E-commerce & fintech brands push targeted ads in semi-urban India by taking vernacular way

E-commerce & fintech brands are now trying to penetrate more in semi-urban, rural regions through targeted and programmatic ads, data companies say. The approach for targeted ads varies depending upon the income scale, and language of the region. While for tier 1 cities, consumers are divided into high and middle-income groups, in small cities, marketers have more vernacular in approach and target low-cost handsets.

With the growing number of netizens from tier 2 and 3 cities coming online, marketers are laying emphasis on the vernacular and using regional content to woo consumers. Rohit Arora, VP Mobile, Xapads Media says, “E-commerce, Fin-tech and Money wallets apps are our major demand partners. They are among the high ad spenders in tier 2 and tier 3 cities in India.” Since the majority of tier 2 traffic comes from Mobile Data, smaller text pieces and snackable videos are preferred for effortless consumption. “There has been a great push in demand from short-video apps that are looking to increase their reach among the youth of Tier 2 and 3 cities,” Arora added. 

The overall mobile usage in India has increased during the pandemic, and semi-urban and rural areas emerged as the hub for mobile usage giving rise to an ideal opportunity to reach younger digital consumers. States with predominantly semi-urban areas emerged as the new sweet spots for mobile usage. Additionally, various apps in different verticals were launched targeting lower-tier cities that boosted mobile usage in Tier 2 and 3 cities. 

Voice and vernacular are no longer niche, says Megha Ahuja, VP- Digital Media Planning, Carat India. Ahuja explains, “The role of voice, vernacular and social media in online shopping is expanding. Voice and vernacular are vital to attract the next generation of online shoppers—1 in 10 users have tried voice search, and 1 in 3 new users use a vernacular platform interface. Influencers and social media channels are also increasingly nudging consumers to shop online". She added saying that in 2020, 40% of on­line shoppers made at least one purchase through social media channels (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.)

Hindi, Tamil and Telugu Rock

As more Indians go online to shop, play games, and connect with friends, the need for content in languages other than English, is amplified. Though English is currently the main language used for business online, there is an increasing preference for Indic-language content. By next year, India’s Hindi internet user base is set to outgrow the country’s online English-language users and, along with Marathi and Bengali users, that account for 75% of Indians browsing online.

Driving this growth are the 90% of new internet users who prefer to access content in a language familiar to them. “Telugu and Tamil are languages that are consumed digitally apart from Hindi”, Ahuja further said. She added, Flipkart’s app can be accessed through eleven Indian languages (Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Malayalam, Assamese, Gujarati, Odia, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada) while Amazon’s app can be accessed through five Indian languages (Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam). These platforms have understood that 'Voice and Vernacular' are vital to lure new shoppers.

Better Response Than Tier 1 consumers

Programmatic ad companies say semi-urban consumers are more enthusiastic about targeted ads than their urban counterparts. Arora says, “The results so far are very encouraging, since this segment is still not over-targeted, the response to ads and brand recall is higher than what we are seeing from Tier 1 cities. There is a clear advantage for early adopters of Advertising in the Tier 2 city approach.”

What Is Programmatic Advertising?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has dramatically changed digital advertising and helped build an ecosystem where personalisation in communication is key to optimize the return on investment in media. Programmatic advertising involves using AI and ML to buy and sell digital advertising space. This means you can connect with a large audience across multiple platforms in a split second. 

It is driven by data in real-time and allows advanced audience targeting, ensuring the right people see the ad and you get the best ROI. Experts are predicting that 88% of all display advertising will be done via programmatic by the end of 2021.

The gap between India and Bharat narrowing

E-commerce buying is growing in Tier 2 and 3 cities. So as fintech growth. The gap between India and Bharat is narrowing, Sandeep Goyal, MD, Rediffusion says, “Bharat is waking up. They have already been touched by technology especially with the ubiquitous availability of data. Data-driven and data-enabled products can now reach Bharat without any impediments. Hence the rapid surge by e-commerce and fintech companies into semi-urbanc and rural markets.”

Janak Sarda, MD Deshdoot Media Group. Global VP- IAA Digital Transformation and YP Development Worldwide, says, “E-commerce has been trying to penetrate semi-urban and rural markets for quite some time now. Changes in the local landscape and employment generation within distribution and logistic chains are visible now. Local players have also geared up to compete with e-commerce brands and safeguard their home turfs.”

He adds, “Fintech brands have seen wider acceptance in semi-urban and rural areas since the time of demonetisation. However, Google Pay, Phone Pe, PayTm and others have their own fragmented markets as of now.”

Brands are starting to understand that these newer netizens place a great deal of value in traditional cable connections and social media, and are customising communication accordingly.  It is why Facebook has been stepping up its hyperlocal campaigns reaching out to smaller cities and streaming services like Netflix, Disney+ Hotstar and Prime Video are investing in regional content. 

Around 70% of current Indian internet users prefer Indic languages over English. Brands that are already accommodating these local-language speakers are reaching more customers than they were previously, giving them a whole new captive audience to engage with, Nadeesh Ramachandran, Head of Performance Solutions, Google India, wrote in an article a year ago. He cited the growth story of Policy Bazaar, a digital insurance marketplace to make his point. 

“Using Google Trends, Policy Bazaar identified relevant Hindi keywords such as हेल्थ इन्शुरन्स (health insurance), जीवन बीमा प्लान (life insurance plan), and सबसे सस्ता टर्म प्लान (cheapest term plan), and tailored creative messaging around search interest for these terms. To ensure wider coverage, the brand also translated and transliterated keywords from their top English campaigns and established call extensions on Search to connect non-English speakers to their call centres,” he stated.  

He further writes, “The experiment was so successful that Policy Bazaar set up a Hindi landing page to support scaled Indic language ads. By crossing the language barrier, Policy Bazaar’s cost per lead was 18% lower, leading to a 4% increase in incremental leads, an 11% increase in clicks through local-language keywords in comparison to the English version of the ads, and a 3X growth in Hindi SEM traffic over the next six months.”