Digital media marketers explore opportunities during current ad slump

With the current economic slowdown having led to curbs in advertising spending by nearly half, online marketing agencies are working on building the digital media as a strong platform  because of its infinite reach and an opportunity for advertisers.

The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI)  and digital marketing company Ignitee Digital Solutions jointly hosted a round-table conference on building digital media as a strong platform in the Indian media industry.

(Left to right) Atul Hegde, CEO, Ignitee Digital Solutions, Prashant Mehta, COO, Komli Media, Vishal Jhunjhunwala, assistant GM – branding, TCS, Sumeet Mehta, CEO, Zee Learn; Debadutta Upadhyaya, national sales head, Yahoo! India; V Ramani, vice chairman and managing director, Ignitee Digital Solutions

The conference, ''Digital Media: From Experimentation to Practice'', aimed at highlighting the opportunities for digital media during the current economic slowdown and was moderated by Suman Srivastava, CEO, Euro RSCG group.

The round-table included industry experts Vishal Jhunjhunwala from TCS; Prashant Mehta from ad network Komli Media; Debadutta Upadhyaya from Yahoo! India; Sumeet Mehta from Zee Learn, the Education division of ETC Networks Ltd and Atul Hegde and V Ramani from Ignitee Digital Solutions.

The key insights that emerged were the requirement of advertisers for more effective utilisation of reduced advertising budgets and how the online media was uniquely positioned to meet this expectation.

''Like their Western counterparts, Indian companies now understand the recompenses of alternative forms of media communication apart from the traditional routes to help enhance their business and are enthusiastically accepting this form of communication,"  said Atul Hegde, CEO, Ignitee Digital Solutions.

Advertisers and their agencies now have to grapple with why they use the online media - whether for its tremendous reach or for the frequency of exposure it provides their ads.

Whichever be their primary reason, the challenge before them now is to re examine how this purpose is served by relying on ineffective measuring concepts like pay-per-click or pay-per-lead, etc, when no such comparison can be made with the traditional media that accounts for 98 per cent of all advertising.