Rickshaws advertising products of Coke, Bisleri, Dena Bank and Priya Gold? Yes. Sammaan, a Delhi-based organisation, has launched rickshaws that will do so.
These rickshaws are owned by the organisation but are driven by persons found eligible by Sammaan. Rickshaws have been given for free. The entire earning from the rides goes to the rickshaw driver while the profit from the sales of water, soft drinks, etc, gets shared between Sammaan and the driver.
The organisation gives the driver free uniform, identity card, bank accounts and an insurance cover of Rs 2 lakh. However, the driver needs to pay a maintenance fee of Rs 10 a day for the rickshaw. A passenger travelling in a cycle rickshaw can now have the luxury of sipping a Coke or Pepsi apart from listening to music via a headphone while he travels.
Moreover, he also gets an insurance cover of Rs 1 lakh. In addition, these rickshaws are becoming an effective way of advertising and brand promotion for companies and are an emerging trend in outdoor media. The good news is that the fare charged for a ride in these rickshaws is the same as in a regular rickshaw.
"We are also in advanced talks with Zandu Pharmaceuticals, Coca Cola and Dabur, and are hopeful of getting advertising contracts from them," said Irfan Alam, director of Sammaan.
The organisation expects Rs 10,000-15,000 a year from a single rickshaw. It has signed a contract worth Rs 1.26 crore with Priya Gold to advertise its brands on 1,500 rickshaws for a period of one year.
Sammaan currently has about 100 rickshaws running in Noida and Ghaziabad, and another 100 in Patna. By February, it will have rickshaws running in Agra, Meerut, Gurgaon and Chandigarh.
Sammaan also plans to install telephones in these rickshaws, which will add to the income of the driver as well as the organisation. It is also considering addition of value added services like payments of electricity and telephone bills through the rickshaw driver.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Interactive Searching - chacha.com
How many times have you searched for anything and felt that there should be a person in the search engine who could actually understand your need and help you out by presenting search options and results that are most relevant. Scott Jones and Brad Bostic were not satisfied with the way today's search engines functioned so they devised Chacha.com a wholly new and innovative approach in search engine technology.
The approach of Chacha is that when you search, you search with a 'Search Guide' who will either be an expert in the area you are searching or at least an expert in Internet searching. The site is still a Beta test version and the number of guides seems to be increasing steadily. (It took us 4 different search queries to get hold of a guide.) The biggest advantage of Chacha is that you can actually phrase a proper question and because the 'search guide' is human, your question will be understood much better than by a conventional search engines. This also means that people can not search for anything illegal and if anyone uses profanity in the chat session, the person can get banned from Chacha. Chacha is also self improving because it indexes all questions and their accepted results.
At the end of the search session you are taken to a feedback form where you can rate the 'search guide' as per his performance. And if you want to become a guide you can apply online too.
http://underground.chacha.com/
become guide - http://www.chacha.com/info/guidesignup
The approach of Chacha is that when you search, you search with a 'Search Guide' who will either be an expert in the area you are searching or at least an expert in Internet searching. The site is still a Beta test version and the number of guides seems to be increasing steadily. (It took us 4 different search queries to get hold of a guide.) The biggest advantage of Chacha is that you can actually phrase a proper question and because the 'search guide' is human, your question will be understood much better than by a conventional search engines. This also means that people can not search for anything illegal and if anyone uses profanity in the chat session, the person can get banned from Chacha. Chacha is also self improving because it indexes all questions and their accepted results.
At the end of the search session you are taken to a feedback form where you can rate the 'search guide' as per his performance. And if you want to become a guide you can apply online too.
http://underground.chacha.com/
become guide - http://www.chacha.com/info/guidesignup
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Friday, January 05, 2007
E-Papers Launched For Dainik Bhaskar, Divya Bhaskar And DNA
The Bhaskar Group has launched e-papers for their newspapers - Dainik Bhaskar, Divya Bhaskar and Daily News and Analysis. For the advertisers, they’ll offer the opportunity to add audio-visual advertisements at a premium cost. However, the paper will be free for only the first two months. Unless they’re planning to provide additional content to subscribers, I don’t see many takers. The value-add will apparently be in the form of e-paper customizations, and the access to archives.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
IAMAI-IMRB study: Value-added services on mobile phones to cross Rs 4,560 crore mark by year end
According to Mobile Value Added Services Report, prepared jointly by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB International, the Mobile Value Added Services (MVAS) industry, having a current worth of Rs 2,850 crore, could reach close to the figure of Rs 4,560 crore by the end of year 2007.
On fragmenting the current market size of Rs 2,850 crore, Person 2 Person text messaging (P2P SMS) dominate the industry with a share of Rs 1,140 crore. This is closely followed by ringtones, including Caller Ring Back Tones (CRBT) at Rs 1,026 crores. Then comes the Person to Application (P2A) and Application to Person (A2P) figuring at Rs 428 crores, Games and Data at Rs 171 crores and others including applications such as MMS at Rs 86 crore.
On fragmenting the current market size of Rs 2,850 crore, Person 2 Person text messaging (P2P SMS) dominate the industry with a share of Rs 1,140 crore. This is closely followed by ringtones, including Caller Ring Back Tones (CRBT) at Rs 1,026 crores. Then comes the Person to Application (P2A) and Application to Person (A2P) figuring at Rs 428 crores, Games and Data at Rs 171 crores and others including applications such as MMS at Rs 86 crore.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
IPTV In India In 2006: Tested, Launched, But Not Marketed To Users
Reliance Communications plans to launch IPTV in ten metro cities, including four metros, by the end of 2008, reports DNA. They’re targeting five million customers in 200 cities, adds DQ.
2006 was a year when IPTV and triple play were more reported about than actually seen. We were told that MTNL and Airtel were trying out IPTV services, and though MTNL eventually did launch the service there was never really any clarity on the regulations and the pricing. The websites still have limited information, and there has been little or no promotion to speak of, so far.
IPTV, because of a startling lack of opportunism on the service providers part and lack of decision-making (only statements, no policy) on the part of the government, has also missed an opportunity as Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata have switched to the Conditional Access System as of today. DTH and CAS services have marketed aggressively, and are more likely to capture the market. It won’t be easy to make consumers switch from these alternatives to IPTV in 2008.
We bring for you, some of the features of MTNL’s subscription plans for IPTV, available only on phone in Delhi:
The Silver Plan has a security deposit of Rs.1500, refundable with interest after five years. There are fixed service charges of Rs.30, and multiple rental options – monthly, quarterly, annual and lifetime. However, there are only 30 free to air channels, at Rs.60 per month, and paid channels at Rs.5 per channel per month, though at present only channels from Star are available. There are multiple options for video on demand: from Rs.200 per movie to Rs.5 per movie. Timeshifting is available for Rs.30 a month. For Videocalling, charges are Rs.25 for fifteen minutes during peak time. And this information is available only on phone. In Delhi, it’s been implemented in a few exchanges, and only one or two customers are apparently booking connections every week. The Bronze plan doesn’t have videocalling. The tariff plan for Mumbai is available online, here (pdf).
The target of 200k subscribers seems to be a pipe-dream for MTNL, and while as a product, IPTV has a lot to offer, and I feel that there is still a market for it – the communication from and information dissemination on the same has been nothing short of disastrous because they’ve ignored the end-user so far.
But what about Bharti, which was also testing IPTV? Bharti began 2006, hiring honchos for its IPTV services. They tested the service out in Gurgaon. The commercial launch still hasn’t taken place, in spite of their stated plans.
BSNL also tested IPTV in Pune, and plans to launch early in 2007 - first in Chennai, then in Pune.
Meanwhile, the content providers and the technology partners have been far more active and aggressive, particularly IOL Broadband and TIME Broadband, with which MTNL has tie-ups.
IOL Broadband increased its share capital from Rs.50 crore to Rs.70 crore, and got investment from the Times Group (5 lakh shares at Rs.100.share) and Maula Trading (7 lakh shares at Rs.95/share). IOL has a content deal with Star, and claims to have 20,000 hours of content. I wonder if they’ve achieved even 10% of their target of 300,000 subscribers by end 2007. The IOL Broadband stock ended the year priced at Rs.252.05 on the BSE, with a 52 week low of Rs.41.05. It had begun 2006 at Rs.69.45, increasing by 275.63% in 2006.
IOL also tied up with Anytime, and we spoke to Anytime CEO Craig Zimbulis about the deal. A deal with Time Broadband, we’ve heard, is also on the cards for Anytime. We also spoke to Time Broadband co-founder Tushar Shah. Time Broadband had diluted Rs.25 crores for a 33% angel investment from UAE based Clarion Shipping. They have tie-ups with IMI, Time Media, Film Producers Guild, Globecast, and have signed MOU’s with several others. I also saw a demo of the service, and the stock ticker was pixelated.
Companies looking at content-tie ups and investment in India:
- Israel’s NDS group
- Shemaroo
- ITV’s Granada International
What should we expect on the IPTV front in 2007?
- Launch of IPTV/Triple Play services from Bharti Airtel and BSNL.
- Increased marketing activities from either the aggregators (TIME and IOL) or MTNL, BSNL and Airtel. Or both.
- A policy governing IPTV from the Department of Telecommunications. Or so we hope.
- Slow adoption, until the next phase of CAS implementation kicks in.
Hope you had a good 2006, and best wishes for 2007.
2006 was a year when IPTV and triple play were more reported about than actually seen. We were told that MTNL and Airtel were trying out IPTV services, and though MTNL eventually did launch the service there was never really any clarity on the regulations and the pricing. The websites still have limited information, and there has been little or no promotion to speak of, so far.
IPTV, because of a startling lack of opportunism on the service providers part and lack of decision-making (only statements, no policy) on the part of the government, has also missed an opportunity as Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata have switched to the Conditional Access System as of today. DTH and CAS services have marketed aggressively, and are more likely to capture the market. It won’t be easy to make consumers switch from these alternatives to IPTV in 2008.
We bring for you, some of the features of MTNL’s subscription plans for IPTV, available only on phone in Delhi:
The Silver Plan has a security deposit of Rs.1500, refundable with interest after five years. There are fixed service charges of Rs.30, and multiple rental options – monthly, quarterly, annual and lifetime. However, there are only 30 free to air channels, at Rs.60 per month, and paid channels at Rs.5 per channel per month, though at present only channels from Star are available. There are multiple options for video on demand: from Rs.200 per movie to Rs.5 per movie. Timeshifting is available for Rs.30 a month. For Videocalling, charges are Rs.25 for fifteen minutes during peak time. And this information is available only on phone. In Delhi, it’s been implemented in a few exchanges, and only one or two customers are apparently booking connections every week. The Bronze plan doesn’t have videocalling. The tariff plan for Mumbai is available online, here (pdf).
The target of 200k subscribers seems to be a pipe-dream for MTNL, and while as a product, IPTV has a lot to offer, and I feel that there is still a market for it – the communication from and information dissemination on the same has been nothing short of disastrous because they’ve ignored the end-user so far.
But what about Bharti, which was also testing IPTV? Bharti began 2006, hiring honchos for its IPTV services. They tested the service out in Gurgaon. The commercial launch still hasn’t taken place, in spite of their stated plans.
BSNL also tested IPTV in Pune, and plans to launch early in 2007 - first in Chennai, then in Pune.
Meanwhile, the content providers and the technology partners have been far more active and aggressive, particularly IOL Broadband and TIME Broadband, with which MTNL has tie-ups.
IOL Broadband increased its share capital from Rs.50 crore to Rs.70 crore, and got investment from the Times Group (5 lakh shares at Rs.100.share) and Maula Trading (7 lakh shares at Rs.95/share). IOL has a content deal with Star, and claims to have 20,000 hours of content. I wonder if they’ve achieved even 10% of their target of 300,000 subscribers by end 2007. The IOL Broadband stock ended the year priced at Rs.252.05 on the BSE, with a 52 week low of Rs.41.05. It had begun 2006 at Rs.69.45, increasing by 275.63% in 2006.
IOL also tied up with Anytime, and we spoke to Anytime CEO Craig Zimbulis about the deal. A deal with Time Broadband, we’ve heard, is also on the cards for Anytime. We also spoke to Time Broadband co-founder Tushar Shah. Time Broadband had diluted Rs.25 crores for a 33% angel investment from UAE based Clarion Shipping. They have tie-ups with IMI, Time Media, Film Producers Guild, Globecast, and have signed MOU’s with several others. I also saw a demo of the service, and the stock ticker was pixelated.
Companies looking at content-tie ups and investment in India:
- Israel’s NDS group
- Shemaroo
- ITV’s Granada International
What should we expect on the IPTV front in 2007?
- Launch of IPTV/Triple Play services from Bharti Airtel and BSNL.
- Increased marketing activities from either the aggregators (TIME and IOL) or MTNL, BSNL and Airtel. Or both.
- A policy governing IPTV from the Department of Telecommunications. Or so we hope.
- Slow adoption, until the next phase of CAS implementation kicks in.
Hope you had a good 2006, and best wishes for 2007.
Year End Review by Lynn de Souza
Business wise, 2006 has been a good year for advertising with both value (up 19 per cent) and volume increases. The total number of spots aired on television has shot up by 35 per cent from 10.3 million in 2005 to 13.9 million this year. For the month of September alone there was a 51 per cent increase. Plus, there was more branded content on all media including cinema than ever before.
However, was this also good for the lay consumer, the housewife in Amritsar, the executive in Bandra, and the schoolboy in Chhatisgarh?
Our lives have been swept up by the media. A good one third of the average Indian's waking hours is spent with the mass media in some form or other - all through the day. Our lifestyles, values and opinions are being shaped by what we see and hear on the mass media as never before. 2006 gave birth or renewed life to many news and children's tv channels, global magazine titles, regional language editions of newspapers, FM radio stations. So far all of these, without exception, are advertiser supported.
It has therefore become virtually impossible for the average consumer to find a free moment in space or time where he or she is not accosted by advertising - on the streets, in malls, in airplanes, on the cellphone, in coffee shops, hotels and health clubs, while surfing the internet - besides the expected fare on tv, radio, newspapers and magazines.
It should come as no surprise to us therefore that he or she has begun to get rather annoyed. Our latest estimate of active ad avoidance in this country has crossed 70 per cent for every medium, among heavy upmarket media consumers. Passive ad avoidance is not far behind. Avoidance of advertising among the rural rich is even higher. I therefore doff my hat at all of us who persist with our careers in advertising. This must be the only profession in the world in which the eventual consumer does his or her best to ignore and avoid and turn away from what we have to say.
Intellect, our research and technology unit, recently released 'Engross', a survey conducted last month among over 2000 upmarket Indians to measure ad avoidance, ad perception and media engagement. Since we expected to find high ad avoidance levels, even on the more personalized media like radio and internet, we further probed on the reasons, our suspicion being that perhaps consumers didn't like advertising at all. Indeed, the feedback was exactly the opposite. An overwhelmingly high cross section of consumers enjoy and appreciate advertising, and find it informative and helpful.
So why do they avoid something they like? Simply because there is just too much of it going around to stomach. The same ad over and over again. Too many ad breaks. Ads inside content. Ads on covers. For the smart consumer, it's really getting to be a bad mad ad world.
There is a lesson in this for both media owners and advertisers. The day is not far off when these consumers will pay extra for ad free content. The era of subscription rather than advertising supported media content is approaching us fairly quickly. As advertisers we have unfortunately been caught up in the whirlwind of downward spiralling media rates, and have helped compound the problem of over advertising. Every time we have insisted on a lower unit rate we have been given bonus time and space by the media owners, thus contributing to the overload. We have together written up a volume over value charter, and the consumer is now clearly saying to us, "I don't like this. I don't like being taken for granted."
I hope we will all listen to this voice in 2007. Engross gave us another important learning - for years, content has been informative and advertising has been entertaining. Now however, the consumer finds content, even on the so called information media, highly engaging and entertaining, and considers good advertising to be informative. We would therefore be quite foolish to demean the value of advertising in his or her mind through poorly judged placements.
To 2007, may our business continue to grow, and may our customers enjoy it too.
However, was this also good for the lay consumer, the housewife in Amritsar, the executive in Bandra, and the schoolboy in Chhatisgarh?
Our lives have been swept up by the media. A good one third of the average Indian's waking hours is spent with the mass media in some form or other - all through the day. Our lifestyles, values and opinions are being shaped by what we see and hear on the mass media as never before. 2006 gave birth or renewed life to many news and children's tv channels, global magazine titles, regional language editions of newspapers, FM radio stations. So far all of these, without exception, are advertiser supported.
It has therefore become virtually impossible for the average consumer to find a free moment in space or time where he or she is not accosted by advertising - on the streets, in malls, in airplanes, on the cellphone, in coffee shops, hotels and health clubs, while surfing the internet - besides the expected fare on tv, radio, newspapers and magazines.
It should come as no surprise to us therefore that he or she has begun to get rather annoyed. Our latest estimate of active ad avoidance in this country has crossed 70 per cent for every medium, among heavy upmarket media consumers. Passive ad avoidance is not far behind. Avoidance of advertising among the rural rich is even higher. I therefore doff my hat at all of us who persist with our careers in advertising. This must be the only profession in the world in which the eventual consumer does his or her best to ignore and avoid and turn away from what we have to say.
Intellect, our research and technology unit, recently released 'Engross', a survey conducted last month among over 2000 upmarket Indians to measure ad avoidance, ad perception and media engagement. Since we expected to find high ad avoidance levels, even on the more personalized media like radio and internet, we further probed on the reasons, our suspicion being that perhaps consumers didn't like advertising at all. Indeed, the feedback was exactly the opposite. An overwhelmingly high cross section of consumers enjoy and appreciate advertising, and find it informative and helpful.
So why do they avoid something they like? Simply because there is just too much of it going around to stomach. The same ad over and over again. Too many ad breaks. Ads inside content. Ads on covers. For the smart consumer, it's really getting to be a bad mad ad world.
There is a lesson in this for both media owners and advertisers. The day is not far off when these consumers will pay extra for ad free content. The era of subscription rather than advertising supported media content is approaching us fairly quickly. As advertisers we have unfortunately been caught up in the whirlwind of downward spiralling media rates, and have helped compound the problem of over advertising. Every time we have insisted on a lower unit rate we have been given bonus time and space by the media owners, thus contributing to the overload. We have together written up a volume over value charter, and the consumer is now clearly saying to us, "I don't like this. I don't like being taken for granted."
I hope we will all listen to this voice in 2007. Engross gave us another important learning - for years, content has been informative and advertising has been entertaining. Now however, the consumer finds content, even on the so called information media, highly engaging and entertaining, and considers good advertising to be informative. We would therefore be quite foolish to demean the value of advertising in his or her mind through poorly judged placements.
To 2007, may our business continue to grow, and may our customers enjoy it too.
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