 "Kirthiga Reddy")
Do you ever consider how often your television ads are being screened to an empty couch or how many times your female-targeted content is served to a male audience?
By simply paying attention to your own behaviour, you can better understand how your customers are behaving. How often do you have your TV playing in the background while you finish household chores? And when you finally do fall into the chair to watch your favourite show, notice how many times you look at your mobile phone to chat to friends, scroll your News Feed or catch up on news. Overall, people are more attentive and tend to feel more positively towards the information presented on a mobile phone than on a TV. With TV, people's brains are more distracted and have to work harder to process the information. In a recent FB IQ study we found that overall mobile is on par with TV with regards to emotional intensity and engagement. People were equally likely to be as engaged on mobile as they were on TV. We also saw an uplift in message recall when participants viewed the stimuli on TV followed by viewing it on a smartphone, which is a great
It's easy to see that multi-screening has been recognised as the most significant consumer trend in India, along with mobile payments and streaming video. Consumer behaviour in India with regards to mobile usage is dramatic with 68 per cent of consumers opting for multi screening. (Source: WARC MMA Asia Report, September 2015)
If consumers are spending most of their time on mobile while your television ads are running, why are the majority of advertising money still being poured into TV? There is no question that TV reaches mass consumers, but what value does this reach alone have if those consumers, say a 'mother with kids' target audience, is buried in their phones during TV commercial breaks, or that it is not even her (and it's her 4 year old son). We know that reach doesn't really matter if you don't reach the right people. Platforms like Facebook, where the user is logged in as their authentic self, gives marketers the opportunity to advertise to the exact audience at scale.
According to a recent study by IMRB International commissioned by Facebook, almost 80 per cent men today are decision-makers for food and grocery purchases. Marketers have the opportunity to reach out to these new grocery shoppers through the unique opportunity Facebook provides to reach Indian males, who account for a significant portion of the users on Facebook.
More than 138 million people are on Facebook in India, which is almost half of the Indian population on internet and they come back on mobile indicating that the shift to mobile has happened. India also has the world's fastest-growing rate of mobile internet adoption (eMarketer) and most of these new consumers are coming on to the internet through mobile devices.
With India's consumers leading the mobile-first charge, it's time marketers start questioning the accuracy of the reach and efficacy they achieve through current traditional media. Your customers are on mobile- so why aren't you? And now with a shared back-end for advertisers on Facebook and Instagram, marketers can benefit the unified management (i.e., planning, buying, reporting, and optimisation), expanded mobile inventory, and creative portability. Both platforms should be leveraged like any other effective solution in a marketing mix.
Forward thinking companies are already seeing the benefits of running mobile-first campaigns. For example, Ola Cabs boosted brand awareness using Facebook as part of its #ChaloNiklo brand campaign on a large scale and it is a great example showing how brands can use video and leverage the reach of the Facebook platform. Ola ran a series of highly targeted video ads and photo ads featuring content from its #ChaloNiklo campaign. The video content and photos contained calls to action that encouraged people to download Ola's mobile app. Ola also drove people to its website with link ads in the News Feed and right column, and ran mobile app ads to drive people directly to Ola's mobile app. Meanwhile, Tata Housing in mid-October, Tata Homes announced the pre - launch of its project "Codename - Goa Paradise", wherein prospective buyers needed to register themselves through Facebook to ensure they receive their unique invite Code, which would ensure and allow customers to login and book these limited homes on a first come first basis. With this initiative which is also first ever social sell of homes through Facebook, as many as 230 homes were sold in a week and all the buyers paid the advance deposit of Rs 30,000 for homes being sold at an average price point of Rs 45 lakhs! The success of this initiative reinforced Facebook as a growing platform for commerce- helping all kind of business to reach out to their audiences.
Another brand Nestle used Instagram's enhanced ad formats, targeting and buying options to drive the results that aligned with their business objectives. Instagram has helped drive significant growth for Nestle, including a 42 points lift in ad recall, 6 points increase in message association and a 10 points increase in message association age 15-17. Nestle's results were achieved through both precise targeting and high-quality video creative.
By Kirthiga Reddy, MD, Facebook India
