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Ozone Media Claims Regional Language Ads Outperform English Ones

The Performance Users Study conducted by Internet advertising network Ozone Media, analyzing 1000 online ad campaigns on its network, from January 2010 to December 2010 across various segments including education, travel, matrimony, real estate and finance, suggests that online ads in regional languages namely Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam, are 30% more efficient in getting response from Resident Indians compared to English language ads. The sample consists of responses from resident and non-resident Indians. However, the sample size is not known, and readers should keep in mind that performance of advertising can vary across networks and sites: these results should be seen as being indicative of performance across Ozone Media’s network of sites (which has regional sites), and not of other networks.

Response to Regional Language ads across segments

According to Ozone’s report, business & financial services and matrimony categories are the ones using regional language ads intensively in their web campaigns. It says that although 12 categories were considered for analyses, these two have leveraged regional language advertising in a major way.

Effective Efficiency of BFSI and Matrimony Categories - Resident Indians

Effective Efficiency of BFSI and Matrimony Categories - Non-Resident Indians

While, resident Indians respond more to matrimony ads in English, their Non-Resident counterparts registered a higher conversion rate with regional language matrimony ads. The reverse was observed in the case of business and financial services ads.

Language Chart

Ozone observed that Tamil and Telugu were driving the maximum number of conversions in regional language ads, across its network.

Effectiveness of Web Ads on the basis of Banner Size

Popunder, Catfish and slider ads were found to be most effective across both resident Indians and NRIs, while Leaderboard, Full banner and Popunder ads were found to be most efficient across both segments.

Ozone feels that this is just opposite to the perceived notion that ads which are in-line with the website’s content get a better response. The report also mentions that NRIs respond better to strip ads whereas square banners get better responses from resident Indians.

2011: 04/06
CATEGORY: News which will Effect the Payment Industry
Our Inspirations : The Gyaan imparted : What excites us
Our Journey
TAGS: #India
internet advertisements
ozone media
regional
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How India searched in 2010

While the IRCTC (railway ticket booking) continues to top the charts of the year-on-year fastest rising bracket, some of the newer interesting entries this year are the low cost smart phone maker Micromax Mobiles and YouTube Videos.

As the FIFA World Cup grabbed the real world attention, netizens too showed the excitement catching them online. Amongst the most popular on the web – Songs, Facebook and Google remain the top three.

Amongst the fastest rising people, Indians searched for British actress Aruna Shields and this year’s new Bollywood sensation, Sonakshi Sinha. Other favorites from Bollywood were Zarine Khan, Katrina Kaif; and amongst the men, Salman Khan ruled the web.

Fastest rising

irctc login
micromax mobile
youtube videos
fifa
facebook
cricket live score
twitter
way2sms
samsung mobile
zedge

Fastest rising people

aruna shields
sonakshi sinha
zarine khan
lalit modi
neha sharma
shakira
katrina kaif
sachin tendulkar
lady gaga
salman khan

Are Indians averse to transacting online

As per industry estimates out of almost 1 million tickets sold by Indian Railways, 1 in 3 tickets are sold online by IRCTC. This translates into close to 300,000 tickets being sold online every day.

Also consider this, Almost 100,000 people fly every day in India on domestic air travel. It is estimated that almost 35% of these people book their tickets on various online travel portals. Another 20-25% book on the Airlines Websites directly through Internet. Hence almost 60,000 people are flying every day using tickets bought through the Internet!

The above would clearly indicate that if there is a compelling proposition (Convenience in case of Indian Railways & price comparison & transparency in case of Airlines) people will buy online. However, when it comes to non-travel online retailing, the numbers look woefully small. A research report by IMRB-IAMAI indicates that non travel online retailing was estimated to be only 850 crores in 2006-07. In 2009 it would have reached around 1200 crores.

Before we get into analyzing why Indians are not buying online, let us look at how consumer ecommerce is behaving in a developed market like USA. Forrester Research in its five-year e-commerce forecast for USA has reported that Online sales amounted to a whopping US$ 156 Billion in 2009 and it contributed to estimated 6 % of total retail sales in 2009. They further expect online sales to contribute to almost 8% by 2013.

The top ecommerce product categories in USA* are:

Clothing & clothing accessories
Drugs, Health & Beauty Aids
Computer Hardware
Books & magazines
Electronic Appliances
Furniture & home furnishings
Toys & Hobbies. Etc

Let us look at the traffic on the websites of leading Brick & Mortar retailers in USA. The following numbers are taken from Comscore and represent the rankings amongst all websites in terms of visitors:

eBay: 7th
Amazon: 9th
Wal-Mart: 22nd
Target: 26th

From the above we can see that the top offline retailers like Wal-Mart & Target have a very significant traffic on their websites and are the 22nd & 26th most visited website in USA. Contrast this with the traffic rank as per http://www.Alexa.com of the big Indian retailers like:

BigBazaar (www.FutureBazaar.com) : India rank 836
ShoppersStop (www.Shopperstop.com) : India Rank: 1,847

Big Bazaar is at the top with an abysmal ranking of 836 this means that no Indian Retail brand is within first 800 most visited websites in India. We also need to see what are people really buying? Some of the products/ categories bought that are online are:

Books
Flowers
Cheap / low priced electronic gadget

*Source: http://www.census.gov/econ/estats/2007/2007tables.html

2010: 09/15
CATEGORY: News which will Effect the Payment Industry
TAGS: #India
e-commerce
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Usage of credit cards on the rise again

Credit card use — a strong indicator of consumer confidence — is on the rebound, touching a 15-month high in May. While consumer confidence is one factor triggering such high transactions, the move by banks to ramp up the credit card business, acceptance of plastic money for routine deals and increased security aspects are also aiding the surge, experts said.

Consider this: In May this year, nearly 2.1 crore point of sale (PoS) transactions were done using credit cards as compared to 1.98 crore such transactions in April. The May figure was the highest since January 2009 figure of 2.18 crore swipes, data in RBI’s Monthly Bulletin for July showed.

In terms of value, aggregate transactions in May was worth Rs 5,936 crore, the second highest figure in the last 18 months with the highest being Rs 6,770 crore in March. The Reserve Bank of India data showed that the highest-ever monthly swipes and value were recorded in October 2008, just before the US economy started showing signs of extreme weakness. In that month, 2.4 crore swipes led to PoS transactions worth Rs 6,442 crore.

‘‘ This rise was primarily because credit cards issued by banks, excluding those withdrawn or blocked, increased from 1.83 crore cards in March to 1.93 crore cards in April,’’ said Piyush Khaitan, MD, Venture Infotek Global, a major player in processing credit and debit card transactions using PoS terminals.

During the previous two financial years, banks in India exercised extreme caution while issuing credit cards. With 2.68 crore credit cards in circulation in September 2008, the downward trend continued right till March 2010. However , ‘‘ Since 10 lakh cards were issued in April this year, their effect in terms of increased usage was witnessed in May,’’ Khaitan said.

Apart from the push by banks to net new customers, experts feel the growth was aided by the fact that people have regained their faith in the economy and are more confident about retaining their jobs. The RBI had a small role to play in the surge.

2010: 08/09
CATEGORY: News which will Effect the Payment Industry
Tips for Card Users
TAGS: #India
credit cards
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India, China in five most attractive m-payment markets

China, along with India, has emerged as one of the world’s five most attractive mobile payment (m-payment) markets though competition is increasing to grab a larger share in the $280 billion sector.

A report released by Arthur D Little (ADL), a global management consulting firm, evaluating the current market conditions for mobile financial services in M-BRIC countries (Mexico, Brazil, Russia, India and China) has recommend potential players to enter these market immediately.

While only 32 million people in M-BRIC currently use mobile financial services, the firm projects that this number will increase to 290 million users by 2015, accounting for 10 per cent of their population.

These users are expected to conduct a total of 20 billion transactions in 2015, with 6.9 billion in China, the report said.

The report said that as mobile financial services are experiencing a global surge, the world’s total m-payment transaction volume is to reach approximately USD 280 billion by 2015.

“In M-BRIC countries, there is a substantial base of people on a low income spread across vast distances who own mobile phones and require banking services,” Thomas Kuruvilla, Managing Director, Arthur D Little Middle East, said.

“By bringing these two factors together, service providers can meet the need for a more extensive payment distribution network, especially in rural areas,” he added.

In India, m-payments will be bank-led, with banks offering this service to regions where ATMs and branches are not in reasonable distance. Over the next two years, players should focus their attention on top-ups and bill payments services.

China’s mobile phone users topped 800 million in the first half of 2010 and despite such a high mobile penetration, China’s mobile payments are still in their infancy, and competition in the market is already intense, China Daily reported.

A variety of players, such as mobile network organisers, independent service providers and banks, have already deployed a variety of technologies.

Competition between telecom operators and banks for a dominant role in the new industry may also thwart the development of mobile payments in China, Cao Fei, an analyst from research firm Analysys International said.

2010: 08/09
CATEGORY: News which will Effect the Payment Industry
TAGS: #India
china
mobile payments
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State of the Mobile – Opera Monthly Data : June 2010

Lets compare this with China and …

India has a penchant for Social Media sites, applications and music.

China searches, browses through news, has e-commerce sites and consolidated sites up there.

Could it also be that :

The Indian psyche is still awaiting the BWA
There is still not enough Mobile worthy content
Have we still not been able to convert to the Mobile
India, Inc does not believe people will actually transact on their Mobile

Snapshot : India

Page-view growth since June 2009: 374.4%
Unique-user growth since June 2009: 346.9%
Page-views per user: 398
Data transferred per user (MB): 8
Data transferred per page view (KB): 19

2010: 07/31
CATEGORY: News which will Effect the Payment Industry
TAGS: #India
#mobile
china
page views
page-view
snapshot
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PayPal stops Electronic Transfers to India

Online wallet company PayPal, which had run into regulatory issues with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), has said that it is stopping electronic transfers to the country, until further notice. In an email sent out to account holders from India , Paypal says that from July 29th onwards, users will only be able to request for withdrawal by cheques.

What is good on PayPal’s part is that it says it will refund the $5 (Rs. 230) fee usually charged for cheque withdrawals, for its users in India; it would have had to, in order to prevent an exodus from the site, because with electronic transfers, at worst, transfers below Rs. 7000 were charged Rs. 50. The RBI is concerned that PayPal operates as an unregistered money transfer company in India.

2010: 07/28
CATEGORY: News which will Effect the Payment Industry
TAGS: #India
#medianama
#payments
paypal
RBI
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Ozone Media Claims Regional Language Ads Outperform English Ones