Prime ad slots in TV, newspaper, the latest trend for ecommerce leaders

ecommerce leaders

Ecommerce majors are resorting to placing ads on different media for this sale season. Most of them are advertising on TV and in newspapers. According to a report from ad research firm TAM Media Research Pvt. Ltd, the leading 50 companies have spent a gargantuan Rs. 1,200 crores on advertising in the last quarter ending September.

This figure is up by 46.3% from the ad spends last year. The report said that most of the ecommerce companies were jostling for primetime space. While many are going in for front page spreads with leading newspapers, TV is a popular choice, due to its wide reach.

K.A Srinivasan, co-founder, Amagi Media Labs Pvt. Ltd, a TV media company, feels that the number of newbie companies that advertise on TV has doubled in 2015 compared to 2014.He says, “Clearly, TV provides huge reach in one go and cost per reach is also the lowest among all media. Increasingly, we are seeing pressure from investors and board as well to advertise on TV for rapid scaling.”

Anything to get the message across

Sellers are looking at advertising in the best medium that will help get them visibility. Suchi Mukherjee, co-founder of Limeroad, says that this is the first time the company is advertising on TV, having used Facebook so far. Mukherjeee feels that television is a highly visual platform.

She says, “We chose it over others given not only the reach but also that it is a highly visual platform much like our platform. Whatever works, we will double down and spend more. Whatever doesn’t, we will pull back and re-evaluate.”

Newspapers help in retention of ads

Advertising in newspapers will help creating an impact in the readers’ memory, feel experts.Kartin Sharma, MD of Maxus, says, “There are certain events for which print is used to deliver that last mile nudge so that it sticks to the memory of the consumers.” Sellers are of the opinion that print ads are more noticeable.

Snapdeal’s senior VP, Srini Murthy opines, “Print is very noticeable and its gets picked up a lot. Along with TV, digital advertising , outdoor and radio, print works very well. This will become a more permanent fixture (for Snapdeal) every Diwali.”

Focus shifting from performance to glamour?

Many disgruntled users have raised the question – why not spend the money on fine-tuning and polishing the platforms? With the Flipkart app giving problems during the Big Billion Days, many users are complaining that the company could work on bettering the app instead of advertising everywhere like there’s no tomorrow.

As of now it looks like advertisements galore, performance not quite there yet.