Wireless as the next big Advertising medium !

This may not come as a surprise to all - except the media planners and buyers and maybe to some extent the brand advertisers as well, the next big media universe to hit advertising and the mega brands in the year 2007/ 2008 in India is wireless. Consider the statistics and we have the picture crystal clear –

156 million wireless subscribers by end January 2007 and the numbers are growing at the rate of 5 ½ - 6 million per month. Projected to touch approx 230 million wireless subscribers by end December 2007 at a CAGR of 54%. Also the proposed launch of 3G services in the 1st/ 2nd quarter of 2008 could mark a watershed year in the Indian telecom Industry. This opens up big time avenues for alternate revenue streams for the telcos and an opportune opportunity for the brand custodians to derive maximum bang out of their advertising moolah. This would take the focus away to some extent from the short code monetization which did not yield any incremental brand value.

Compare this to the monies being spent on traditional mediums like Television/ Radio/ Print/ Internet etc. by the big brands.

Television penetration is close to 70 million C&S homes and growth rate is almost stagnant (please refer to the latest studies by NRS and IRS). The biggest attraction of DTH platform being free of advertisements for the premium subscribers seems to be just an empty rhetoric which means that the same brands would waste no time in riding onto the DTH platform once the numbers are attractive enough to warrant low CPRP’s. Currently 2 players in the field – Dish TV belonging to Zee TV and Tata Sky belonging to the House of Tata’s and Star TV have less then 2 million subscribers amongst them while the third entrant Reliance’s Blue Magic is expected to make a bow only towards the end of the year. The 4th player in the stable, Sun TV is yet to make any announcements.

Internet is still lower due to the low home PC penetration in the country. As per a study conducted by Nasscom, the numbers are less than 40 million by end December 2006 and most of them are at offices and controlled by a hardware firewall due to security reasons which means that the majority of the people using these internet enabled machines are not entitled to surf popular sites like Yahoo/ Rediff/ MSN/ Indiatimes etc which command huge advertising premiums which means monies spent on click throughs do not add up to a considerable amount which corresponds to lower brand visibility and lower exposure. Banner advertising has lost it’s lustre and are simply ignored unless you have a breakthrough creative campaign which simply demands your attention and laced with a gracious offer.

Radio does not have any metrics in place to support the SOV being demanded by them. Moreover, the proliferation of a number of FM broadcast stations mean that all of them are vying for the same advertising pie which has effectively reduced the yield for each of them to operate and make decent profits. Secondly, The rigidity of the license fee structure makes it very difficult for most of them to break even, forget making profits.

Print has a huge reach and readership as reinforced by the media studies but the localization aspect with different editions and logistics put a huge effort and cost to the same.

Still close to 90% of the media budgets fall in place to these mediums simply due to the parochial attitude of the traditional buying/ planning pattern as dictated by the most obsolete of planners and buyers. Also add the kick backs which accrue to all and sundry in the media business and you would understand why most of the advertising spend is sewn up at a limited number of touchpoints. Secondly the wireless telcos do not encourage the use of wireless media for advertising purpose due to restrictions imposed by TRAI and hence the lack of a rate-card and initiative to en-cash the WAP/ wireless space.

Analyze this - most of the buying/ planning heads at the most big media houses have no inkling about the marketing/ advertising activities which can be carried out within the realm of wireless and the rev share patterns between telcos etc. I have met a couple of them who head wireless divisions etc at real big time media houses who seem to be at odds and ends trying to figure out the brand building activities/ solutions that they can provide to their clients. Time for a reality check guys? I do not blame either the agencyfolks or the clients simply because they need to be exposed to the telecom/ wireless industry from the other side and not from a client perspective.

Wireless is the only medium where you can figure out which person in which part of the country has visited/ seen your WAP page at what time of the day/ night and belonging to which telephone company! Simply put, it actually makes fun of the classical adage by John Wanamaker – “I know 50% of the money I spend in advertising is wasted but cannot figure out which half”

The wireless telcos hold so much data about their subscribers that it can put all the other media to shame.

Analyze this –
Each wireless telco gets a lot of data filled from you before a number is issued due to TRAI guidelines. This sharing of data between the Telco and the advertiser can get them a lot of knowledge about the subscriber profile which would be great for targeted advertising based on profile.

Any call emanating from any MSISDN’s help in determining what type of handset is being used. This would again give a very good idea for UI development for selective handsets which have a major proliferation in the market.

All MSISDN’s can be tracked real time. Each cell site tracks the movement of all the MSISDN’s in the vicinity – Location based which means you know the location of each and every subscriber. This can be useful for location based services.

Based on the time spent between 10.00 hours and 18.00 hours, the office location of the subscriber can be figured out. Similarily based on the time spent between 22.00 hours to 08.00 hours, the homing zone can also be figured out.

Based on the usage pattern of the phone, it is very easy to figure out whether the subscriber takes the local train/ tube to work place and back home or the road which can be used to arrive at some kind of consumer profile.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. The kind of detailed profiling and targeted interactive advertising/ communication that can be possible using wireless media opens up the possibility of every other media getting redundant. At the same time, it also opens up a slew of benefits for the end subscribers since advertising revenue accruing to the wireless telcos would subsidize a lot of services which would help in pushing the subscriber base which again would help in getting more number of brands onto the wireless platform. It’s a small world out there and all of us are interconnected with just a call away.