What’s getting the

eyeballs
l Social Media l Classifieds
l Gaming l Search & Horizontals
 GENRE ANALYSIS
The virtual family
Social Media
Brands are understanding the importance of their presence on
social media; however, few understand how to use it effectively
By Robin Thomas
M
id-June 2009, Twitter
user - @kiruba post-
ed that Cleartrip.
com took his money
and did not book his
ticket and that he had a harrowing
time at the airport. Soon Twitter was
flooded with retweets and questions
seeking explanations from Cleartrip.
The incident forced Cleartrip to in-
duct an enquiry into the incident.
Cleartrip, on its official blog refers
to the case as the ‘Kiruba Incident’.
42 | Pitch | May 2010
That is the power of social media.
Brands are realising the power of so-
cial media. In turn, they are using the
platform to gauge their brand value
and as a tool to engage the consumer.
Making an impact for sure
A survey – India Social Media Sur-
vey: Brands & Corporates – con-
ducted by exchange4media, the
parent group of Pitch magazine
in association with Blogworks, an
online social media solutions pro-
vider just corroborates the fact
that social media today plays a
great role in businesses. According
to the survey, 90 per cent of the re-
spondents – working professionals,
executives, business leaders from
India – believe that blogs and social
media platforms have an impact on
business and marketing.
Nearly 90 per cent respondents,
of the survey, believe that social me-
dia activities can deliver buzz and
word-of-mouth for a brand. Over
65 per cent think social media can
deliver insights; 61 per cent think
social media can build engagements
and over 46 per cent hope that so-
cial media can help brands create
better products and services.
An overwhelming 85 per cent re-
spondents agree that social media
has an impact on purchase deci-
sions, particularly in categories
such as auto, gadgets, mobiles,
healthcare, travel and finance.
Face realities
According to ComScore, a research
agency tracking global internet ac-
tivities, in India, more than 68 per
cent of the online population visited
social networking sites and the aver-
age number of visits per visitor per
month was 13. Accordingly, Orkut
is the preferred social network-
ing site by Indian netizens, followed
by Facebook. Our own indigenous
open online audience measurement
 Leaders and laggards
Rank Website Unique users* (in crore) Percentage change
1 Orkut 1.73 13.07
2 Facebook.com 1.46 15.87
3 ibibo.com 0.38 40.15
4 Linkedin.com 0.29 5.93
5 Bharatstudent.com 0.22 47.97

“At BigAdda, all (Source: ViziSense; * as in March 2010)

brands having web Even though Facebook is the leader worldwide, in

reality shows have India, it’s Google owned Orkut that’s the favourite.
tasted success” Indian players are in no position to play catch-up
Shivanandan Pare
COO, BigAdda

platform, ViziSense, a vertical of

Komli Media, too states Orkut’s leader-
ship. In March, according to Vizisense, Are you future ready?
Orkut had 1.73 crore unique users and Will blogs and social media have an impact on
Facebook had 1.46 crore unique users. businesses and marketing in the near future?
Indian social networking site, ibibo.
com, though the third most preferred Very little impact Can’t say
social networking site was far behind 2% 2%
with 38.4 lakh unique users.

Social money Some impact

According to the Pitch-Madison 38%
Media Advertising Outlook 2010, Huge impact
internet clocked a total revenue of
58%
Rs 453 crore in the ad pie worth Rs
18,670 crore in 2009, a growth of Rs
90 crore, over the previous year. Of
this, it is estimated that social net-
working sites contribute to over five (Source: e4m-Blogworks Survey)

per cent. Telecom, educational in-

stitutions and auto sectors are one
A clear majority (96%) believes that blogs and
of the biggest online advertisers.
The auto sector for instance, has in-
social media will have a huge or some impact on
creased its digital spends to nearly
their businesses and marketing activities in the future
10 per cent. This apart, even FMCG

May 2010 | Pitch | 43

GENRE ANALYSIS

brands are also exploring this me-

dium like never before.
According to the exchange4me-
dia and Blogworks survey (from
Engagement, not sales hereon referred to as e4m-Blog-
works survey), sectors using blogs
What can social media deliver for brands? and social media platforms in the
89.4 best way possible are IT, telecom,
airlines and job portals. Some
brands with the highest recall with
65.7
61.8 respect to social media are Sun-
silk: Gang-of-Girls, Tata Tea: Jaago
46.4 Re, MTV Roadies, Fastrack, Pepsi
35.2 (Youngistaan campaign) and blogs
of Microsoft, IBM, HP and Nokia.
The survey states that only 25
1.6
per cent of respondents are spend-
Buzz & word Insights Engagement Sales Better products Can’t say ing over 10 per cent of their mar-
of mouth & services keting budget on social media.
(Source: e4m-Blogworks Survey) However, there are encouraging
signs as 43 per cent of respondents
Brands seem to have understood that social media feel that they would be spending 10
is not a sales tool, but an engagement platform. per cent or more of their marketing
budgets in the next two years.
However, it can influence purchase decisions highly
Shivanandan Pare, COO, BigAdda
feels that digital advertising spends
will have a consistent growth rate of
Bangalored? 25 per cent per year until the year
2012. “This is a very encouraging
Who are marketers outsourcing their digital work to? estimate. However, I expect a big
35 figure growth this year due to prom-
30 inent FMCG brands jumping into the
27 digital bandwagon.”
On the other hand, there are social
22
network owners like Ashish Kashyap,
CEO of ibibo.com, who believe that
10 the growth would not come only from
lead acquisition marketing but also
by brand building activities across
social media platforms. “We are
Public Advertising Digital Social media Others witnessing many FMCG companies
Relations agency agency agency
agency beginning to leverage social media
(Figures in %; Source: I-Cube 2009-2010) and gaming platforms to intimately
engage with their audiences. Garnier
About 55% of repondents make their digital plan in- Fructis ibibo iFresh face application;
house; while 15% who outsource, hire independent Pears Masoom Moments, Perfetti’s
digital agenices and PR agencies for their work – Fortune Fundas on ibibo are a few
examples showing that FMCGs are

44 | Pitch | May 2010

beginning to embrace social media.
Further, brand building on internet is
still in a nascent stage and as FMCG
companies begin to see value in us-
ing social networking, they will grow
their investment on digital,” he says.
Early days
However, a section of the industry
believes that these are early days.
The rise of social media only allows
advertisers to get close to custom-
er needs and chat with customers
directly. Sandeep Singh, Business
Head, Quasar Media, says, “People
join social networking sites to con-
nect with like-minded people and
not get bombarded with promo-
tional messages. They are averse
to advertising messages. The kind
of CTR (Click-Through-Rate) you
get on social networking sites is
a proof of this trend. So, brands
have to be-friend users on social
networks and engage in a regular
interaction. Presence on social net-
working sites can’t be campaign
dependent. It has to be a thought
through 24x7 approach.”
Singh could be quite right if we
go by the activities Maruti Su-
zuki does online. According to
Shashank Srivastava, Chief Gen-
eral Manager (Marketing), Maruti
Suzuki India, has been promoting a
number of its key brands through
seeding information, answering
queries through its Orkut & Facebook
profile pages and setting up
Twitter channels.
“We are also doing an online rep-
utation management to keep track
of all our brands. Social media
marketing has been an important
tool for spreading positive word of
mouth and arresting any negativi-
ties. I believe that this is one plat-
form, which should be employed
“People join social net-
working sites not to get
bombarded with pro-
motional messages”
Sandeep Singh,
Business Head, Quasar Media
by any serious marketer, although
the current base is small but it has
huge potential to grow. You bet-
ter be starting early to ride on the
trend rather than being a follower
of sorts,” Srivastava suggests.
According to the e4m-Blogworks
survey, 54 per cent of the respond-
ents have engaged in a social activ-
ity for their brand or organisation.
And amongst those who responded
in the negative, nearly 64 per cent
are considering participating in a
social media activity soon.
Little understanding
Kashyap of ibibo feels that ad-
vertisers have not yet figured out
ways of leveraging social media.
The e4m-Blogworks survey, just
reiterates that. Almost 85 per cent
of respondents believe that In-
dian marketers have a cursory or
no understanding of social media.
Inspite of the low understanding,
only 15 per cent have outsourced
their social media activities to spe-
cialists. “On our part, we are con-
stantly educating advertisers about
the power of social media and are
seeing positive traction driven by
partnerships with several brands
across categories - telecom, FMCG
and automobiles. Social media and
social gaming applications need to
be well integrated,” he says.
According to him, ibibo
tightly integrates advertiser driven
applications with Facebook, Orkut
and Twitter. For example, an
application called Airtel ibibo
iSinger, enables the participants to
connect with Facebook and publish
their expression across social media
vehicles.
Similarly, BigAdda too has some
successful innovative in-house
campaigns made for clients - Virgin
Mobile, Samsung (user generated
content inspired by movie tie-ups)
and Yamaha for India Bike Rally.
New opportunities ahead
Till now brands’ presence on the
social media platform has been
limited to blogs, social networking
sites. There are opportunities in
the sense of widgets, wikis, micro-
blogging, auto-tagging, networking
on the mobile, and SMS-based mar-
keting. Use of broadband has al-
lowed brands to get innovative with
rich-media like videos.
Lately, there has been an in-
creasing trend of web based reality
shows, which are in no ways simi-
lar to the TV reality shows. Many
portals have introduced unique
concept of reality shows. iHunk,
Fantastic Five - an interactive on-
line travel series, India Bike Rally
May 2010 | Pitch | 45
 GENRE ANALYSIS
are a few examples, which inte-
grate brands within.
Kashyap of ibibo says, “We are
pioneers in driving web based
reality games. iHunk, iSerial Star,
Fresh Face, iSinger are a few ex-
amples. We have seen strong trac-
tion for each of these reality gam-
ing apps. For instance, iHunk has
attracted more than 2,00,000 users,
who have published themselves and
received votes from their friends.”
Pare adds, “At BigAdda, all the
brands associated with our web real-
ity shows have tasted success. These
shows are picking up at a fast pace;
and companies are able to take their
brand communication, product fea-
tures and benefits to their target au-
dience, without being perceived intru-
sive. Currently, we have another first
of its kind fitness reality show, where
brands like Revital, Equal and Gold’s
Gym have come together. These com-
panies form good examples, where
Plug and play
Gaming
Gaming, traditionally, has been a part of the entertainment
industry. Yet, with the sheer interactivity that it offers, marketers
have found ways to plug in their message
By Robin Thomas
A
ccording to the FICCI-
KPMG India Media
and Entertainment
Industry report 2010,
the size of the Indian
gaming industry is estimated to
be around Rs 790 crore in 2009 as
compared to Rs 650 crore in 2008,
46 | Pitch | May 2010
“Advertisers have
not yet figured out
ways of leveraging
social media”
Ashish Kashyap
CEO, ibibo
they are willing to go the social media
route to enhance their brand image.”
a growth of 22 per cent during the
period. There are over 500 crore
mobile subscribers in India and
given the popularity of mobile gam-
ing, console gaming and online or
PC gaming is slated to help further
growth of this segment.
A bigger game
The report states that the Indian
Need for more socialising
Despite all this, there still is a big
question lurking - How does social
media impact sales? Experts still
have to crack the question as social
media is still being seen as a platform
for not generating sales but a plat-
form for insights, engagement and co-
creation. As per the e4m-Blogworks
survey, ‘sales’ did not make to the top
five matrix to evaluate success of a
social media programme.
Even if social media is a platform
for consumer engagement, it needs
to become a medium for not just the
‘cool quotient’ but ‘awareness quo-
tient’ too. And brands are aware of
that. The platform, according to the
survey, is surely moving from being
speculative to effective and meas-
urable, which is giving birth to “ex-
perts”. In this report ahead, in the
‘Deal Makers’ section, we’re touch-
ing upon these experts – the need
for them and what they are doing.
media and entertainment industry
is expected to grow at a CAGR of 32
per cent between 2009 and 2014 to
reach Rs 3,190 crore by 2014. Of this
growth, mobile gaming is estimated to
touch 50.7 per cent growth, followed
by PC and online gaming with 37.8 per
cent and console with 18.8 per cent.
The growing population of the youth,
rising income, increasing PC and wire-
less users are some of the factors that
are believed to lead to this growth.
Harsh Jain, Founder and MD,
Dream11.com says, “Over the last
few years, gaming in India has tak-
en a front seat in the entertainment
space. We see gaming becoming a
big part of the online industry now
and even on the road ahead.”

Games that brands play

Brands from sectors like FMCG, in-
surance, banking and telecom, are
already making regular appearances
in online games these days, making
online gaming a lucrative medium
for Indian brands whose target au-
diences are usually teenagers and
youth. In-game advertising is also
not a new phenomenon in India,
but now the volume of in-game ad-
vertisements has increased signifi-
cantly. While gaming is a part of the
entertainment industry, what differ-
entiates gaming from other forms of
entertainment is the sheer interac-
tivity that it offers.
According to Rohit Sharma, CEO,
Zapak Digital Entertainment, a gam-
ing division of Reliance ADA Group,
“Zapak only provides a brand build-
ing platform to marketers, and noth-
ing else.” In fact, he says, “Hundred
per cent of our revenues come only
from brand building.”
For the record, Zapak managed
the entire digital strategy for Bol-
lywood blockbuster - 3 Idiots, creat-
ing disruptive stuff, be it on gaming,
social networking, mobile or other
applications. An IdiotsAcademy.com
was launched, to leverage these as-
pects, where users could go to dif-
ferent rooms of Idiots Academy like
Director’s Office, Lab, Hostel, Can-
teen, Class Room and Toilets; each
room offering something different
and interactive to its visitors.
Game for money?
While monetisation in this industry
is yet to mature, subscription based
games is one interesting business
model, which is fast gaining grounds.
With the launch of 3G services in In-
dia, it might end up doing good to
PC based gaming rather than just
“Zapak only provides
a brand building plat-
form, to marketers
and nothing else”
Rohit Sharma,
CEO, Zapak Digital Entertainment
mobile games. Samir Bangara, COO,
Indiagames says, “3G will definite-
ly have a significant impact on the
mobile gaming industry and offer a
high quality gaming experience to
the end user. However, multi-player
games, which were earlier poised to
get a boost with the 3G implementa-
tion, will still take sometime to roll
out in India. Considering the price
model, 3G is more likely to reach out
to the higher-end audiences”
Another new trend in gaming is
fantasy games - where users optimise
a given budget to create their fantasy
team, consisting of real life players.
Users score points, depending on
how these players perform in real life
matches, and compete with the game
community for recognition as the best
fantasy game team manager.
New rules
Although fantasy games are not
new to India, the success of In-
dian Premier League (IPL) has
only increased the popularity of
fantasy cricket games, consider-
ing that cricket attracts good re-
sponse from the Indian audience.
Jain of Dream11.com said, “Fantasy

May 2010 | Pitch | 47

 GENRE ANALYSIS
gaming will be the big benefactor
from 3G services in India. Every-
thing is free to play at Dream11 and
the money is made through adver-
tising and sponsorship. As long as
the creatives are good and we make
it relevant to our target group, users
will click on the advertisements.”
Fairplay
Despite the robust growth, there are
plenty of challenges too. Tussle over
the revenue sharing agreements be-
tween telecom operators and game
publishers, lack of brand aware-
ness, regulatory issues and piracy
of games are the few hurdles.
A recent market report conducted
by IAMAI and IMRB finds that there
exists a grey market in India, where-
in, almost 70-80 per cent of games
are pirated thus, severely impact-
ing the growth of gaming in India. In
addition to this, the report further
states that internet is the driving
Optimising options
Classifieds
Finding a job or a spouse on the net is easier and convenient.
No doubt that the Gen-X prefers the net over a newspaper when
it comes to scan through classified advertising
By Robin Thomas
O
nline classifieds are
spread across catego-
ries like jobs, matri-
mony, real estate, auto,
travel & tourism, health
and others. With a focused approach,
these portals offer users a better op-
tion to optimise their search results.
48 | Pitch | May 2010
“Fantasy gaming
will be the big
benefactor from 3G
services in India”
Harsh Jain,
Founder and MD, Dream11.com
force for the gaming market in India.
Gamers are said to constitute 41.2
The burgeoning pages
Job search remains one of the popu-
lar categories in classifieds, which
people find easier to look for job op-
tions than traditional media. Some of
the major players in the job search
include Naukri.com, MonsterIndia.
com, Timesjob.com. Though the
global slowdown affected the clas-
sified business too, the players are
per cent of the total active internet
users in India, which is a whopping
89 per cent increase from 2007.
According to Bangara of Indiag-
ames, “The revenue model and the
entire ecosystem of the Indian gam-
ing industry still hasn’t matured
and the business models need to
mature and fast. In-game advertis-
ing certainly helps create a brand
recall but India is still in the nascent
stage and in the process of adopting
the adver-gaming model. There is a
definite need to expand this base.
Having said that, I believe that after
couple of successful ad funded game
launches, more and more brands
would look at using this medium to
reach out to their target audiences.”
Over the years, the content in
gaming will get more localised. 3G
rollout in India from the mobile
gaming perspective will lead to an
increase in download speeds and
migrate towards smart phones.
optimistic about the growth this year.
Sanjeev Bikhchandani, CEO, Naukri.
com, says, “The recession is over and
clients are posting new jobs, which is
evident from the growth in the job list-
ings in the past six months.”
As matrimonial portals - Shaadi.
com, BharatMatrimony, Jeevansathi.
com become popular, they hope bet-
ter returns after the slowdown. Some
 Matrimonials
Rank Website Unique users* (in Lakh) Percentage change
1 Shaadi.com 21.2 2.91
2 Bharatmatrimony 18.3 13.66
3 Jeevansathi.com 11.0 -3.51
4 Simplymarry.com 4.86 14.35

(Source: ViziSense; * as in March 2010)

Seems that a simple word like ‘Shaadi’ has a higher

“The recession
seems to be over
and clients are
posting new jobs”
Sanjeev Bikhchandani,
CEO, Naukri.com
players claim to have done good busi-
ness even in the last fiscal.
Gourav Rakshit, VP, Internet Mar-
keting & Business Head, Shaadi.com
says, “We did come out of a period of
some turbulence a year back on ac-
count of global recessionary fears,
which is never good for businesses
involving high-involvement decisions
– in our case marriage and real es-
tate. But it showed significant growth
during the last fiscal, and the outlook
is positive for the next financial year.”
New bed-fellows
As matrimonial portals remains pop-
ular in the metros, the rural areas and
smaller towns are yet to be tapped.
Players are entering the untapped
market through various partnerships
with mobile companies, DTH and
television channels. For instance,
Shaadi.com had earlier launched its
multilingual service on voice, to cater
to audiences in smaller towns and
brand recall, putting the site in the No 1 position
Job Search
Rank Website Unique users* (in Lakh) Percentage change
1 Naukri.com 50.6 -5.24
2 Monsterindia.com 41.0 28.93
3 Timesjobs.com 26.5 8.61
4 Shine.com 22.3 55.94
5 Freshersworld.com 7.2 14.29
(Source: ViziSense; * as in March 2010)
Is it the brand equity of ‘Naukri’ or the simplicity of
the word, that puts the site on top?
rural areas, where mobile penetration that a lot of business intelligence
is high. BharatMatrimony opened its tools are required to understand con-
second TamilMatrimony retail outlet sumer behavior on the web and play-
in Coimbatore. ers should invest accordingly.
The job search category also saw Recognising the potential of so-
some interesting partnership. Mon- cial media sites, the players have
ster.com and DishTV collaborated to chosen the platform as one of their
offer an interactive jobs search serv- focus promotional area. Naukri.
ice, enabling job seekers to search for com, for instance, is present on so-
jobs through DishTV. cial networking sites like Facebook
and Twitter.
An ad to sell an ad Explaining the emerging trend,
As online activities grow in an unprec- Bikhchandani says, “We are present
edented way, classified players are on social media sites both as an
opting internet advertising as their advertiser and also as a brand. As
preferred choice. R Sundar, CEO, advertisers, these sites allow tar-
Times Business Solutions, believes geting and are less cluttered too;

May 2010 | Pitch | 49

GENRE ANALYSIS
therefore one can take the right
message to the right user.”
Even Shaadi.com has been inter-
acting with its audience on Facebook,
Orkut and Twitter for a while now.
“We do also actively advertise on so-
cial networking sites, since it allows
us the flexibility of providing focused
messaging to our target audience,”
“A lot of intelligence “Twitter has innumer-
tools are required to able advantages and
understand consumer allows us to show-
behavior on the web” case our proposition”
R Sundar,
CEO, Times Business Solutions
50 | Pitch | May 2010
says Rakshit of Shaadi.com.
He feels that the site’s presence
on social networking sites like Fa-
cebook and Twitter has helped the
portal to connect with users’ percep-
tions and needs. “Twitter is a clas-
sic example concept with innumer-
able advantages for us to showcase
our proposition, our values and our
Gourav Rakshit,
VP, Internet Marketing, Shaadi.com
beliefs. It allows consumers to form
emotional connections with what we
stand for, rather than only being con-
sumers of our service,” he adds.
Besides this, ‘Promoted Tweets’,
the new advertising model by Twit-
ter, is being closely watched by the
players. Shaadi.com is, however,
playing a wait and watch game.
Rakshit says, “Twitter’s simplicity
has helped turn itself into a global
marketing phenomenon which is
widely used by growing number of
brands each day. Every brand is
keeping a close eye on the effec-
tiveness of the promoted tweets. If
proven successful, it will certainly
form a part of our media mix, but
the jury is still out on that.”
Bikhchandani has another opinion
as he says that Twitter is more of a
branding platform for Naukri.com.
“We are yet to evaluate it as an ad-
vertising platform. At Naukri.com, we
use a lot of analytics and data, which
we superimpose on to our marketing
efforts. As for differentiated strat-
egy each one has their own metrics,
which is used to track,” he says.
Minor hitches
With the increasing popularity of
classified portals, the challenge for
them is to bring innovation in their
product and develop new ways of of-
fering the product to users.
The industry players, however,
opine that the challenge for classified
portals is similar to the challenges
that overall internet industry faces
today. “The drivers of bandwidth
growth in India such as the internet
speed, ubiquitous availability and low
pricing are still not up to the mark.
The issue needs to be tackled more
aggressively for us to compete with
the rest of the world,” says Sundar of
Times Business Solutions.
 The Search Ends
Horizontals
Search &
As more youth use the net, the hunt for educational information
is high. From the marketers point of view, however, local search
will make the search engine market richer
By Robin Thomas
A
fter emails, search is
the second most popu-
lar activity amongst
active internet users
in India.
According to the ‘I-Cube 2009-
2010: Internet in India’ report, 80
per cent of the active internet us-
ers in India used search engines in
2009 for general information hunt-
ing. The figure in the year went up
by four per cent as compared to
2008. Search for educational and
financial information too was high,
scoring 65 and 24 per cent respec-
tively. The figures, respectively,
have gone up from 49 and 21 per
cent in 2008.
The research team
According to ViziSense, an online
audience measurement and analyt-
ics platform from Komli Media for
March 2010, Google, not surpris-
ingly was the leading search en-
gine with 3.77 crore unique users
followed by Yahoo search with 1.03
crore unique users, Ask.com with
64.8 lakh, Mywebresearch.com
with 54.9 lakh and Microsoft’s big-
gest bet Bing.com is far behind with
only 43.1 lakh unique users.
Unlike China, where the local
search engine Baidu is the leader,
in India, it’s the global giants like
Google and Yahoo that have cut ice
with the information seekers. How-
ever, there are small local fish in
the fry, which are trying to make a
mark. Guruji.com, AskLaila.com,
Justdial.com, and Onyomo.com,
are some of the popular ones. In
the Hindi search space, Raftaar.in
is trying to make search easier for
a minuscule Hindi user on the net.
According to Narasimha Jayaku-
mar, Business Head, Google India,
“There are several reports which
highlight that search engine mar-
keting has a significant uplift in
brand recognition across verticals.
We are very upbeat about the op-
portunity in India and advertisers
are also eager to work on launching
various brand building campaigns
through our content network.”
What was found?
The total intensity of Google us-
age in India has increased by 70
per cent this April over the year-
ago period, Jayakumar adds. He
gives an interesting insight into the
search behaviour of Indians.
As mentioned above, education
related search is a hot property. In
education sector, Google was flooded
with over 100 crore queries in 2009
of which 4.8 crore were MBA related.
“While research on specific brand
makes and models is most popular,
consumers do a lot of reading on ex-
pert websites and seek opinions on
their vehicles or prospective buys on
Google search,” Jayakumar says.
May 2010 | Pitch | 51
GENRE ANALYSIS

Search Engines
Rank Website Unique users* (in Crore) Percentage change
1 Google Search 3.8 8.07
2 Yahoo Search 1.0 10.75
3 Ask.com 0.6 8.18
4 Mywebresearch.com 0.5 12.5
5 Bing.com 0.4 3.86

(Source: ViziSense; * as in March 2010)

The much-hyped launch of Bing has not been able to
make a dent in the long-enjoyed monopoly of Google
Web Portals
Rank Website Unique users* (in Crore) Percentage change
1 Yahoo.com 2.8 7.2
2 Rediff.com 1.2 8.33
3 Msn.com 0.7 13.51
4 In.com 0.5 11.86
5 Indiatimes.com 0.5 -7.08
(Source: ViziSense; * as in March 2010)
While late-entrant In.com is gaining audience at a good
rate, popularity of old-guard, Indiatimes is on a decline
According to Google’s ‘Brand ing. In insurance, LIC (Life Insur-
Zeitgeist’ which highlights the most ance Corporation) was the top
searched brands, mobile phone searched brand followed by ICICI
maker Nokia emerged as the most Prudential and Bajaj Allianz.
searched brand in India followed India, according to Jayakumar,
by State Bank of India, Samsung, leads the world in online search for
Sony and BSNL. investing and stock markets.
Financial sector recorded a 73 Another interesting trend, accord-
per cent growth in terms of search- ing to Google is, air travel giving way
es and 33 per cent of these queries to rail and bus bookings in the online
were about banking and net bank- travel category. The Indian Railway
“India leads the world
in online search
for investing and
stock markets”
Narasimha Jayakumar,
Business Head, Google India
booking website is by far the most
popular brand overall in travel.
In the travel category, honey-
moon packages are the most re-
searched for, followed by domestic
holidays and international holi-
days, says Jayakumar.
Besides the larger players, local
players are also looking for a share
in the search space. Kiran Konduri,
Co-founder, Ask Laila, notes, “The
Indian or local search has seen tre-
mendous growth over the last two
years. While we have over 50 crore
subscribers, there are only one
crore mobile internet users in India.
Over the years local search on mo-
bile phones will only mature and the
search engine market will be richer,
much capable and even larger.”
Anurag Dod, CEO and Co-Found-
er, Guruji.com, adds, “Search is
expected to be more than $50 mil-
lion market and the growth of local
or Indian search market will have

52 | Pitch | May 2010

bigger role to play with the growing
internet penetration.”
With so much action on the search
side, no doubt marketers are tap-
ping the opportunity to display their
messages in the right context. That
has given rise to advertising prod-
ucts like AdWords of Google.
Beyond search
Even though online display adver-
tisement comprising banner ads, rich
media, digital video and sponsored
links has relatively large number of
participants but compared to search
engine advertising, it enjoys a lim-
ited share in the total spends.
In the display advertising space,
horizontal portals like Yahoo, Red-
iff, In, MSN and Indiatimes com-
mand a huge share. As per the Viz-
isense report for March 2010, Yahoo
was the leading horizontal portal
with 2.83 crore unique users, while
Rediff had 1.17 crore unique users.
According to Nitin Mathur, Senior
Director, Marketing, Yahoo India,
Yahoo enjoys a leadership position
in the horizontal portal space by
reaching over 73 per cent of the
Indian internet audience. “The
last six months have been incred-
ible and the work we have done to
create personally relevant web ex-
periences for consumers has made
Yahoo an even more valuable asset
for its advertisers. We have intro-
duced some key innovations to our
core consumer products through
the Yahoo home page, email, search
and messenger.”
As technology keeps updating
itself and more people are opting
for broadband, portals are experi-
menting with rich media and em-
bedding advertising models within.
“All brands nowadays are opt-
ing for innovations to capture their
“Local or Indian “Local search through
search market will mobile phones will
have a bigger role to make the search en-
play in the future” gine market richer”
Anurag Dod, Kiran Konduri,
CEO and Co-Founder, Guruji.com Co-Founder, Ask Laila
target audience,” says Mathur, not offer. Rajan Srinivasan, VP,
adding, “We at Yahoo activate the Sales, Web 18, says, “The opportu-
power of our vast network, to ena- nities are big to co-create, interact
ble the brand reach more premium and engage their consumers in the
audiences, in the right place and at digital space - be it ideas, discussion
the right time. For example, Colors’ forums, feedback, develop new fla-
reality show, Big Boss launched vours of coffees for Café Coffee Day
a microsite on Yahoo and with-in or to win substantial prize through
just four weeks, the microsite wit- an online contest with Fastrack.”
nessed 33 lakh page views and 4.5 Like Yahoo, Web 18 too had “some
lakh unique users hitting on the decent success” with its web reality
website. There were 17,000 contest property - Fantastic Five, wherein,
entries within 2.5 weeks with an it partnered with South Africa Tour-
average time spent at 6.3 minutes.” ism, to run a contest online to select
Similarly, Yahoo claims to have five winners. The winners were sent
“huge successes” with integra- to South Africa from where they
tions with popular TV shows such explored five different cities and
as “Channel V Get Gorgeous” or blogged on their experiences daily.
“Sarkar Raj” from Real TV Channel. While, online display advertise-
This certainly is one of the defini- ment provides a marketer an op-
tive shifts in the digital space, where tion to generate awareness, which
more and more brands increasingly in turn results in brand-building
are getting into the conversational in the long run, search advertising
mode or user generated content, can help a marketer generate leads
which traditional advertising does in a short span of time.
May 2010 | Pitch | 53
COLUMN
“Localisation is order
of the day on internet”
Language portals can help brands connect with locals
I
ndia is a diverse country, lan-
guages are very much part of our
culture. Only 10 per cent of our
population is comfortable with Eng-
lish. In the last couple of years, Eng-
lish newspapers have not been able to
show significant growth, whereas lan-
guage newspapers have been showing
good growth. Different media vehicles,
including internet, have now realised
that it is time to focus on the majority,
the whopping 90 per cent. The reason
for English being the most popular
language on the internet until now is
that the medium’s penetration was
mostly limited to Tier-I cities only.
Also, the search engines are not ready
for the Indian languages, i.e. it doesn’t
throw up results from language sites.
Unsurprisingly, there are not many us-
ers who are aware about the existence
of language portals in India.
Now the internet is penetrating into
Tier-II and Tier-III cities where local
language is preferred. With internet be-
coming a reality, both on PC and mobile,
users in these towns look for content in
local languages.
Local content
On the internet, India needs local clas-
sifieds, local events, local news, and lo-
cal shopping deals. And if these are in
local languages they will be consumed
a lot more by surfers. Collecting all
these is no small task. Once you have a
54 | Pitch | May 2010
B G Mahesh
CEO, Greynium
vibrant platform the number of repeat
users would increase dramatically on
local portals.
Advertisers are always interested in
increasing the reach for their product.
When a bank starts a new local branch
the best way to attract customers would
be to advertise on a portal that caters to
the specific locality.
Local users too have some needs that
can be provided only by national level
portals. E-commerce portals dealing in
air ticketing, train ticketing, travel and
Internet penetration
into Tier-II and Tier-III
cities is necessitating
content in local
languages
tourism services have taken lead and
are making the services available to
local users. Some of the travel portals
have already launched their language
version as they see huge untapped rev-
enues in local markets.
Language advertising
In print, TV and radio (basically other
than internet), we are increasingly
witnessing advertisements in local lan-
Rajesh Jain
MD, Netcore Solutions
guages. On South Indian TV channels,
we see the Bollywood stars speaking the
local language, though dubbed, simply
because the message is better conveyed
and better accepted in the local lan-
guage. Similar phenomenon will work
on the internet too. Language display
banners on local content pages have
shown four to five times higher click
through rates (CTR) compared to Eng-
lish creatives, this is a huge bonanza for
publishers and advertisers.
With local language portals gain-
ing popularity, brands reach out to the
language speaking population. DTH
has been gaining popularity in India,
so is the competition. DTH companies
want to reach out to language speaking
prospective customers. If they want to
reach out to Kannada speaking cus-
tomers, they need to advertise on Kan-
nada internet portals. So what finally
work are Kannada display banners on
Kannada content to sell DTH services
which have Kannada TV channels. A
focussed campaign will yield far better
results for brands and these local lan-
guage portals will provide the perfect
platform to do so.
India has been a little slow in adopt-
ing localisation, but the process is gain-
ing pace. Localisation is order of the day
and people are demanding local content
in their own local languages. Players will
definitely have to tighten their belt for lo-
calisation of the medium.