Ring in a better future

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The mobile industry in India is on a never-before high. With over 300 million subscribers, mobile connections are expected to touch a staggering figure of 7.49 billion in 2015. Revenues will also cross the $1,000 billion mark. Naturally, advertisers are perked up that this may be the advertising mode of the future. If a report by Berg Insight

is anything to go by, then the growth in the mobile market will ring in greater opportunities for advertising in the medium in the future. In fact, the global advertising market will account for 11.7 per cent of the digital advertising segment. As telecom professional, S Kundu, points out, “The simple fact that you are able to make a call or send a text message to anyone anywhere in the world makes this the perfect medium for advertising. And marketeers are realising the medium’s potential and are exploring new ways to exploit it.”
Experts observe that mobile advertising will gain maximum leverage in Asia, particularly in China and India. The high rate of mobile penetration will be the sole factor responsible for the prolific growth.
There are also a few other observations. Mobile owners are increasingly using their wireless devices to access the web. Twenty eight per cent of the users are also exploring new products through the mobile web. And you may find this difficult to believe, but 84 per cent of mobile web users observe that they would feel lost without their devices! About 18 per cent of the users say that they usually notice a mobile banner advertisement and 56 per cent of those who notice it visit the mobile site of the advertiser. “All these statistics are definitely interesting and they point to a growing trend — that mobile advertising is here to stay,” says Saumya Chattopadhyay, Head, Strategic Planning, Rediffusion Y&R. Chattopadhyay is also of the opinion that the mobile is the perfect medium for advertising because of the low transaction cost.
Advertising professional S Chatterjee believes that the future of mobile advertising is bright. Big brands will have the opportunity to showcase themselves on this platform. “And we are definitely targeting more consumers than before,” he adds. Be it WAP advertising or SMS advertising, putting an ad on the mobile is the in-thing. And the target audience is not the upwardly mobile youth of cities alone. It is also the rural youth. “It is the younger generation in Tier-II and Tier-III cities who are leading the way,” says Chattopadhyay.
The only problem with mobile advertising is that the screen space is very limited (about 80 characters), so one has to convey the actual message and the advertisement in this limited space. Also, Indian languages are not so well supported by all mobile handset vendors. Yet advertisers are hopeful that these problems will soon be sorted out.
There’s another issue that needs to be ironed out too. So far 3G phones have stayed out of the race for mobile advertisements. That’s primarily because of the low penetration of smart phone devices. iPhone and Android have only 0.4 per cent share of the market. However, impressions are growing but at a slow pace compared to the growth of the other mobiles.
Chattopadhyay sums it up well when he says that the Indian mobile advertising market shows promising growth opportunities. And with improvement in the 3G network infrastructure, India will soon be able to position itself as an influential mobile market.
The writer is a well-known industry watcher