Reaching Captive Audience Beyond Search and Social Media Platforms

Authored by Lavin Punjabi, CEO & Co-Founder, Affinity Global.

There are nearly 4 billion active smartphone users in the world today with a growing number of internet users year-on-year. This provides a huge opportunity for marketers to reach a captive  audience.

Simultaneously, COVID-19 has also affected consumer online behaviour. The pandemic accelerated the growth of online purchasing across categories by 15-30%.

Marketers today are eager to increase their reach to this audience but have to rely heavily on search engines and social media giants to meet these goals. The increasing demand for these platforms for paid ads has ultimately resulted in increased competition for the same audience. This has led to higher costs of acquisition and lower ROIs.

A report by Online Nation in 2019 revealed that, only 34% of consumers’ time online is spent on search and social media properties, yet they make up more than 63% of all digital ad spend – over-indexing by nearly twofold.

To break through the clutter and stay ahead of the curve, advertisers need newer, more effective avenues for marketing that can help marketers accentuate and extend their reach to an active audience. With nearly 4 bn smart phone users, the solution has to be mobile-first.

Digital advertising today has grown beyond just the realm of the search and social media giants and there are more choices.

Newer options for advertising

It’s evident that brands allocate a majority of their ad spends on search and social media advertising. However, from a macro perspective, there’s an even larger audience that can be tapped through original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) of mobile handsets, and browsers. These have a potential to reach a high intent active audience of 500+ million users. There are infinite opportunities to drive consumer acquisitions, sales, app downloads, website visits, and engagements at a performance matrix.

This gives advertisers the opportunity to not only reach captive audience beyond search and social but also work on performance marketing options beyond CPM and CPC such as CPI, CPA, CPS, CPV, and others not available with search and social giants. Advertisers can thus have incremental sales, installs, visits and engagements with predefined and consistent ROIs.

The solutions

OEMs

OEMs or mobile handset manufacturers such as Xiaomi, Oppo, VIVO, Samsung, Jio, Gionee,  Micromax, Lava and others have complete control over the device interface, user flow, content customization and pre-bundled applications. This comes in handy for advertisers as they can use this information for targeting and getting users to interact with a brand while paying for the interaction on a performance parameter.

Browsers

A recent research suggests that 1 in 2 smartphone users spend more than 60 minutes on their default browser. Advertisers can leverage this and capture high intent users directly without relying on search and social platforms thereby eliminating competition in the marketing funnel. Moreover, brands still pay on performance matrix such as CPA, CPS, CPV, etc.

Affinity Global’s performance marketing platform VEVE has transformed OEMs and browsers into powerful advertising tools, empowering brands to reach users at multiple touchpoints through the device itself.

Multiple touchpoints on the device

VEVE’s native ad formats – Tiles, Notifications, Universal are user-friendly, engaging and non-intrusive. It helps brands reach their target markets with unique and personalised experiences. These ad formats can be leveraged to drive clicks, engagements, leads, sales, subscriptions, app installs and more, thereby reaching a captive audience beyond search and social on a performance matrix.

VEVE’s native ad formats

Whether you are reaching consumers through OEMs, telecom operators or browsers, VEVE provides creative and operational support across different geographies and in multiple languages. Further, the solutions are available both for local as well global campaigns. Advertisers also have access to the reporting dashboard that offers complete transparency and meaningful insights.

Advertisers can reach out to the VEVE team to know more about these unique marketing solutions at sales@veve.com

About Author:

Lavin Punjabi has spent over 16 years at the intersection of Advertising, Media and Technology in the US, EU and India. He is the CEO and Co-founder of Affinity Global Inc., an ad tech holding company. Under the Affinity umbrella, he has setup 6 different business units - SitePlug, VEVE, mCanvas, OneDash.ai, Yield Solutions and Munchable. Each business caters to a unique set of marketing needs across US, UK, EU, IN, ID and China. He graduated from Jai Hind College in 2004 with a BMS degree.

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and Adgully.com does not necessarily subscribe to it.