Why Digital Advertising ?

Digital advertising is the practice of delivering promotional content to users through various online and digital channels. It leverages mediums such as social media, email, search engines, mobile apps, affiliate programs and websites to show advertisements and messages to audiences.

Online Marketing has made its presence felt in India during the last few years. Last year, digital media grew about 29.4%. This increase can be attributed to a number of factors.

• India is now the 2nd largest smartphone market based on the number of shipments
• India has reached a telecom subscriber base of 1.19 Billion
• 3G & 4G constitute over 75%of the overall wireless internet user base
• Data charges have fallen significantly to INR 4-6 per GB
• A massive increase in data consumption ~25 GB per month per smartphone
• The urban-rural gap in terms of the user base is decreasing rapidly
• Payments have gone digital with mobile Apps like BHIM, UPI entrants like Google Pay, Phone Pay, Payment Gateways such as CCAvenue and Citrus Pay
• 250+ Million people viewed videos online in 2020
• Digital Ad spend contributed 17% of total Ad spend in India in 2017

(Source: Reimagining India’s M&ESector, FICCI-EY report 2018)

The above mentioned facts prove that online marketing is the future of marketing and advertising.

Advantages of Digital Advertising in India ?

Internet marketing comes with the following advantages that are worth considering:

• Suitable for low budget campaigns: There is no minimum spend limit for online marketing so digital marketing cost in India can be as low as INR 1000 also
• Measurable ROI: One can track the performance of the online marketing campaigns and compare the results and ROI.
• Easy to control: One can control the inputs of the internet marketing campaign by monitoring the campaign performance in real-time and pause or stop it whenever required.
• Precise Targeting: One can target the desired customer group as per the digital advertising requirements like demographics, interest, expenditure etc.
• Global Reach: The reach of digital advertising is not necessarily restricted to the city, state or nation.
• Greater Engagement: Internet marketing provides the advertiser with an opportunity to converse with the audience and it does not remain a one-way communication only. An online marketing campaign is successful when a customer interacts with the advertisement.

Digital Advertising: Basic terminologies to help you book your online marketing campaign with a digital marketing agency

• Impressions: Impression refers to how many times a user has been exposed to your online advertisement. For example, if your ad has been seen by a user 5 times, it is equal to 5 impressions.
• CTR or Click-through Rate: This is a ratio which tells the advertiser out of the total number of impressions of the ad, how many times did the user clicked on the ad to visit the landing page. For example, an ad was shown to 100 people and 5 people clicked on the ad so the CTR is 5%.
• Conversion: On setting up an online campaign, the advertiser has to define the goal expected from the user like website visit, filling up a lead form, downloading an app. Whenever this goal is achieved, it is known as a conversion.
• Call To Action: Online advertising campaigns require the audience to interact with the ad by taking some actions. This link which helps the user to take action is known as a call to action. For example, book now; request a quote, join now, sign up for newsletters etc.
• Frequency Capping: This is a feature in online advertising where the advertiser can limit the maximum number of times a user can view a particular ad
• Geo-Targeting: Geo-targeting refers to targeting the audience in particular locations, for example, all tier 1 cities in India
• Audience Targeting: Audience targeting can be done based on gender, age, income, interests etc. The criteria would vary platform wise.

Digital Advertising Options

Your Digital Marketing Agency would provide you with the following options for running an online marketing campaign:

• Text Ads: On platforms like Google Search and Quora, advertisers place text ads that are shown to users when they search using relevant keywords.
• Banner Ads: These ads mostly contain images and texts and are mostly clickable with a call to action button.
  • Interstitial- Interstitial ads cover the entire screen
  • Leader board- These are rectangular ads seen at the top of the website and are the first ads to appear
  • Run-On-Site- Run on-site ads can be placed randomly on any page of a website
  • Mid Page Unit (MPU)- Banner ad placed in the middle of the page
• Audio Ads: These are audio advertisements similar to radio jingles that can be played on online music sites like Gaana, Wynk and Saavn. They can also be accompanied by banner ads.
• Video Ads: These are video advertisements similar to TV Commercials that can be played on online sites like Hotstar, Voot and YouTube. They can also be accompanied by banner ads.

Digital Advertising Cost and Rate Card

Digital Advertising rates vary from platforms to platforms based on a number of criteria. Some of the platforms that allow the advertisers to set up their advertisements on their own, also known as self-serve platforms like Google, Facebook and LinkedIn, provide you with options of pricing (CPC, CPM).

The digital advertising cost incurred by the advertiser, in this case, would also depend on the target group, ad quality and other advertisers competing for the same keywords/audience. Apart from these self-serve platforms, there are websites that allow advertising on their websites (in CPM and CPC format, varies site to site) in the form of banners, video ads and audio ads too. Following are the various digital advertising pricing models that can be offered by your digital marketing agency:

• CPM or Cost per Thousand Impressions: This is one of the important digital marketing cost terms that you would have to opt for digital advertising. CPM means Cost per Mille, the cost of one thousand impressions of the ad.
• CPC or Cost per Click: Another popular digital marketing cost term, Cost perClick refers to cost advertisers have to pay when someone clicks on the advertisement.
• CPL or Cost per Lead/CPA or Cost per Acquisition: CPL or CPA is another digital marketing pricing model where an advertiser pays only when a lead generation/conversion happens.
• CPI or Cost per Install: Cost per Install is an online marketing pricing model that is applicable only for app download. This is the price that the advertiser has to pay for each app download.

Apart from the above mentioned popular options, there are premium options also available like paid articles and influencer content that are priced higher than the popular options.

Top Websites for Digital Advertising in India

According to Alexa Rankings (A global website ranking system based on a website's average of daily unique visitors and its number of page views over the past 3 months), following are top websites in India.

Google, YouTube,Yahoo, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Hotstar, Amazon, Flipkart, IRCTC, Quora

Digital Advertising for Small Businesses

Digital Advertising is a good option for both first time advertisers and small businesses with a lower budget. With internet marketing, advertisers have an option to test their market and optimize their campaigns in real-time and the learning from the online campaigns can be taken forward to offline campaigns as well. The real-time tracking and ROI measurement makes online advertising a preferred media option for Small and medium enterprises (SMEs)