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Globally, of the $578 billion spent on all forms of advertising, $171 billion will be spent on digital advertising this year. According to research firm eMarketer, India will account for $6.60 billion and $940 million in these fields, respectively.
The majority of India’s population is below 30 and many of them are online, on the computer or on the mobile phone. About 25-30 per cent of digital advertising is spent on display ads. How do brands create a compelling ad on screen that does not mar consumers’ reading/viewing experience and piques their curiosity enough to seek more information about them?
Display ads came into being about 20 years ago but haven’t evolved much, says Madhu Konety, Founder & CEO of IceCream Labs, which has developed inPici, a technique that uses artificial intelligence to place the brand message and ads on top of photos on most websites, targeted based on what is contained in the photo.
“Video has been the only innovation that has taken place in the last 20 years. Else, different kinds of banners have been the only format.”
The advantage with inPici, he says, is that the audience doesn’t have to leave the content page even when they click on the ad and interact with it.
Display ads have been focused on brand engagement metrics but have had trouble delivering them, bringing down their efficacy and value. Their viewability has been questioned. “As a brand, how do you de-clutter and engage?
Context makes a lot of difference,” says Konety, explaining that inPici matches brand messaging contextually as an overlay over images. Since images are actively viewed, the ad and the messaging are also viewed.
Aaron Noronha, Director at media buying agency Mindshare, says this technology is apt for today, when content is becoming more visual and less text-based.
For Mindshare’s client Lifestyle’s private label brand Code, endorsed by Farhan Akhtar and Anushka Sharma, Ice Cream Labs targets articles featuring their images to place ads.
“inPici helps advertisers connect directly to what their target audience is consuming and build a better context for the brand.”
Konety claims inPici offers much higher engagement rates than for conventional display advertisements.
Viewability, he says, is three times more compared with traditional display advertising. inPici provides metrics such as social chatter and organic search, beyond the standards ones such as the audience’s profile and number of viewers.
A client who has worked with inPici for three campaigns for an apparel brand said that while he was pleased with the results, one had to bear in mind that the goal of the campaign determines the technology/solution to be used.
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