Advertising Trends on Short Video Platforms

The DIGIXX 2021 Summit & Awards turned the spotlight on ‘Advertising Trends on Short Video Platforms’. The panel discussion was moderated by Shrenik Gandhi, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, White Rivers Media.

The panellists included:

Avinash Joshi, Chief Operating Officer, Natter

Bimal Kartheek Rebba, Co-Founder & COO, Trell

Devika Sharma, Director Sales, Glance &Roposo, InMobi

Shivank Agarwal, Co-Founder & CEO, Mitron TV

Viraj Jit Singh, Head of Revenue, MX Player 

Commencing the discussions, Shrenik Gandhi remarked that content consumption is growing faster than the global growth, and added that short platform has emerged as a breakout category in the cluttered content space. He went on to ask the panellists as to what the differentiation strategy is and how user and creator satisfaction can be insured through the platform.

Viraj Jit Singh responded by citing the example of MX Taka Tak, the short video platform from MX Player. He said, “Being a short video platform, MX Taka Tak has given us many opportunities to sell our products. The initial 5-6 months were of getting an idea to drive in the market share. After which, now what we focus on is the three key stakeholders – the Consumer, the Creator and the Advertiser.”

On what they do for the consumer, Singh said, “Product experience is at the helm of everything which is offered by the tech. Moreover, the current focus is on the Content that we bring to the table. The IPs that are necessary for all the short video platform and which have been created by us on our own for the first time will bring out the produced content by MX Taka Tak.” He laid emphasis on the need to focus on producing the content for the audience which can be used on short video platforms by them. According to Singh, the second most important thing is the spot for every platform, and considering the same, the platform has announced partnerships with 7-8 teams for IPL 2021. “What we are able to do is generate very good content out of the players, covering the behind-the scenes and fun stuff which they are doing. This will help us engage the superstars with their audience by going live by creating short form handles,” he added.

Speaking about localisation strategy, Mitron’s Shivank Agarwal said, “When we talk about localisation, it becomes very important for us as there are users from different countries who are engaged with our platform. Language is one of the aspects of localisation, but it has a lot more to it considering their occupations, festivals, and customs.”

While observing that in China, an influencer raked in $300 million worth of sales in a day which most of the malls are not able to cut out in a year, Gandhi asked the panellists what they thought about the potential that short form content held for social commerce.

Bimal Kartheek Rebba pinted out that most platforms in India currently cannot afford that kind of sales. However, he felt that seven years down the line, it will be a common phenomenon where influencers will lead to purchases and social commerce will become a common way of shopping for users in India.

He observed, “In China, it went from horizontal commerce to vertical commerce method, similarly in India – from Flipkart and Amazon to BigBasket and other applications have allowed for more virtualised purchase. People would thus want to understand the product before buying, not only through videos but through the sources they trust and in the language they understand.”

Avinash Joshi from Natter added here, “When we talk about trust and loyalty, it is important for us to figure out the phenomena of purchases. At Natter, we give importance to the loop funnel either during the time of purchase or at the bottom of purchase and this is what customers are looking out for.”

According to Joshi, “The second key aspect is to understand the brand objective and what is customer asking for even on short video platforms. Studying about the parameters is necessary before any campaign is launched and this is what we do, half yearly study, quarterly study and much more. Any short video format or any other is moreover focused on our marketing plan and media plan, especially in terms of content to build trust and loyalty and the advocacy loop for the consumers. Nowadays, people are more into getting aware about the product before buying them and that is the time when they go for YouTube or Google for the brand awareness and various other features as Conversion Marketing plays a very important role for the same.”

Devika Sharma commented, “There is need to establish a value proposition, even if we are able to win the race today there is a need for us to keep the users engage on a longer term basis. The answer to this is live, which is practiced very well on international basis, as it creates a lot of sources for fresh pieces of content which brings the user back on the app. Talking about the same market, there are 526 million live users out there. Live not only covers social commerce, but also brings up entertainment, education related content to a grade deal of diversity. Our focus on text tech is 24x7 and AI and ML are continuous focus areas for us. The other part is to drive synergies between Glance and Roposo. In the long term, we are also focusing on making content live and to be successful in the same.”

Catch the complete discussion here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnX_F8Jh9Gs