With a customer base of more than 320 million and has access to data as minute as what its consumers spend on and where they spend, it also has details of their geographic location.
Airtel recently announced the launch of its ad tech platform, Airtel Ads. The often-asked question in the past few days has been whether it will be similar to the ad tech platforms of Google or Facebook?
Airtel Ads is surely a competition to Google and Facebook, but its ad inventory is expected to be priced at a premium. Experts believes, Airtel has to fught with the two American tech giants , which bag over 85 per cent of India’s digital ad dollars.
Annualised revenue
Commenting on the company game plan, Bharti Airtel Chief Product Officer Adarsh Nair said Bharti Airtel had clocked nearly Rs 100 crore in annualised revenue in the ad tech segment during the beta launch and that it had run successful campaigns with more than 100 brands in the country and delivered eight billion impressions per month.
Media Ant cofounder Mukesh Agrawal said advertisers are looking for premium inventory, as the click-through rates and performance on Google and Facebook are not very encouraging.
“There are too many ad placements and as a result, there are a lot of random clicks that don’t make sense. Google’s display ads runs on third-party platforms and thereby give advertisers a wider reach, but it is difficult to find out if those ads have got the desired traffic,” said Mukesh Agrawal.
Target audience
He further said the ads served on Airtel are expected to be far more targeted, and the platform is also less cluttered. “This will be especially useful for smaller brands that want to reach out to a specific set of audience,” said Mukesh Agrawal.
The advantage Airtel promises to offer is more accurate targeting and that would come at a premium.
Airtel has access to data as minute as what its consumers spend on and where they spend, it also has details of their geographic location.
“These facets will enable advertisers to serve targeted ads based on geography. If an advertiser wants to invest in hyperlocal advertising, say, target consumers living in DLF Phase-4 in Gurgaon, it will be able to do so better on a telco’s ad platform,” says experts.
