Airtel spends nearly 45% of its ad spend on digital: Gopal Vittal, Bharti Airtel CEO
Airtel’s digital ad spend has nearly doubled in three years, from 22% in 2015 to 43% in 2018.
Gopal Vittal, CEO of Bharti Airtel, on Tuesday revealed that the leading telecommunications firm spends nearly 45 per of its ad budgets on digital alone. He was speaking at the Google for India event hosted by Google in New Delhi. Vittal said that while television as a medium is not going anywhere, digital is key because it offers 14% incremental reach over television.
Airtel’s digital ad spend has nearly doubled in the recent time, jumping from 22% in 2015 to 43% in 2018. The reason behind the significant digital spend, Vittal said, is that Airtel has “a bunch of services like Wynk, Airtel TV and is trying to drive recharges and payments online.” “A disproportionate section of our customer cohorts that matter are reached through digital,” he added.
Delivering a study of Airtel's digital strategy, Rajiv Mathrani, Chief Brand & Online Officer at Airtel, noted that redirecting over 40% of ad spend to digital helped Airtel increase efficiency by a factor of 12. He said that Airtel conducted a global hybrid cross marketing study, which included all platforms & publishers and TV, to truly understand the impact of digital advertising. “The results of the study reassured us that we were right to shift half our budgets onto digital marketing,” Mathrani said.
Over the last couple of years, Airtel has been deploying various digital advertising strategies to stay ahead of competition. Mathrani noted that leveraging specific digital strategies has led to Airtel increasing MAUs by 40 million across web and app and increase search for the key words “online recharge” by 20%. Airtel has also seen online payment penetration of 2X, he said.
While digital offers many benefits over other platforms, it does have its challenges. Commenting on the challenges, Vittal said, “Digital is effective for a short period of time, but it tends to be gamed. So as a consequence, some of the money tends to be wasted.” He added that digital platforms such as Google and Facebook along with advertisers “need to get much sharper to cut the gaming of the platform and be much more focussed on effectiveness.”
Airtel’s digital ad spend has nearly doubled in the recent time, jumping from 22% in 2015 to 43% in 2018. The reason behind the significant digital spend, Vittal said, is that Airtel has “a bunch of services like Wynk, Airtel TV and is trying to drive recharges and payments online.” “A disproportionate section of our customer cohorts that matter are reached through digital,” he added.
Delivering a study of Airtel's digital strategy, Rajiv Mathrani, Chief Brand & Online Officer at Airtel, noted that redirecting over 40% of ad spend to digital helped Airtel increase efficiency by a factor of 12. He said that Airtel conducted a global hybrid cross marketing study, which included all platforms & publishers and TV, to truly understand the impact of digital advertising. “The results of the study reassured us that we were right to shift half our budgets onto digital marketing,” Mathrani said.
Over the last couple of years, Airtel has been deploying various digital advertising strategies to stay ahead of competition. Mathrani noted that leveraging specific digital strategies has led to Airtel increasing MAUs by 40 million across web and app and increase search for the key words “online recharge” by 20%. Airtel has also seen online payment penetration of 2X, he said.
While digital offers many benefits over other platforms, it does have its challenges. Commenting on the challenges, Vittal said, “Digital is effective for a short period of time, but it tends to be gamed. So as a consequence, some of the money tends to be wasted.” He added that digital platforms such as Google and Facebook along with advertisers “need to get much sharper to cut the gaming of the platform and be much more focussed on effectiveness.”
