What you want is what you get

Brands are slowly moving towards ads that have context and interactivity built into them to reach out to the correct audience Advertisers have long wanted to...
What you want is what you get
Brands are slowly moving towards ads that have context and interactivity built into them to reach out to the correct audience
Advertisers have long wanted to pair commercials with relevant moments in consumers’ lives without being intrusive — something that was not possible in the television era. By creating a direct context, companies can serve consumers a contextual and interactive ad experience.
Now, in the internet era, this is both possible and more important than ever. With attention spans shrinking, and competition soaring for consumer time, making a truly engaging experience is a must. With the advent of new technologies like artificial intelligence and data analytics, machines can crawl the Web and track online behaviour. That information is critical to build context. Once that’s established, deeper interactivity in ads can be created, to help the customer make a purchase.
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Globally, contextual advertising was worth $106.49 billion in 2017. In India, according to research firm Statista, digital advertising is expected to grow from Rs 11,630 crore in 2018 to Rs 20,260 crore in 2020. A large portion of these ads will be contextual in nature. “We are living in a digital age,” says Vivek Bhargava, CEO of Dan Performance Group, a Dentsu Aegis Network company. “Every ad will be delivered with some context, some intent, some interactivity.” But, that is not something, which is in in the future. Companies like Nestle, PepsiCo, Fortis, FabAlley and L’Oréal, among others are already banking on contextual and interactive ads.
Last year, in January, Garnier (owned by L’Oréal) launched Micellar Water, a makeup remover through a digital-only campaign. “With the television target not being sharp enough, there is a lot of spillover. It wasn’t a mass-market product like shampoo or hair colour,” says Pankaj Sharma, General Manager at Garnier & Maybelline, L’Oréal India.
L’Oréal created a one-minute video starring Alia Bhatt and did partnerships with Google and Facebook to run the campaign. The ad got 50 million views. What more? An icon appeared at the end of the ad with a ‘buy now’ option. The conversion rate was a conventional 2-3 per cent. All L’Oréal ads have a purchase icon, and conversion rates are getting better. Contextual, interactive videos and rich media have opened doors to a whole new world of creative possibilities. When FabAlley, the Indian high-street fashion company, which also owns Indo-western fusion brand Indya, launched Curve, a label for plus-sized people it ran an online campaign, FabFitsAll. “We created one dress and made women wear it across sizes… The theme was: I love myself and I don’t have any insecurities,” says Tanvi Malik, Co-Founder of FabAlley. The dress sold 2,500 pieces, making it one of the highest selling ones for the brand. It also gave Curve instant recognition — 9 per cent of FabAlley’s revenue now comes from it. For its Indya brand, it ran a campaign called “IndiaAllDay” and “WorkInIndia” on Instagram to make Indian-wear mainstream.

“Click-through rates are dropping throughout digital advertising,” says Klaudia Kostarelas, Director-Operations at 1World, an online blockchain-powered platform that unifies data and advertising. “Interactive ads help you target your sales persona better and bring the right people to your website.”
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This is helping brands become smarter, more efficient and define their audience better. Google, for instance, uses weather forecasts to contextualise ads. It gathers 40 different kinds of data on cloud, wind condition, rain, among others, to predict an epidemic. “Using machine learning, we do predictions three weeks in advance for 200 cities,” says Bhaskar Ramesh, Head of video and brand advertising, Google India. For instance, pharmaceutical major GSK needed help predicting when its Ortivin nasal drop would suddenly see a higher demand. Google predicted the weather conditions, helping GSK to stock Ortivin better in affected cities. Click-through rates went up four times, and engagement doubled, says Ramesh.
Google’s other solution called Director Mix, identifies the key interest areas of the audience. The advertiser can provide a one-line description for each consumer segment. “The system generates the right kind of ads on its own. You need to create one ad, and the systems will create various creatives for different audiences,” says Ramesh.
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Creating interactive and contextual videos also need a different mindset. PepsiCo’s recent campaign starring Disha Patani, Tiger Shroff and Badshah is one such example. India is all about Bollywood and cricket. Around World Dance Day, PepsiCo released a song ‘Har Ghoont Mein Swag’. The song was distributed by T-Series on YouTube, and other music streaming apps like Gaana and Saavn. “Instead of product marketing, we learnt how to market music,” says Tarun Bhagat, Director-Cola & Hydration, PepsiCo India.
The swag song showed Shroff, Badshah and Patani dancing and drinking the beverage, and garnered over 240 million views in the first 24 hours. PepsiCo then announced a dance challenge on Tik Tok — the world’s largest short video content platform with 120 million users in India. Users performed the dance step (from the song) and drank a Pepsi at the end. More than 25,000 people uploaded their dance video, and those videos in turn got 3.5 billion views. Experts like Prashant Puri, CEO and Co-Founder of AdLift says, “Contextual ad is a format, and its offshoots are behavioural ad, remarketing ad, audience ad and interactive ad. If someone is reading about SUV, Toyota can put an interactive ad of its Fortuner. It is contextual targeting.” Nestle, after realising that ignorance was the root cause of India’s malnutrition problem, created a platform called ‘Ask Nestle’ to answer nutrition queries. “We can give custom meal plans, customised to the region,” says Rashi Goel, Senior Vice President-Consumer Communications at Nestlé India. Since launch, 400,000 people between the age of 25 and 34 years — have posted questions on the platform. The company has also come out with an AI-enabled chatbot, Nina, which is available on Parentune. com and on Google Assistant. While suggesting diet plans, it sometimes pulls out products from Nestle’s stable.
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The future of advertising is about brands making the connection with the consumer on a real-time basis — offline and online — to influence decision-making. “A lot of data and technology is required... It is about having a conversation with the consumer. Engagement is more important than just having a 30-second ad,” says Prabhu Kannan, Senior Vice President, Marketing Technology and Global Loyalty Delivery Leader at Epsilon/Conversant. That is not possible without context and interactivity.
This article has been written by Sunny Sen from Times Group.

Disclaimer: This is a promotional story by 1 World Online Inc and the liability for the same solely rests with them.

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