Smart strategy

New Delhi, Aug. 17: Indian companies are developing novel advertising tools for Internet and mobile phone users.

“By investing just a small amount of money, these firms help advertisers access potential customers across the world through computers and mobile handsets,” said Beena George, project manager, McCann Erickson India.

Internet advertising, which accounts for 1.8 per cent of the country’s total advertising expenditure, stands at around Rs 300 crore. It is slated to rise to 3.1 per cent of the total advertising spend in 2008-09 and to 7.1 per cent in 2010-11.

However, analysts believe the reach of mobile phones is greater than the Internet.

In mobile phones, India is adding 8 million subscribers monthly. There are about 300 million mobile connections at present, and the government’s target is to have 500 million connections by 2010.

“The mobile advertising market, which is still in its infancy in India, is a definitive winner for reaching to mass consumers as it is more interactive than any other media,” said Ravi Shankar Bose, director, Fugumobile, a mobile gaming and marketing firm.

The current online mobile advertising market in India includes broadcast SMS, brand jingles as caller ring-back tones, product placements in mobile phone games and banner advertisements on Internet that can be accessed through mobile phones.

Fugumobile creates games based around a brand’s communication and advertising messages, which is enabled on the mobile phone of the user. Users can switch it on anytime they wish to. “The games provide 3-5 minutes of one-to-one interaction with the consumer in a personalised environment,” said Bose.

In the mobile SMS space, too, there’s no dearth of players.

mKhoj, founded by 29-year old Naveen Tewari in late 2006, started by offering shopping deals but now helps advertisers target mobile Internet surfers through contextual ads based on key word search.

Some others such as 160by2 offer free text messages to registered users, where ads piggyback.

Two firms making waves are Komli and ideacts innovations. Founded by 31-year-old Amar Goel, Komli is just over a year old and offers advertising products for the online market in India. Komli received $7 million in venture funding from Nexus India Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Helion Ventures last year. The company plans to use the money to grow its headcount and introduce new technology initiatives in 2008.

ideacts received its first round of funding of $5 million from Sequoia Capital. The company plans to invest the amount in technology development and retail operations.

The Mumbai-based firm has recently launched a desktop interface application, called Clinck, which is for cybercafes.

“Clinck acts as a desktop interface which provides shortcuts to Internet browsers, messengers, search, news, entertainment and online storage, as well as advertisements from various companies,” said Saurabh Khullar, co-founder, ideacts innovations.

Some of the companies advertising with ideacts include Cadbury, Perfetti, Naukri, MakeMyTrip, Dell, Yahoo, Guruji, Radio Mirchi, Lenovo, and eBay.

“With the cyber cafe market growing at 8 per cent annually, Clinck enables us to offer an innovative platform to a broader set of advertisers that helps to reach the cyber cafe users,” Khullar said.

In comparison to desktop platforms, banner ads are the best known online marketing channel. Banner ads are usually placed on the most prominent places on a web page.

“A downside, however, is that banner ads cannot always reach the advertiser’s target audience, and they tend to have a high exposure rate without a correspondingly high click-through rate,” George said.