Data and native are two big revenue makers: Sandeep Amar, India.com

Digital has gained momentum and is the fastest growing medium today. Among the evangelists of the medium is Sandeep Amar, COO, India.com Web portal Pvt Ltd.

India.com has spread its wings beyond news and information dissemination to technology solutions. iReach, their data management programme with first party cookie data, is a step in that direction. iReach offers 300+ audience segments. The content categories it has a presence in are entertainment, news, travel and sports among others. Its bouquet of content platforms includes Zeenews.com, dnaindia.com, Bollywoodlife.com, Cricketcountry.com, BGR.in, TheHealthsite.com and more.

Adgully had a freewheeling conversation with Sandeep Amar on evolution of digital, the emerging trends and India.com. Excerpts: 

AG: What are the key trends in digital marketing?
Sandeep Amar: Digital marketing budgets are increasing. Three segments that are showing a lot of potential are video, content integration & native advertising and programmatic.

Data and native are two big revenue makers internationally. Display banners are not witnessing that kind of growth anymore. Data, for some reasons, is not picking in India – marketers are not asking for it.

For us at India.com too native is big play. We have facilitated native solutions to quite a few brands, for instance Lifebuoy.

Unfortunately, native’s potential is not being utilised to the optimum in India as it is pretty commoditised. There are publishers who will say give us X amount of money and we will give Y likes.  How can one be sure of authenticity of these likes?

We are great believers that native advertising has to grow from believable content. For instance, Knorr said they want to establish relationship between taste and emotion. You eat something and it triggers an emotion. If you are served authentic food from your native place it would bring back so many memories.

To give you an example of how we do it at India.com, We were asked by a leading technology brand to do a comparison with the market leader in perception on various parameters. We engaged a third party expert and did native advertising only when the expert’s findings proved that the brand’s claim was right. The article too was done by an expert.

Content has to be believable, interesting and genuine. It needs to be done strategically. It has to be subtle unlike Hrithik Roshan asking for Swift car keys or prominent display of Duster in Happy New Year. I would say unobtrusive Ford in Three Idiots was much better executed.

To give you another interesting example, Renault, which is not an Indian brand, wanted to connect to Indian patriotism. They drove from India Gate on 15th Aug and by evening reached Wagha Border and captured Independence, emotions and spoke to a number of Renault owners in the way.

AG: Does native advertising work for most brands?
SA:One has to work hard on creating content which has value. Having said that, when business starts it is at operational level. Slowly it becomes a brand. Native advertising works the best when it is an established brand, content is believable and native advertising is done right. McDonald, for instance, tried to prove burger as healthy through native content and they were blasted.

AG: What is your take on programmatic ?
SA: The World is moving to Programmatic and for us to 65% revenue comes from Programmatic. Unfortunately, data demand is not there much in India. We have full-fledged DNP. We are not saying to shift to our DNP, but shift to data. Times and Bhaskar too have DNP. Data is the way to go. Why should you target a banner ad without knowing who is viewing it? We have tied up with TANE which is leading data management platform technology. We have first party cookie data and have base of 35 mn users. We are putting a lot of money and hard work to capture it. As of now, we are only monetizing through SSP levels private market options outside India. America and European counterparts are doing 60% plus bang on data. In India, it is absolutely shocking that sales are not happening on that basis.

AG: When we speak of video, what works better: FB or Youtube? 
SA: Has just started out. On Android, video streaming has started and you can scroll without interruption. I think reason to be on FB is not to watch video. But on YouTube, intent is to watch video. On FB, the reason can be anything, catching friend, to comment, like, etc. 

AG: Do you think mobile has potential?
SA: More that 60% of our users are now coming from mobile platform. As for revenue, it is not that huge – but it would in the times to come.   It has a growth rate of about 70-80% and it is very impressive.

AG: What is your take on app only strategy?
SA: It is early days in India to say whether it is working or not. Customers would take some time to settle down. However, globally e-retailers are pushing for apps.  For instance in China, B2C sites like Aliexpress are going for app. The reason why e-commerce players want to do app is it cuts out marketing and affiliate costs. App business is all about direct traffic. Second, in app the purchase is faster. 

AG: Are Indian companies ready for digital?
SA: But of course! Other than advertising which is not seeing lot of technology movement, impact of digital can be seen everywhere. Young start-up space in India is amazing, look at Ola, etc. India is very happening, practical and forward country. The revolution in satellite towns is massive.
Talking of corporates purely from the digital marketing perspective…

Some of them have not understood how to use it so their dependence on agencies is heavy. Marketers who have understood the power of digital and are in sync with the medium are reaping greater benefits.  The medium has a lot of potential and can be used in highly interactive and focused manner. A key challenge is that FMCG budgets have not moved much.

AG: Moving to the oft debated topic, can WhatsApp be used for marketing?
SA: It has closed communities like school groups, college groups etc – so maybe not that easy to get in there. However, political parties, which are otherwise not so good at marketing, have used WhatsApp amazingly well. This is where all their propaganda marketing is happening. Their messages keep floating around.

I believe it has excellent opportunity for brands seeking high penetration among housewives as they are avid users of WhatsApp. They have time and keep things floating around. Recipes with watermark of a brand, or for that matter jokes! Brands ask, ‘what have jokes got to do with my brand?’ It is about target audience. Real India has to be understood. WhatsApp is not about putting banner ad. With 150-200 million logins in day, it surpasses everything.

AG:Data shows that india.com and Bollywoodlife.com are doing well and have remarkable presence on social media platforms…
SA: Our success has come by focussing on younger people. We realized that in Bollywoodlife.com we don’t have fire power of big brands, so we focussed on younger people and their needs. Young is about Fun, trending. We also have a Newsbuddy app.

We have network with big stars and get content from them. We took strategy jump as young audiences are interested in young generation. They relate more to Shraddha Kapoor, Varun Dhawan, Alia Bhatt, Parineeti Chopra, etc. They react to them to a certain extent and also retweet. So we kept our focus there.

On India.com, we cover sports, travel, entertainment, technology etc. We don’t want to cover conventional ideas.

Coming to social media, what we doing right is young people managing our FB accounts. It is like young talking to young. It has given us excellent connect with the users and talkability.