The Hindu Business Line : Visibility sells

If you are looking for a better return on your advertisement budget, or are considering newer channels of reaching out to customers, search engine marketing could be your answer.

The medium, which is still relatively small in India, is poised for big growth in the next few years on the back of significant increase in the number of Internet and mobile phone users, strong growth in the personal computer market and increase in th e number of people accessing the Internet through mobile phones.

Management consulting company Zinnov estimates search engine marketing revenue to grow to $0.6 billion by 2015 from $0.1 billion in 2008. The number of active Internet users is expected to grow to 198 million by 2015 from 31 million in 2007, and the number of mobile users is expected to grow to 750 million from 261 million, it adds.

“At this point in time, the percentage even big companies allocate to online budget is very low, but going forward we expect that number to increase,” says Chandramouli CS, Director, Zinnov. Large companies are gradually realising that online advertisement is a key thing and it is becoming a part of their marketing budget.

“Most of the companies are competing with global brands. So it is very important for them to be a global brand. Also, it is important that they can measure their return-on-investment, which is possible in online marketing,” Chandramouli says.

He says given the competition and globalisation requirements that small and medium businesses (SMBs) have, it is important for them to position themselves as a global brand as well, and that scale of advertisement is possible only through online advertisement. At present, SMBs spend very little on online advertisement.

“These companies always thought that advertisements in local newspapers will give them more visibility rather than a global reach through online advertisement,” he says.

New players in market

Another major reason for the growth in the search engine marketing revenues is the large number of search engines that have come up in India. Local search is a trend that has picked up in India, he says. Earlier, the revenue was split between top players such as Google, Yahoo and MSN, who had a good 60 per cent of the total market. “But from 2004-2005, there was a lot of innovation amongst the smaller companies in segments such as local searches or vertical-specific searches,” Chandramouli says.

Vertical-specific search engines can enable Indian search engines to gain a significant share in the market, he says. In a vertical search, the search engine looks up a very limited part of the Internet, catering to specific vertical needs such as jobs, classifieds, blogs, travel, food, etc.

Search engines that have niche offerings to serve specific needs of consumers will also drive growth due to enhanced customer satisfaction and will induce repeat usage and increased popularity for search engines, he adds.

According to Chandramouli, as many as 24 search engines have emerged in the last two years in the Indian market — JustDial, Asklaila, Guruji, Zatka.com,123india.com, mapmyindia.com, tolmolbol.com being some of the popular ones.

About $32 million venture capital investments have happened in the search engine segment. JustDial and Asklaila are some of the companies that have received funding.

shamik@thehindu.co.in

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