An Enterprise Server
ad goes into Dataquest, a Whisper ad features in Femina.
However, a similar activity on the online medium ends
up getting bought Run of Site or Run of Network—with
the result that you end up with a Whisper ad on the
male fashion segment or an Enterprise Server ad on a
dating section! |
High
click-through rates! Clients demand them, media planners
live for them, portals promise them and adservers measure
them. Click-thrus are more often than not the yardstick
for measuring online branding efforts. However, are
click-thrus all there is to the online medium?
Click-thrus
became the much-touted metric by which all activity
in Internet space was measured. And since measurability
and accountability were supposed to be the USP of the
medium, sites pushed click-thrus as a metric actively.
In fact, one has noticed click-thru levels jump up significantly
(on certain sites) whenever there is a click-based deal.
Are we going to get our joy from such steroid-pumped-up
performances? It is in the interest of both advertiser
and publisher that healthier and more beneficial practices
are adopted. By pushing direct measurement (clicks)
as the defining element of online advertising from the
beginning, the online ad industry has made sure that
it becomes apparent when the online part of the media
campaign is ‘working’. Direct marketing principles have
been applied to all forms of online advertising. Therefore,
benefits such as brand recognition and brand awareness
(which is taken for granted in the case of other types
of advertising) have been discounted in the worship
of click-thrus. However, are click-thrus all there is
to the online medium? Taking a look at a campaign for
a client who was on only the online medium (no offline
activity):
Only about 20 per cent of the unique visitors to the
site were through click-thrus. Therefore, are click-thrus
all there is to online advertising!?
Take an ink dropper, dip it into a soup bowl, take a
drop and squeeze it into your mouth. Are you well fed?
Did you feel energetic? How long did you take till you
felt the need for the next drop?
The way advertisers look at the Internet medium is like
the drop of soup. Critical mass or threshold levels
are not achieved and the post-mortem arrived at is:
Advertising on the Internet does not work!
More often than not, the drop of soup is a ‘contest’.
Advertisers are lured by low-cost contesting options
on sites—a fraction of the cost that would be the threshold
spends. The commitments range from the number of players
and number of e-mails ids to the number of plays. A
close equivalent in offline space is the strategic promotional
activity of a Pepsi or a Coke where you have scratchcards
and numbers on the inside of cola caps which can win
you prize money. However, in any given month, activities
of this nature can be counted on one’s fingertips. Also,
this is a minuscule part of the overall brand campaign
and not the be all and end all of offline communication.
Why is it then that contests are the only activity for
certain advertisers in online space?
Creative directors fight for awards for print and
TV ads. Can anyone stand up and say that they have excelled
in creative in online space?
In offline media selection, each media vehicle is debated
and torn apart before being used. An Enterprise Server
ad goes into Dataquest, a Whisper ad features in Femina.
However, a similar activity on the online medium ends
up getting bought Run of Site or Run of Network—with
the result that you end up with a Whisper ad on the
male fashion segment or an Enterprise Server ad on a
dating section! And again the conclusion is: Internet
advertising does not work! Now if content was relevant
to the product, the results would have been startlingly
different.
An argument often given against the online medium is
that it is too niche. It does not add to reach and the
advertiser’s money is wasted. But, is Internet the only
niche medium? Let’s look at some leading FMCG brands
on ‘niche channels’ (table on right): A reasonable percentage
of the total expenditure was on niche channels like
Star World, Star Movies, AXN, Discovery etc. Result:
at best a 3.2 per cent reach at 5+ OTS. And if you were
to calculate the incremental reach that this activity
generated over and above the mass TV channels, you’d
be looking at even more microscopic fractions. The Internet
audience, on the other hand, is significantly larger.
More often than not, we hear the argument that Internet
is primarily a metro phenomenon. Yes, the metros do
account for around 50 per cent of Internet usage, but
what about the 33 per cent contribution by the less-than-one-million-population
towns?
How many clients have used options like frequency capping
on creative, sequencing of creative, which are unique
to this medium and actually enhance response to online
advertising? Similar communication served to similar
audiences had click-thrus rates of above 19 per cent
when using a frequency cap as opposed to a mere 3 per
cent when run without a frequency cap. Controlling exposure
is one of the unique features of the online medium but
the majority of the advertisers are still to even explore
this possibility. Last but not the least, creative directors
fight for awards for print and TV ads. Can anyone stand
up and say that they have excelled in creative in online
space? More often than not, online advertising is just
an adaptation of offline creative.
When the inherent characteristics of the medium are
different, and the Internet is just not another mass
medium, why is creative not given its due importance?
When, presumably, all the ingredients are just right
for the medium to take off, why is it not doing so?
How does one change the current scenario? Education
and evangelisation of the medium is the only way out.
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