Social Media Poised at $3.1 Billion Globally in 2014 – India’s Potential?
Online marketing has been on on the upswing. We’ve so far kept you updated on the changing trends in digital marketing. India as a market for digital advertising and online marketing has however, seen slower growth as compared to international markets. And as Ajit Balakrishnan, from Rediff.com recently told us, it will possibly take quite a while to hit a growth rate as high as international markets.
In the USA, Forrester’s research which regularly tracks marketing trends, published this on their blog.
From their report, they draw the following conclusions:
- Search continues to lead interactive spend followed by display.
- Social media assets (like internal blogs, community sites) are really the only emerging media getting traction in today’s economic climate.
However, their take is that Overall Advertising Budgets will decline. The trending shift to Online Marketing is definitely less expensive than Conventional Media (which is possibly at its maximum potential now) which is the major reason for the prediction. Already, newspapers across USA are facing losses due to the uprising trend of social media like Twitter. A recent report concurs. This should directly impact Newspaper advertising.
The widespread outreach of Internet will soon reach out to the remotest region. In our budget analysis, we commented about how the Government is looking at rural unification via the Internet. It’s only a matter of time before everyone is actively using Internet-on-the-go, which is why the development of Mobile Technology will be one of the most viable platforms to keep an eye out for.
However, is the state of the international marketing scene reflective of the Indian scenario? A recent IRS survey shows how readership of the newspaper is increasing in India, whereas global trends show newspapers facing losses (however, all opinions focus on the eventual downfall of print media). The truth is, though Indians are also shifting, increasing presence on social media, and a gaining focus on digital media is testament to that.
As of now in India, Digital Advertising is still understood by ROI concepts due to which more brands focus on SEO and SEM tools. However, there are limitations. In the West, a company can pump in 40-50 crores in SEM, still be efficient and generate low pay-per-leads. India’s online market is lower. Hence, after a limit, increased dependence on SEO, Display-ads or a Click-based advertising model will grow extremely expensive. After a point, a pay per performance model will not generate as much ROI as it will get increasingly difficult to generate more leads with lower costs.
As Forrester reports, companies in the USA spend close to 3% on Social Media branding with an expected growth rate of 34% in Social Media spending by 2014. In India, we could well estimate the net worth of social media to be around 20-25 crores, (estimating a 4-5% share of a 500 crore market) that being inclusive of ads on Social networking sites, microsites and viral ads on the Internet. The report also predicts overall growth rates in other digital media, but agrees with our view of SMM and SMO having higher growth rate potential.
We’ve already commented earlier on our view of the growth of digital media in India.
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Hi
In India very few advertisers adverise online. I think this is the high time to have advertisers from different sectors to start online advertisements. This will help advertisers as well as customers.
Hello,
Now most of the Top brands focusing on online advertising, its just because the customer are engaging directly into the brands. I would India gonna be biggest platform for online advertisers.