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Social Networks Bend Towards A Branding Strategy - Will It Rake In The Revenues?
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More and more social networks are announcing what I would call a social media branding bouquet of products for advertisers. Advertisers who have got used to using the digital medium as a lead and sometimes even a conversion generating medium are now being approached by leading social networks of India with a branding based model.
So Which Networks Are Moving Into Social Media Branding?
BigAdda.com - BigAdda stated in a report today said that it would be looking at making the BigAdda a branding centric platform. Mandar Natekar the newly appointed National Head of BigAdda.com said “We will position our platform as a branding solution provider and pitch advertisers to use BigAdda.com for brand building activities, rather than just carrying out lead generation and returns on investment (ROI) driven campaigns. We are targeting FMCG, telecom, lifestyle and automobile brands as advertisers on our site.”
Recently another blog reported that 25% of BigAdda’s traction comes from the BigB Blog who offlate has been in the middle a lot of controversy which has had a direct impact on his blog traffic. I would like to believe that the BigB blog is the hottest destination on BigAdda as on date and given that they haven’t still built engagement with users I think the same wouldn’t be as easy to build as well.
Ibibo.com - Ibibo.com has already initiated a social media branding exercise on their website which is quite apparent from the way they have been showcasing brand. Check the screenshot below of the idea campaign integrated as a feature on Ibibo:
And this feature for Nokia on profiles at Ibibo:
Also they seem to be running a contest for TataSky on their video site here.
Ibibo (MIH India) seems to have taken the branding route pretty seriously though they would need much more of this if they have to meet their losses that they seem to be incurring.
Will It Rake in the Moolah? If Yes What Is Required To Make It Happen?
Long Term Play - Branding is a long term strategy and its not something that will churn out the dollars on the first day itself. The Social Networking Platforms would have to create unique properties that allow ongoing brand engagement with users without making it too intrusive which may put them off. Also campaigns would need to be longterm in nature and this realization would have to be driven down marketers.
Requires Offline Push - One needs to have good connections with the media planners and brands which are primarily offline advertisers or atleast are not the kinds which would look for ROI. For example FMCG and Clothing brands.
User Engagement Key - Most sites even today judge their traffic by number of visitors and not by engagement centric metrics like apps interacted with or actions taken like groups joined, scraps sent, messages sent etc. These metric will become more and more important as time goes on and brands which will look to engage with these social networking platforms will look at such statistics.
What do you think? Social Networks will earn enough revenue via branding?
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yes, of course it will rake in the money. But, as you said, user engagement is the key.
Very apt analysis of branding through social media. Good story.
I’d be curious to know what the typical CPM rates are for these Indian social networks and what their click through rates are. Any insight here would be much appreciated.
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