Sunil Punjabi, Co-Founder and Vice President, Networkplay.in
“World over it has been observed that it is better to advertise on vertical ad networks than on a horizontal ad network if the objective is to create brand awareness. This is because on a horizontal ad network one is not sure which sites the ads are being served on. This leads to spillover, which is money down the drain. If a person seeks brand engagement from a user from a specific audience thereby ensuring that there is zero or minimal spill over, then vertical ad networks are the best.”
Q. What has vertical ad networks to offer different as compared to horizontal ad networks? World over it has been observed that it is better to advertise on vertical ad networks than on a horizontal ad network if the objective is to create brand awareness. This is because on a horizontal ad network one is not sure which sites the ads are being served on. This leads to spillover, which is money down the drain. If a person seeks brand engagement from a user from a specific audience thereby ensuring that there is zero or minimal spill over, then vertical ad networks are the best.
Q. How would you differentiate ad network scenario in India versus that of the international scenario? Where do you see this industry headed? World over the percentage of spends online in comparison to other media is significantly higher than what it is in India. The online market in India is heading to touch the Rs. 1000 crore mark. In the same period, spends on the ad networks would probably be in the range of 15 per cent of total internet spends. The rationale of this is very simple. The cost of reaching a person on the internet is significantly lower than the cost of reaching the same person on television. Even right now a lot of money has been moved from other media to the internet. This trend will keep growing and that is what we are acting as catalysts to.
Q. In the last couple of months especially in the month of April itself we have seen Networkplay.in in strategic alliance to expand its advertising sales in India- Makemytrip.com and Linkedln. How have things changed post these partnerships? It is a testimony to our capability that so many publishers like Makemytrip.com, Travelguru.com, Bookmyshow.com, LinkedIn.com, etc. have signed up exclusively with us. We see a lot of value on signing them exclusively with us because that eliminates undercutting in the market. There are therefore, efforts being made to ensure that we have exclusivity with more sites. Plus, we are also aiming to include a lot more sites that are on a non- exclusive basis to ensure that we scale up on inventory. How this has changed the game for us is that we have been growing quarter on quarter in revenues. The upward curve may not have been so sharp if we did not have these relationships in place.
Q. Networkplay.in was launched towards the end of 2008, could you share with us what were the challenges you faced at the time of the launch? When do you plan to break- even? Tentatively, what kind of plans do you have in mind?
There were no earth-shattering challenges that we faced. Sure, there were a few teething troubles. One of them was getting the right people for the job, which was easily handled since it was the entire team at Yahoo! who decided to quit Yahoo! and form networkplay.in. This was due to the belief that ‘performance’ is not really the way to go and brand advertising is what will give an impetus to the growth of Internet in India. And to our pleasant surprise, we are seeing a lot of movement in that direction by other horizontal ad- networks as well, thereby reinforcing our conviction in the Sales Model.
The other challenge was to ensure that we get seed funding. We were sure that this is the way to go forward and this is the business model we want to follow but, starting off on your own is never easy. But sure enough, even funding happened and Capital 18 came in as the seed investor.
Once we entered the market, getting first few advertisers on board was another small milestone because India is still a CPL/CPC/CPA dominated market. From that point of view, we were moving against the tide by offering CPM and only CPM. We faced all the usual challenges that a brand marketer will face. But we have managed very well in the three quarters that we have been in existence. We have constantly grown and have achieved a 79% growth in AMJ 09 over JFM 09.
We know that we are able to provide a lot more value to publishers than others. However getting them to exclusively sign up with us, without having given any minimum guarantees or without any commitment on revenues, literally, just on the face of it was itself a challenge again. This too, under the management of Rajesh Nair, our VP for Publisher Networks, we have overcome with success.
So challenges yes, but none insurmountable. We will break-even very soon. On the plans, we have only two short term plans. Grow our publisher network and generate more revenues. Slightly long term plan is to invest in a product of our own, which would be a strong growth driver.
Q. How would you assess the performance of Networkplay.in? What are your core propositions and what kind of strategies have you adopted to counter competition?
The performance is there to be seen. We are growing faster than any other network in the country today.
We operate in the ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’- i.e. we do not regard anyone in the current space as direct competition. We are creating our own space, beyond the realm of the existing players. Our main focus is to give a brand the kind of audience it wants, which is why we are signing up on an exclusive basis with a lot of such publishers. For instance, if you want professional networking in India you would go to no other site but LinkedIn. We want to ensure that whichever vertical we are operating in, we are able to offer the right kind of audience to the advertiser.
Q. As a vertical ad network, your objective is building and evangelizing the Indian Internet Advertising Market for brand advertisers. The 6 offerings that you offer are Travel, Women, News and Business, Middle East and Youth verticals and LinkedIn. Could you share with us your sales model, the importance of ad networks today and how is the Indian market embracing it? Which are the other sectors that you are eyeing?
Networkplay completely follows pay per impressions i.e. CPM (Cost per thousand). We do not believe in (and do not offer) clicks, leads or acquisitions. As an advertising medium the internet industry is currently Rs. 350 crore which is poised to grow to 1000 crore industry in a couple of years’ time according to industry estimates. And this growth cannot be achieved through performance advertising alone. I believe that this growth can only be achieved if internet is given back its place as an advertising medium (as against a sales medium, which is what it is being used as now), something that it started off with originally. That will happen only if non-advertisers (on the internet) can be converted to internet advertisers and performance advertisers realize the value of branding and spend with that objective. This, in turn, will only happen through evangelization of the medium as an advertising medium. Against the tide, as I mentioned right at the beginning but that is what pumps adrenaline in all of us at networkplay.
Our endeavor is to increase the advertising pie itself and not really try to eat into performance advertising. In this process we have got new advertisers like Videocon, Venetian Macau, VIP Industries, Godrej Ezee, etc. to advertise with us – these are traditional non advertisers coming on board with us.
Ad networks as a model is an extremely need-of-the-hour solution for advertisers who want to go beyond the top 5 or 6 portals. In India, roughly 10 per cent of the Internet Advertising revenues are contributed by Ad Networks, which is not a small number at all. And it is only poised to grow.
We would be consolidating our existing verticals in the near future as we think we have the right vertical mix.
Q. Internet has undoubtedly come a long way since the inception and the medium has enormous potential today. What fuels the growth of online ad-networks in India, be it horizontal or verticals? Currently ad networks are about 10 per cent of the total internet advertising space. Unlike before, what’s happening today is that the client increasingly understands that there is a need to reach out to people beyond just Google and the top few portals. That understanding and knowledge I believe is propelling the growth of ad networks in India.
Q. You have over 13 years of experience in Media Sales and have a 360 degree exposure w1ith stints in Print- Indian Express, TV with UTV, and OOH with Future Media and Internet with Microland, Mediaturf and Yahoo. How has your journey been so far? The experience has been truly wonderful. The Sales function unlike any other function is a revenue generating function (while the others are Revenue Managing functions) which is what attracted me to Sales, to begin with. I also felt at that time that for my overall growth, gaining knowledge and experience of various forms of media was important. The only advertising medium I haven’t worked for is radio. After OOH at Future Media I moved to Yahoo! where I was part of Rammohan Sundaram’s team. (Sundaram, is the CEO of networkplay). At Yahoo!, we were responsible for revenue generation from the ‘performance side of the business.’ But shortly thereafter, having realized the limitations of the performance business, we decided to quit the place and form Networkplay.in. All in all, the experience and the journey so far have been phenomenal.
Q. As the Co- Founder and Vice President- sales of Networkplay.in what are your priorities for 2009 and 10? What are the growth targets set for networkplay for 2009/ 10?
In the first quarter itself we grew by almost 40 per cent, the second quarter too was around the same figure and in the third quarter we grew by around 79 per cent over the second quarter numbers. So, in terms of the revenues we are meeting our challenges and surpassing them. The greatest corroboration of our mettle came with the signing of LinkedIn for the exclusive representation of India. LinkedIn had approached / was approached by five other players in the market as well. All five have been in existence for over two years. We were the only company who were in existence for six months at that point of time and we still bagged the contract.
Since we have no past year records to go by our sole aim right now is to better our quarter on quarter growth. My priorities clearly are to ensure that we do not lose the momentum that we have built for ourselves. This will need a great deal of hard work – building stronger relationships in the market, strategizing and offering solutions to brands for them to spend an extra rupee with us, ensuring that we promise what we can deliver and we deliver what we promise.
