Vertical Ad network Networkplay.in has in a short time capture several vertical players in building out its inventory for online advertising. The latest addition to its line of verticals is shopping which its announced today.
Networkplay has added 6 sites to begin with and these include Naaptol.com, Cafegadgets.com, Storrz.com, Shopping.Zeenews.com, Infibeam.com and Onlinedeals.in. Ecommerce players have been tying up with ad networks and one of the bigger fishes in ecommerce i.e. Ebay had signed up with Komli not too long ago. What one needs to keep in mind though is the effectiveness of ads on these ecommerce properties.
How effective can online ads be on ecommerce sites?
Well compared to other media sites where the objective is to consume content on an ecommerce site we can safe assume that the intent is to buy and that might also mean compare and buy offline. But it does provide a window of opportunity for online driven sales for advertisers who can sell their product online.
Does this mean that all ads on ecommerce sites are effective?
Not really.. I feel a lot of online marketers and ad networks alike hardly ever stress on the creative and relevance of ads. Most of them are usually concerned with numbers with pertain to clicks, conversions and inventory. Sometimes the problem isn’t with the number of how many but what you say when you reach out to the audience also matters. This is sometimes lost on the advertisers and the agency who are both in a hurry to get things moving.
What will be the challenge for Networkplay?
Launching verticals one after the another might seem great but the real challenge for networkplay would be to make sense out of different verticals and provide value through each in a way which is best suited for publishers, advertisers and even the visitor of that property. If networkplay goes the one size fits all strategy of more and more inventory across its verticals without adding any vertical specific value (could be kind of advertisers, banner sizes or even demographic user valuation) then Im sorry but according to me they shall see their conversions and value as well as the advertisers going down the sink soon.
Hey Rajeev,
We have discussed this in the past and I appreciate your valuable thoughts, it is bang on when you say one size fits all wont work. We are not going to do that. We launched our offerings in shopping keeping in mind our audience pitch that goes in the marketplace through our sales force.
We believe that transactional audience whether through our travel offerings or through our shopping offerings clearly dissects what we call audience segmentation and this is what is the key to success in the ad network business.
We dont believe in accumulating 2Billion impressions and then wonder whom to sell it to, so our mantra is premium offerings to brand advertisers through the audience we have on our federation that clearly differentiates jantha and serious shoppers whether on travel or shopping or even news/business. So we might have low sell throughs on our inventory but what we do have is premium pricing for brands that needs to address their business objective online. We believe that once the market matures this scenario of lower sell throughs will also change.
We are not launching any more vertical beyond this and this was our last of the verticals as planned. We did plan Entertainment but thats being sold at pork belly prices and we dont think we can add value to those inventory.
One more announcement shortly will happen from our side, which possibly could be the catalyst for premium pricing in the Indian Internet Marketplace going forward.
Its about belief and we are sure that our belief will yield the requisite dividends going forward.
If we go wrong then no problem, we atleast will have the satisfaction of trying than sitting back wondering what to do?
Patience mate, is the key, I dont get worried too much about what some people say because they have no competence in what they say so I rather let them be than worry how to change their perspective.
But must confess, you have raised the right point of view and we shall ensure we work diligently to achieve what we set out for.
Cheers
Ram
Its nice to see that you are acknowledging the points made in this post. I believe the ad network game would be way beyond just numbers and I think only time will tell as to how many current players actually end up delivering value in the longer term.