First line: Came across a wonderful statement today, “Those that danced were thought mad by those who could not hear the music”.

Second Line: The Networkplay passion is music. Those who can’t see that, think we are mad! What me worry? What me care?

To run a business effectively, it is crucial to understand the core key performance indicators (KPIs); knowing the key metrics that drive your business will ensure that you are always making directionally correct decisions. Identifying the most sound and effective ways to develop real solutions for clients is always the goal, as opposed to simply shilling inventory.

However, in the ad business we’ve fallen into the habit of making everything complicated. This started when we were trying to differentiate what we affectionately called “new media” from traditional print and broadcast. We were selling a cure-all of targeting, accountability, and emotion, all within a 468×60 banner.

Unfortunately, we dramatically oversold what we could do and the entire industry suffered. The obvious point — that businesses still need to practice sound fundamentals even when confronted with a rapidly growing new medium — was lost on many, if not most, of the sellers involved.

Today, audiences are still shifting online with tremendous volume, and publishers and advertisers are still struggling to keep up. Building a digital media business is certainly not easy, but during the mass migration to the internet many of us fell into the easiest (and laziest) logic: Cast as wide a net as possible to hopefully pull enough new consumers in to make a good profit, as opposed to stepping back and thinking carefully about the true value proposition of the core business to consumers, advertisers, and shareholders.
Marketers could see the audiences shifting to the internet, but could not yet justify spending a premium for the so-called accountability, targeting, and insights every publisher, ad network, and interactive agency was hocking.
The result of replacing fundamentals with a dizzying online free-for-all is a general lack of cohesion in our business models. Audiences and revenues continued to grow at such a fast clip that we swept all the sins under the rug. Many of the most experienced people in the industry look less attractive to start-ups today because they simply forgot or never learned the fundamentals needed to run a profitable business.

Those fundamentals are simple:
• Focus your offering on core advertisers (your top 20)
• Identify those products that are effective for the core
• Price them fairly but profitably
• Track the key drivers of the business diligently

Is your business taking the bold step to invest in our future?

I am writing this article as I have been in the Indian internet industry for last 5years and the amount of trends that have emerged over the years in this market have been quite staggering, proving the dynamic nature of the industry. Although, the penetration of the broadband services to the masses has been a point of discussion, the speed at which the infrastructure is shaping up can also be a deterrent to the aggressive growth required to give boost to the subscriber base as the current infrastructure is dogged by the continuous hiccups on the operational front. But this is one end of the story the other end being the number of companies that are being floated by the day in anticipation of the market being mature or getting matured in future in some pre –defined time horizon.

But the point of contention is that race is for the piece of 47 million audience pie that is there on the internet needs to be strategized to perfection and the competition in the economy not only being intense is also unforgiving. One key parameters that I am looking at right now is how many internet ventures are making money and in what space. The venture and space is an outcome of the maturity level of the average Indian user of the services provided on the web. The services consumed at this point of time are:

• Content / Information
• E- commerce and Services
• B2B market place

The idea out here is to understand the mindset with which an average Indian audience is looking at internet as medium for its purpose of engagement. That’s is where the high end value added services are not being able to get functional over the counterparts in the developed economies where the high end consumer retail i.e. High Street Brands and practically every banking and financial service has been brought to your desktop i.e. insurance, loans , etc. Thus, above makes the competition in the space very intense and too much margin draining as there is not much scope for differentiated product offering.

So when we look at it from the point of business and its competition the success of the internet venture in today’s competitive marketplace would be around 5% i.e. 1 in every 20 that to with very aggressive valuation models.

Then there are companies who are trying to develop markets in the online space such as real estate, auto and gaming. Though these online high end transaction making value adding firms facilitating the offline model are there in the marketplace for last 2 -3 years the trend for actual success or failure would come out once they have exhausted their initial investment .

Thus, when we look at it holistically the success rate of the internet ventures in India are going to be very low unless and until they are able to create a market place of their own (Blue Ocean) to beat the competition or maybe get a head start. Also it will make some time for the Indian Audience to come to the terms of the global internet consumer and start consuming high end value added services over the web.

Emerging Trends:

Digital advertising on the internet is going the brand way, something we are clearly seeing through our quarter on quarter growth at NetworkPlay, we add on atleast 5new clients every quarter who have no tasted the internet before so clearly it shows that the adoption of medium is happening at a rapid pace from the traditional offline brands.

There is a lot of noise on the mobile side of the spectrum though we haven’t seen any break through in terms of innovations outside of Bluetooth as a technology where brands are using the services of the companies that can offering relevant captive solutions, case in point being IPL and CL matches where brands are connecting with the 40K audience on the ground by way of this technology.

Finally, its clear that the industry is headed towards audience engagements than just pure play real-estate occupancy in the digital space.

Auto & Consumer Durables:

Auto as a category has always been active on the internet and mobile and they use it very intelligently to reach out to their end consumers, so there is always a demand that is available on the acquisition side of the business however we have seen tremendous growth where now Auto Brands clearly are indulging in various innovative and engaging solution thus by creating a brand impact with their requisite audience through various high end sites in categories such as travel and social media.

As evolution, there used to be just Maruti a couple of years ago who adopted the medium early but now we have all car manufacturers understanding the medium well and we have over the last quarter seen all brands go the online route including the likes of Mercedes, VW, Hyundai, Tata Motors, Mahindra to name a few.

However I don’t agree that consumer durables have actually used the medium as well, there surely has been growth but cannot be compared to that of Auto as a category. Only high end durables have gone all out during the festive season where the opportunity to attract consumers for the lower end durables was much more compared to the high end ones.

2010 - 11:

I am very gung-ho about the mobile side of the canvas, I like many others believe that the time has come and it is just a matter of a few more days when high end bigger screen phones are made available through 3G, which automatically sets up the stage to do innovative branding solutions on the mobile. There are just 40-50 advertisers currently who are largely mobile VAS service providers who use the medium but the day isn’t far off when we will see a lot of traction from the traditional brand advertisers spending significant amount of their advertising spends on the mobile. Don’t forget a lot of first time internet users in India will actually be using their mobile phone to hook up on the internet and for all you know it is volcano that’s waiting to explode. We already are seeing a lot of social media applications on the mobile phone and with Twitter etc penetrating our lives in a big way, 2010 – 11 will be the year of mobile maturing in India.

Internet - Primary Medium?

Definitely not, I don’t think Internet is anywhere closer to being primary medium outside of the internet businesses in India; we are some time away to getting into that scenario.

Challenges For Growth:

We are involved in a lot of those whether it is evangelizing the space in the market place or building requisite products that will cater to the brand managers to make the right decisions. Basically, the problem has been perpetual however as an industry we have recognised that the growth in the space has to be paved by traditional brands coming online which only has instigated a stream of efforts from companies to build ad-products that will determine what brands actually are getting in terms of reach, frequency, time spent, engagement, TOM Scores, Impact studies etc, this is the language brand managers understand and they automatically will be empowered to make decisions when it comes to using the digital medium. At NetworkPlay we are launching a skew of products in that direction this quarter.

Mobile & Broadband:

I have no doubts given the power of handheld and its penetration in India, it will surely overtake broadband and due to the opportunity that exists, I will really not be surprised in the next 3yrs where a lot of first time internet users actually get onto the internet from their mobile handsets.

Automatically mobile ad-spends will increase over time.

Cheers!!!

In one of the Agency meetings last week, an interesting question was raised by the VP there -

“Why should DTH spends be a part of digital media(online) and not offline”

“How to I tackle and reason out my offline counterparts on DTH being a part of Digital spends and not TV”

He says, although am very keen to use DTH platform to advertise for my Auto Clients, I’m unable to justify if it really falls under my Domain!

I’m sure many of us would be facing the same questions time & again and if not, lot of agencies would still be contemplating on it!

So here is my take on how it justifies being in this medium:

- DTH in the first place is Interactive in nature unlike TV
- There are a lot of owned and operated properties of the service provider like iPizza, iMatine, iAstro, iTravel etc where complete transactions are now possible through a remote control without one logging onto the internet
- These properties are owned by the DTH operator, hence the monetising capability lies in the digital space than the offline
- Also, the Reach and Costs to advertise on DTH are on the same lines as the digital spends that still remains miniscule unlike offline(TV) and hence Digital, this is largely a convinience aspect!
- Finally, DTH can drive brands that have never advertised online as DTH to a large extent can be compared with the nature of consumption of TV. This invariably gets a lot more easier for Marketers to relate to unlike a laptop/desktop and internet

Most business relationships start out great, but how do you keep them that way?

Maintaining a business relationship / alliance is something you have to work at and can be compared to a marriage, which as you may know, needs constant effort.

Nothing beats having a great business relationship. We have several key relationships with partners that are simply fantastic, but no word of a lie, it takes a lot of work to maintain those relationships and keep them going strong.

In a way, it’s almost like being married. You’ve got to be sensitive, respectful, and in some cases, protective of your partner. There’s sure to be some give and take and there certainly needs to be a clear understanding of your goals and how you are going to reach them together.

In a business relationship you have to stay on message.

I could go on and on about how to be a good business partner or associate but it could be only “gyan” which not all would be interested in.

As we move ahead in our alliances game, I welcome www.holidayiq.com, another travel domain into our exclusive representation club.

This space is only getting hotter by the day and we at Networkplay are game to this competition. Watch out for the formal announcements on some big sign up’s soon..

What job do we do?

Most of us would say that we sell online, “If most of your business is transaction driven or commercial led, we can’t say that we are Selling Online. That’s money that is already earmarked for Online.

Selling is a process. It involves training ourselves to be marketing experts. It involves prospecting for new business…a LOT of new business.

It involves using best practices to discover prospects’ needs and objectives, and then creating mixed media marketing plans that accomplish the prospects’ goals.

This is a completely different process than reacting to an agency asking for a deal and then acting as a negotiating liaison between Sales Management and the media buyer. That is not selling, and it does nothing to generate growth.

The operative word is “HARD SELL”

Mr. Raj Thackeray must be happy man. After all he managed to win 13 Seats in the most recent Maharashtra elections. Well I would refer to this as victory for Mr. Raj Thackeray but someone’s loss for sure (not referring to any party ). A man who has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. A man who held Mumbai city at ransom & not for once has finally managed to pull off a victory.

There is a thin line between fame and disrepute, more so in the inconsistent world of politics. Bashing north Indian students may grab him headlines, getting arrested may even get him sympathy but what’s shocking is that all this finally helped his cause. Let’s just look back to what Mr. R. T. (Raj Thackeray) has been up to in last year & a half. Street agitations, taxis being stoned and buses being burnt, which got him incredible Media Coverage. All news channels talking about Mr. R.T. & all news Newspapers had that beautiful face on their front page.

All this seems to have worked & is truly unfortunate. I am not saying this because I live in NORTH INDIA. I am saying this because all of us are INDIANS first & then Marathi’s Punjabi’s or whatever.

JAI Hind, JAI Maharashtra !

October 2009 is a month of multiple celebrations for Networkplay. One, it was Diwali, the most awaited festival of the country. Two, we completed one year on 15th of October and what a journey it has been, from no where to becoming the number # 1 Ad network of the country and all this in just 12 months. WOW !!!!
And now the best one , we finally, after sweat and toil and back breaking effort, made inroads into the world’s and also India’s largest FMCG company HUL (Hindustan Unilever Limited) for their brand, Pears –Soap A 15 day long campaign for Pears Soaps for their latest concept, “MASOOM pears” , where users can share their key moments with loved ones and can win a chance to be in the next ad of Pears. The campaign is planned and executed on our network covering sites like www.tarladalal.com , www.Indusladies.com , www.123greetings.com , www.burrp.com and www.bookmyshow.com . Banners were placed on strategic sections and ad positions ensuring high visibility and interaction. Not only that, we also sold Rich media innovations as part of the plan with Home page Shoshkele on www.Burpp.com, Video banners on www.123greetings.com interstial page and page tear on www.indusladies.com Home page . Campaign has got tremendous response in terms of interaction and participations.
With this we have also broken the market myth that Networkplay is strong in Travel as a category only …
Again keep watching this space for more to come from networkplay.in

As a kid, I once instructed my tailor to put ‘double stitches’ on my trousers for it to look cool. While making a note of it, he wrote it as ‘duble steach’.

We’ve heard of ‘beer’ being spelt as ‘bear’, ‘cold drinks’ as ‘coldrings’, and a lot of other such mis-spellings by people whose education levels are lower than ours.

While it might cause us to smile, whenever a person makes a spelling mistake, THAT is not the objective. He doesn’t want to make us smile at the cost of sounding foolish.

The mis-spellings happen because the person making them thinks of those as the correct spellings. Or even grammar. Specially when one is trying to speak in a language, which he has ‘picked up’ as against ‘learnt’.

So also at work. When someone does not buy your sales pitch or our reasoning regardless of how simple or how correct you think it is, more often than not, it is not because he does not want to. It is because he thinks of his view point to be the correct view point.

While correcting someone’s spelling mistakes, we choose to be tactful so that the other person doesn’t feel bad.

But while trying to correct a client, we lose no opportunity to point out where he is wrong, with probably the result of antagonising him and taking us farther away from making a sale as ever.

The trick, is to find the right balance between being correct and being tactful to get the client on your side and buy.

And conversely, if you believe in something and someone else has a contrary view, be objective enough to figure out if it is you who is making the spelling mistake.