FaceBook not anymore?

The tittle of the post may sound very unrealistic, as the way popularity of FB is growing in India and more and more people are joining it everyday, how can I write it off in my tittle? But that is what FB has started experiencing in some part of the world (read the article (link given) to know more... :-)). I have recently gone through a survey published on CNN.com, that talks about the waning enthusiasm of young population in America towards FB. 

Isn't it going to be an issue for FB across all geography, where some years down the line, most youngsters would have their parents, grandparents on FB and instead of a cool social networking platform, it will be used to micro manage the kids by the parents. Do you remember the days, when Landline phones were in trends? Remember the how desperately we wanted to close a conversation, when our friends used to make a call and entire family used to sit there watching us and (un)intentionally being a part of our conversation? Perhaps the biggest factor why mobile became instant hit, because it added the privacy and mobility part. Sooner or later, FB is going to meet the same fate that boring land lines met (assuming, they don't come out with a solution to this). 

FB is "cool" because it gives us the freedom and allow us to be what we are. Imagine, if we were to customized our status update and comments, so that it goes down well with the imaginations and perceptions my kith and kins have about me, the purpose of having my account on FB is lost and I am better without it. So enjoy the freedom on social networking sites for few more years until it becomes a tool for micro managing for parents.... :-) 

Mobile, Social and Video advertising spend grow by more than 40% in 2012-13

Online as an advertising medium continues to impress the advertisers and have grown by 29% over the previous year by Mar 2013. It was valued at INR 1750 crores in Mar 2012 and has reached at 2260 crores in Mar 2013. The online advertising space comprises search, display, mobile, social media, email, and video advertising.

Search and display continue their dominance with acquiring 38% and 29%, respectively, of the total ad spend, their share of overall ad spend has declined owing to rise of mobile, social, and video advertising. The Social media and video advertising constitute 13 percent (INR 300 Crores), and 7 percent (INR 150 Crores) of the online advertising market, respectively, both growing at the rate of 41% annually, while mobile advertising constitutes around 10% (INR 230 crores) of toal spend, growing by 46% from the previous year.

Please find below the chart of the growth of different categories in terms of ad spend.

All figures are in INR Crores (Source: IMRB)

The Power Of Thought

Our thoughts control our behavior or our attempts to avoid a certain behavior  Who we are, how we come across and the results we get are aligned with what we tell ourselves. What we lead ourselves to believe.

Take the evening news for example. The news presenters say 'good evening' and then proceeds to tell us why it isn't. (A borrowed line). The same goes for us humans. Nothing is good or bad until our thoughts make it so. It is these thoughts that set the 'vibration' we are in and presents to the world who we are at first glance - not who we really are because we are masked by fear, doubt, pity and so on.

The point is, we attract back into our lives what and who we are and until we are able to conquer fear, doubt and self pity then we will always, to some extent, dance to their tune. It must be said that these emotions can play an important role in guiding us but being in control of oneself and recognizing the emotions for what they are and why they are present goes a long way to self actualization.

In this or any state, we will attract people of like mind and the inner peace within us will make for some awesome relationships (among other things) because we have conquered our hang ups and can present the REAL us with the confidence that we are in charge.

Also, in this self actualizing state, we become emotionally stronger and tend to make more of the right decisions and with that happiness follows, clarity prevails and life all of sudden looks a pretty good proposition.

Mobile Advertising to Boom in 2013?

165 mill mobile Internet users in India by 2014: IAMAI-IMRB

The two major news which were broken out lately have fetched my attention towards a fast growing trend in digital advertising. Last month, the CEO of Google Larry page has hinted that mobile may overtake desktop as a revenue generator for Google. He has also predicted that advertising on mobile will slowly but steadily become more expensive that desktop and last week, Reuters has reported that Social networking company, Facebook doubled its mobile advertising revenue in the fourth quarter. The two giant of internet are showing and predicting a strong growth in Mobile advertising and it seems that sooner than later, it is going to be bigger than desktop. 

We can safely consider that mobile advertising has reached to that threshold point where it is going to take off now and 2013 could be the year when mobile advertising may actually find a lot of advertisers trying this medium to reach out their TG. 

At present, the supply of mobile inventory is more than the demand, hence mobile is an extremely cost effective medium, but as suggested by Larry Page, it is not going to last very long, mobile phones are slowing down Google's desktop business. Only 73 percent of Google's clicks come from desktops.

Everything augurs well for mobile advertising and it seems stage is all set for mobile to take a big leap this year. Don't you feel the same?

Precision Match: Buying user behavior?

How often you come across with the term of behavioral targeting, if you are a digital marketing professional? I can bet that many a times in a day. There are lot of networks, companies and individual publishers who have their own definition of behavioral targeting and claim to be one who can actually do it. However more often than not, we end up meeting with nothing else but disappointment.

Google worked on behavioral targeting for quite sometime and then opened this to adwords users. Google has associated a user’s browser cookie with its pre-defined interest categories (e.g. “Arts & Entertainment – Humor”, “Food & Drink – Cooking & Recipes”). Google aligns a user’s profile to a specific category and give advertisers a right to target the ads to a specific category or set of categories. But google still primarily tracks a users behavior through its searches. Hence, there could still be a set of data that it may be missing out i.e. it may not be reporting the engagement level and buying pattern of a user, which could lead to even better targeting, consequently great results in terms of ROI.

Preceision match  seems to be addressing the solution for this and making display performance campaign more effective. Going by the description, it seems an advertiser can actually buy user behavior instead of impressions, clicks or views. If it is so, digital marketing will become even more effective and a lot of money going to flow towards digital media in this year. Although, we need to wait to see how users are going to respond to it. Whether they are going to consider it a better way of showing the ads of the products, which they are actually interested in, or will consider it a breach of privacy and stalking them in virtual world. Only time can tell.  

Microsoft: In pursuit of Nokia?

This whisper started in 2012 that Microsoft is all set to buy Nokia and then due to some reason decided against it. New year (2013) is giving a lot of strength to this whisper and it seems that IT giant is in the thought of buying once a leader of mobile manufacturing company, which is struggling at this point of time.

The timing of acquiring Nokia can't be better than this because, Windows-8, the recently launched OS from Microsoft is creating a lot of buzz and it seems people are liking the feel of it on mobile handsets too. Nokia is struggling in handset market but still commands a good market share. Apple's Iphone 5 are getting mixed reviews, hence there is a place for being a contender who can challenge the growing popularity of Android and Microsoft with its new launch can very well occupy that place.

The question that would rake the mind of analyst this year could be "Will Windows Phone 8 do better, if Microsoft acquires Nokia?" Only future can tell.

YouTube Remarketing: Tool to look forward to?

Remarketing is an effective way to target the users, who have been to your website before. If the marketing objective is to increase the lead or the transaction per user, re marketing probably the best way to go forward because:

Remarketing

1) It is targeted to the people who have already been to your portal or have shown interest in your offerings but didn't take the desired action (transaction in most cases). Hence the spill over in terms of targeting the wrong TG would be minimal,

2) It is extremely helpful to increase the transaction per user, as communication can be customized as per the liking of the users (by looking at the buying behavior), hence conversion is more likely to be higher side.

If you are reading this post, I am assuming that your are aware of the basics of remarketing.

What I have discussed so far is remarketing through google or other third party tools which are targeting the intent of the users (especially in the case of google, since search is the intent based phenomenon). But this post is all about discussing the idea of having a remarketing tool targeting to interest of users. Is my language becoming a bit complicated? Let me try to speak in english... :-)... 

Just imagine a user, who unintentionally lands on your website and your remarketing tool drops a cookie on his browser, he may not be a prospective customer or at least may not require it immediately. Now, look at the different scenario, where a user who is genuinely interested in your offerings comes to your portal, the keyword here is "interested". Even if he doesn't buy your offering immediately but definitely a prospective customer, it makes more sense put your marketing efforts to target the second case (do you think otherwise?). Remarketing on youtube users is a same. Video is by nature an interest based phenomenon, people filter their videos based on their interest and accordingly visit the pages to watch the same. Now just think, if we have a customized offering for a user like this, what are the chances of getting this user converted? Answer is obvious, isn't it?... :-)