Airtel-Jio-Vi all set to challenge Google-Facebook duopoly in digital advertising market

There is some serious competition in store for tech and e-commerce giants like Google, Meta, Amazon, and Flipkart as India's telecom operators Bharti Airtel, Jio, and Vodafone Idea have launched their own ad tech platforms to grab a slice of the fast-growing Indian digital advertising market.

According to a recent e4m-Dentsu report, the digital advertising market in India is expected to grow at a whopping 30% to reach Rs 27,759 crore by the end of 2022. Google and Meta have a lion's share of the digital advertising pie followed by e-commerce giants like Amazon and Flipkart.

Google and Meta had together earned a whopping Rs 23,000 crore in gross ad revenue in FY21. Likewise, the cumulative advertising revenue of Amazon India and Flipkart stood at Rs 3940.2 crore during the same fiscal year. With the three telcos looking to build advertising as an additional revenue stream, the digital advertising market is bound to see a shake-up in the long run.

The three telecom operators, who cumulatively own 1.16 billion users, see a huge opportunity in the digital advertising ecosystem considering the data goldmine that they are sitting on.

Bharti Airtel launched its own ad tech platform Airtel Ads in February 2021. Reliance Jio is also aggressively building its ad-tech business, Jio Ads. The latest to enter the ad-tech space is Vodafone Idea. With Vi Ads, the telco is offering precision targeting on Vi’s owned assets as well as on external media channels.

According to digital advertising experts, the biggest advantage that telecom operators enjoy is the fact that they have access to authentic first-party data which will become crucial for marketers in the wake of Google's plan to phase out third-party cookies by the end of 2023.

Airtel Digital CEO Adarsh Nair sees Airtel Ads as a billion-dollar opportunity. "Airtel Ads leverages all our digital assets to deliver targeted ads to customers which today has a digital MAU of 184+ million. In its first year, Airtel Ads has achieved 200% revenue growth and we aim to continue to achieve remarkable growth as digital becomes a key area of advertising spend for brands/media agencies in the future," Nair told exchange4media.

He further stated that Airtel Ads provides brands access to Airtel’s 350+ million customers across various Airtel platforms like Wynk Music, Airtel Thanks App, Xstream Premium, DTH, and SMS. These audiences are further segmented based on insights into groups like travellers, gamers, online shopping, foodies, and many more to ensure that relevant ads are showcased to customers.

As part of its mandate to allow brands of sizes to curate consent-based and privacy-safe campaigns, Airtel is investing in blockchain technology. In line with this strategy, Airtel had acquired a strategic stake in blockchain technology startup Aqilliz. It aims to deploy Aqilliz’s advanced blockchain technologies at scale across its fast-growing Adtech (Airtel Ads), Digital Entertainment (Wynk Music & Airtel Xstream), and Digital Marketplace (Airtel Thanks App) offerings.

Nair noted that digital advertising faces two significant challenges - lack of trust between the publisher and platform on the user accessing the platform and lack of trust between the platform and the user, who feels that they are receiving irrelevant messages. "We believe that the question of trust and privacy in digital advertising are best addressed by a first-party platform such as ours where users are present," he averred.

JioAds is offering marketers and advertisers to connect with its 450 million+ users across online and offline media assets. The JioAds ecosystem includes multiple touchpoints across Connectivity (Jio, Jio Fiber, Jio STB, DEN, and Hathway), Entertainment (Jio TV, Jio Saavn, Network18, and Viacom18), and Commerce (Reliance Digital, Reliance Fresh, JioMart, BookMyShow, AJIO, Netmeds, Urban Ladder, and Zivame).

The telco has roped in former Disney+ Hotstar Ad Sales Head Gulshan Verma to drive the JioAds business. JioAds' biggest selling point to advertisers is the promise to reach customers in a brand-safe omnichannel network.

"The JioAds team have been working hard to not only engage with marketers, agencies, and publishers but also to make it easy for our partners to work with us (#customerexperience). I'm proud to announce that we have opened up #selfserve reporting for campaigns on JioAds. This is near real-time (every 90 minutes on VOD and with a 24-hour delay on live sports)," JioAds CEO Gulshan Verma said in a recent LinkedIn post while adding that the JioAds platform will be continuously upgraded.

In a press release, Vodafone Idea said that the Vi Ads platform will enable marketers to engage with the operator’s over 243 million subscribers through multiple channels like Vi-owned digital media- Vi App, Vi Movies & TV App, and traditional channels like SMS, IVR calls.

What differentiates Vi Ads from other telco-owned ad tech platforms is the fact that it will be media agnostic and empower marketers to engage with Vi users on external media channels and publisher partners of Vi Ads. The platform will also offer a self-serve interface enabling marketers with full control of their campaigns from a campaign setup, tracking campaign performance to driving campaign insights.

Vi CMO Avneesh Khosla claimed that Vi Ads will address two of the biggest challenges faced by marketers today - authentic insights and enhanced reach. "Firstly, it offers marketers the benefits of unique audience segments, interest groups and targeting parameters derived using Vi’s deep insights of our consumers built on opt-in data. Secondly, it allows advertisers to not only reach their chosen audiences over Vi’s own Digital Media like Vi App and Vi Movies & TV app but also on external third party programmatic media and traditional channels of SMS & IVR calls."