The Changing Face of the Indian Mobile User

Editor's Notes

• #11: BHARAT IS THE NEW FACE OF MOBILE INDIA Over the next five years, it is expected that 9 out of every 10 new Internet users in India are likely to prefer vernacular or regional languages to access the Internet. WITH OTT, SMARTPHONE IS NOW PREFERRED FOR VIDEO-VIEWING Smartphone video viewers are expected to reach 225 million in 2022, an increase of 117% from 2018. GAMING IS SKYROCKETING AMONG ALL DEMOGRAPHICS Mobile gamers stand at 250+ million and are consistently increasing. Women and non-metro areas form the major chunk. MOBILE IS REDEFINING MCOMMERCE By 2021, retail mCommerce sales is set to double.
• #12: Since 2015, Rural India brought 100 million more people online! The next wave of growth in India’s Internet population is expected from tier II and tier III cities and rural areas.
• #13: Over the next five years, it is expected that 9 out of every 10 new Internet users in India are likely to prefer vernacular or regional languages to access the Internet.
• #18: Primetime shopping moments on mobile
• #19: Impact of mobile across all stages of shopping
• #22: Growth of digital ad spend is 3X growth in ad spend Digital is gaining a good share of all media spends
• #24: The ecosystem is split into leaders, followers and laggards.
• #27: Today’s empowered consumers demand their experiences with brands to be meaningful, relevant and consistent across channels and devices. Marketers need a 360 degree view of who their customers are, what they like, and how they engage with the brand. They need to consolidate disparate data from cross-channel/cross-device consumer journeys to understand demographic, intent, and interest attributes and create robust consumer profiles. Marketers can use these profiles to make personalised experiences across screens and interactions, be it offline or online, a reality. What Marketers Can do: Recognise that customers can be anywhere Deliver connected experiences that are compelling and consistent across every device, location, platform or situation Connect the entire marketing ecosystem and extended value chain Invest in technology to capture, organise and integrate multiple data from multiple consumer touchpoints
• #28: It is the era of data privacy and trust, and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act are just the beginning of ushering it in. Putting the consumer first is crucial for the long-term health of our industry for several reasons. To begin with, the peaking trend of pervasive collection of data with limited or no restrictions was bound to end poorly. Second, marketers can focus their efforts on elements that contribute to marketing success such as creatives, attribution and consumer experience instead of excessively obsessing with data collection. The data privacy and protection regulations place great responsibility and accountability within the ad tech ecosystem, while at the same time standardising data practices of app publishers. What Marketers Can do: Invest in technology and data specialists to comply with privacy regulations Understand audience’s data privacy comfort level Reduce vulnerability to data breaches Reassure and build trust by communicating about policy revisions with your customers
• #29: Ad fraud remains one of the biggest challenges for marketers . Today, mobile fraud takes various forms and hence, necessitates a multi-layered approach to protection, detection and prevention of fraud. App marketers continuously try to mitigate fraud in their campaigns by blacklisting IPs and the offending sub-publishers. However, fraudsters are constantly finding new ways to grab a slice of the pie. With one of the highest ad fraud rates globally – fraudulent click rate stands at 32 percent compared to the global average figure of 15 percent. India’s mobile advertising growth figures lose their shine when wasted ad investments are factored in. Here are a few ways marketers can effectively detect, and in certain cases, prevent, mobile ad fraud. Develop Pattern Recognition and Heuristics Prevent Fraud by Detecting Fraudulent Patterns Prior to Impression Integrate Your First-Party Data with Your Advertising Partner Curate Your Own Database of Blacklisted IPs Fight for an Industry-Wide Publisher Blacklist Invest in mobile ad fraud prevention tools in their attribution systems. Investing in artificial intelligence and machine learning can help to better model and predict fraud, allowing for proactive intervention
• #30: With a marketer’s continuous struggle to keep up with the rapid proliferation of marketing touchpoints and channels, it is imperative that a holistic and effective attribution model is adopted. Attribution is the method of assigning credit to a marketing or advertising-driven interaction. Desktop is an easier and proven medium for attribution since it relies on cookies. But mobile is a different game altogether. A universal method is required to assess campaigns across mobile devices, failing which the impact of a campaign run on mobile may be underreported. Consequently, marketers are increasingly shifting from traditional attribution models like market mix modelling to more granular models like multi-touch attribution to track and improve ROI across both online as well as offline channels. What Marketers Can do: Build a thorough understanding of different models of attribution (last-view, last- click) and the technology behind it Collect both View-through and Click-through attribution in in-app and mobile web environments, to evaluate the reall ROI of the mobile campaign. Evaluate partners with the right attribution windows to maximize performance Combine probabilistic identifier with a deterministic identifier. Use a third party vendor for validation and for discarding self-attributed clicks/installs
• #31: Today, marketers must demonstrate a clear, measurable contribution to the bottom line. They must be able to track and measure impact across all channels, analyze data holistically to draw insights, properly allocate budget and demonstrate ROI. Marketing can involve multiple touch points and channels that have varying levels of impact on a prospect or customer’s journey with the brand. In order to assess the value and contribution of marketing programs, be it towards revenue or customer acquisition, marketers need to be cognizant of the following factors: Acquiring customer data: Marketers must have the technology and infrastructure in place to capture customer interaction and engagement data that contribute to lead generation and customer acquisition across various touch points. Ensure consistent metrics: Marketers must define consistent metrics for measuring impact across marketing channels - be it TV, print, mobile, outdoor etc. The siloed efforts on tracking, measurement and reporting are leaving marketers in disarray when it comes to tracking ROI. Fully integrated systems: The sales and marketing systems need to be connected in order to establish the true impact of marketing on business. This has to enable advertising and marketing metrics to come full circle through linkage to business metrics A structured data-driven approach is critical to measuring the success of any marketing campaign.
• #34: It is the age of the consumer, and CMOs need to be able to truly understand a consumer’s various aspects - transactional, behavioral, etc., to be able to build a valuable and long-lasting relationship across all touchpoints and interactions. The consumer, on the other hand, is spoiled for choice and has limited time to find the right fit. Hence, they rely on brands to recognize them and deliver personalized experiences that serve their needs and save them precious time. How, then, are marketers to deliver superior experiences customized to the individual’s behavior and preferences without a 360-degree view of the customer? This realization has mobilized the industry towards achieving a more unified view of the world, bringing CMOs a step closer to realizing the quintessential marketer’s dream - a 360-degree view of the customer. The next couple of years will see significant strides in cutting across data and tech silos to truly understand the consumer, catapulting CMOs into a truly connected and unified world.
• #36: Personalised screens have become the preferred entertainment enabler across multiple devices. The “TV-watching” industry has seen the influx of Over The Top players making content available like live sports matches, TV shows, movies and even original content A distinctive feature of the Indian OTT market is that it heavily relies on advertisement revenue. This is the consequence of majority of Indian consumers preferring to watch ad-supported content on say, YouTube or Hotstar, rather than an ad-free, paid subscription-based platform like Netflix. Since most of the OTT consumers prefer ad-supported content, it becomes a highly attractive medium for brands to invest in – for customer acquisition, engagement and outreach. A new set of data points are being generated for the consumer enabling a complete profiling of the consumer.
• #37: Objective: McDowell’s No 1 – India’s leading alcoholic beverage brand, has always enjoyed a special relationship with their consumers. They have always believed in celebrating responsibly. Over the years the brand realised that a disturbing pattern had emerged in the community and wanted to help curb this menace of drunk driving. For the very first time, the brand partnered with a start-up, Drive U to offer a unique yet feasible solution, unlike anything seen before. The channel of choice for this campaign execution was mobile. Mobile allowed the brand to achieve immense scale while still communicating with the community in a truly unique fashion. The brand developed an immersive video based storytelling experience which directly addressed the menace of drunk driving. What more? The brand combined innovative creatives with precise location, persona and time targeting, to deliver an outstanding campaign. McDowell's No. 1 was able to successfully reach millions among the community across the nation and nudge them to give up the terrible habit of drunk driving. Solution: The brand knew that in order to truly help fight the plague of drunk driving, they would have to offer an easily implementable solution to their target audience. In keeping with this aim, the brand partnered with the start-up DriveU. Through this collaboration, McDowell’s No.1 offered users an immediate solution, where they could seamlessly book a driver to drop them home. By making the use of mobile, McDowell’s No. 1 could provide their target audience with a uniquely personalized experience while still being able to achieve massive scale. The brand made use of a 4-pronged innovative approach to ensure that they reached the right person at the right place and right time. Persona Targeting – the brand reached out to millennials and young working professionals who are audio/video enthusiasts Location Targeting – the brand made use of bespoke location targeting technology, reaching users at business parks and popular bars Time Targeting – the brand reached out to their target group during the most crucial moments i.e. late evenings during the end of the week. Innovative Creative Format – the brand made use of video based rich media ad units which would help deliver high interactivity
• #38: The number of people in India who speak Indian vernacular languages is around 500 million - almost five times of the number of people who speak English. The introduction of local language support and the Indic keyboard in smartphones indicate the potential to reach a diverse audience. Soon enough, majority of the Indian audience will resort to their vernaculars not just to consume content, but also to make purchase decisions. This will necessitate brands to build ecosystems that cater to diverse audiences – whether it is in terms of customer insights, data analytics tools, or even digital systems that are compatible with multiple native languages.
• #39: Objective: McDowell’s is a Diageo India brand that was looking to reach out & engage its target audience by leveraging a music album created in association with one of India’s leading musician duo A Unique Solution InMobi worked with Wynk Music to create a organic presence for #No1YaariJam on the App reaching out to India’s music enthusiast The McDowell’s playlist on Wynk Music raised an immense amount of interest driving over
• #40: In the coming years, the share of programmatic spending is expected to increase significantly in India. Programmatic buying is growing not only because it makes transactions more efficient and more effective, but also because the marketer is now more aware of it and is taking steps towards adoption. With programmatic buying, a marketer will be able to cap the frequency of exposure of a particular campaign across publishers. It will also be possible to manage media buys across publishers in a transparent manner. Compared to digitally mature markets like Australia and Japan in Asia Pacific, India may be still in the early stages of adoption. However, awareness among marketers is increasing and one can expect a huge growth in the programmatic space.
• #41: The Objective A leading FMCG player aimed to drive awareness of its top chocolate brands amongst mobile-savvy Indian audiences. The Solution InMobi Exchange was the preferred platform for Doing Mobile Video Right. Through the InMobi Exchange Private Marketplace (PMP), the company could drive mobile video campaigns with control, precision and at scale. The Results Seamless mobile video ad experiences through VAST-enabled, SDK In-App inventory High brand recall and engagement amongst premium audiences Complete transparency through third-party measurement 24 million Unique Users reached; 2X Higher click through rates compared to industry standards; High brand safety
• #42: Deep technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are changing the landscape of the marketing industry. The idea of using AI to target the right audiences and thereby improve brand lift is going to be adopted by more and more marketeers in the near future. Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning will surely replace manual effort but what it will do more significantly is to to unleash the true strategic and creative potential of marketers and advertisers. For this to happen, they need to be ready and adaptive to these new technologies and bridge gaps in knowing and understanding them fully.