Mykarma.in

Being in the industry by passion and working for the industry by choice. I have seen a lot of action in my three years. The boom period, The hiring spree, The VC fundings, The innovations, The entrepreneurial spirit and The Rush for Moolah.

The recession has changed this a lot. No boom but actually a bubble on a brink of bursting. Yes the bubble 2.0 . Leave hiring, its a workforce slashing spree.VCs are tired.. they have lost hope that any of India’s digital properties will become a orkut or a facebook of India. Innovations are now rare and the entreprenurial spirit has gone into hibernation.

There was a boom in social networking sites… So much spamming.. oops ! I mean marketing but everything was the same just with a makeover. No one offered a unique proposition..

then came the ad networks boom.. I have lost count of the number of networks in the market. Everyone is buying each other inventory and selling it off to their local advertisers.

Yes how can we forget the numerous digital agencies that sprung up overnight and also washed out over day. Even the promising lot are living on the edge.

The twitter fad is still there. Many other portals came in with their own versions of twitter but still no success.

You can’t forget mobile ad networks.. Many came and I heard from them once and then were never seen again.

The current market scenario has hit many of them. One by one they go down. the spending spree continues, the employees are left high and dry. And one of the worst things is that some companies do hire new guys with handsome packages but fail to honour their commitment.

So what an agency/publisher/company/individual do if they want to survive ?

Its always survival of the fittest.

Agency

Digital agencies are suffering but some are enjoying attention as their clients have been put on a new track. As marketing spends are te first casualty in cost cutting Marketers are finding internet as a good low cost option to reach to their audience rather than the mass campaign on print, TV and OOH media.

The digital agency should approach clients with a proposition that will offer value without spending much. Dont pitch and propose big budget spends.. or else the guy you are talking to may have to cut his own salary to pay for it.

Other good way to go is “consolidation”. Digital agencies should tie up with offline agencies to offer digital marketing mix to the conventional plan. This will help both the players i.e the offline agency as well as the online agency.

Publisher

Go full blast in to the market and dont just approach agencies for business. Go directly to the client so that he would personally put you in the media plan.

Offer more value than just impressions. Give them customized plans and free inventory. Fixed spots and custom sections are one of the best ways to show value to the advertiser.

Also be flexible in approaches. Leaner times calls for more tactical and flexible approach. Money has to flow one way or the other.

Company

Reduce spends on the conventional medium and don’t cut your marketing spends.. he he.. I mean if you are reducing the marketing spends focus on more unconventional medium like internet and mobile where you can reach your audience at a fraction of your costs and can track every rupee spent. Internet is a great medium for ROI.

Even during recession the right approach is needed to get the audience and sales numbers. Communication and strategy should be according to the current economy.

The Indian economy is not in recession mode. People have money they just need to be approached right so that you have the money. The habit of savings is passed down from generation to generation and is a part of Indian culture which has saved us from the effects of the global meltdown.

Individual

Buckle up.. You are a part of everything I said earlier. Start working harder. Be proactive. Spend responsibly. Got laid off inspite your best efforts. Use your network to your advantage and find a new job and if you have that entreprenurial spirit. Now is the best time to grow. Recession mode reduces your monthly expenses and motivates you to reach further out.

How has the supposed global recession affected you ?

Google has just launched a new service called Google Ad Manager (as reported by Wall street journal). The google ad manager is a hosted ad server which allows users to manage and sell their own ad sales and inventory on their websites. After the acquisition of doubleclick in april 2007. Google hasn’t wasted any time in developing its own ad business.

The Google ad manager promises to be a simpler, intuitive ad management system which will serve, sell, optimize and manage your ad inventory. Google is known to make products user-friendly by improving its usability and giving it free. It’s a boon for small publishers who tend to keep a separate adserver to serve ads on their site as big networks won’t take them and other networks will charge a fee to use their ad serving technology.

Google has developed the complete Ad Manager itself and says that it will primarily cater to web publishers with small- to medium-size sales forces, while the services of recently acquired DoubleClick will be for big publishers. It is being said that eventually Doubleclick services will also be rendered free.

Google hopes to make money if the users agree to carry some ads that Google sells in ad spots on their Web sites that are not filled and Google would also take a commission on revenue from any ads it sells through the ad manager system.

There are similar services like Openx, Adbrite where users allow the site to sell their website ad space directly to companies. But what differentiates the Google Ad manager from the rest is that the users can opt to utilize AdSense ads for the times when no ad is currently sold in a given space or from other competing ad placement networks like Rightmedia, bluelithium, Tribal Fusion, Tyroo, Komli etc so that there is no unsold or wasted inventory. The Google ad manager system will automatically serve ads from networks that offer the best eCPM… There are also other services like Rubicon project, Yieldbuild, Pubmatic that offer similar services of optimizing ad serving and giving the best eCPM but they act like a aggregator of ad networks as users cant run ads on their own.

According to the google ad manager site the system has features like:

• Inventory management
• Yield optimization
• Ad targeting
• Trafficking, ad delivery, and order booking
• Creatives and rich media management
• Reporting
• User interface navigation
• Account administration

You can read more about the features here.

As of Thursday, Ad Manager entered a beta testing phase and users require an invite to register for the ad manager system. Publishers may apply here to participate.

I have also registered for the service and waiting for a invitation myself to check out the system.

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