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Online advertising in India is gaining momentum in terms of growth over the past few years. Behavioural advertising is relatively a new phenomenon, worldwide. However, behavioural targeting is gearing up in India, with major online publishers and advertisers already adopting it.
Worldwide, two major market players, Tacoda and Revenue Science in the US, assist publishers and advertisers implement behavioural targeting. Large advertisement networks, such as Advertising.com, ValueClick and BlueLithium, have entered the behavioural targeting segment and are able to integrate it with geographic and demographic targeting. Behavioural targeting in India was introduced in India by Komli (advertisement networks).
An AOL spokesperson is of the view that behavioural targeting is mainly used in mature online advertising markets and that it would take some more time for it to impact India.
Rediff.com, which conducted a survey to understand the role of behavioural targeting in India, observed that behavioural targeting ensures better results for advertisers, due to the high probability of users clicking on advertisements. As a result, advertisers expect an increase in the number of clicks and optimal inventory utilisation without any revenue reductions. Since advertisers using behavioural targeting are able to make the best use of their gathered insights, they derive higher returns from their online expenditures.
Yahoo! also offers behavioural targeting services in several categories of potential commercial interest areas. It analyses certain factors to track a consumer’s progress towards actually implementing a product purchase and then decide on the kind of advertisement and its customer suitability.
Notwithstanding its numerous advantages, behavioural targeting will not work for Internet users operating from shared PCs such as in universities, colleges and cyber cafes. According to an IAMAI report, 39 percent of Internet users continue to access the Internet from cyber cafes. The report also states that the percentage of people accessing the Internet from home is increasing, currently accounting for 31 percent of the Internet-using population in India. |
