Internet Advertising Scenario in India

Internet Marketing Facts & Figures

As of the end of 2007's third quarter, Google had almost 25 percent of the U.S. Internet advertising market, up from almost 21 percent in 2006's third quarter, according to IDC. Meanwhile, Yahoo's share during this period dropped to 11.3 percent from 12.3 percent, while Microsoft's declined to 5.2 percent from 5.8 percent, according to IDC.

In search usage, Google held a commanding 62.4 percent of queries worldwide, followed by Yahoo in a very distant second place with 12.8 percent, according to comScore. Microsoft ranked fourth with 2.9 percent, after Baidu (5.2 percent).

Internet Marketing and India

The latest report from CIA Factbook pegs the Indian Internet audience at 50.6 mn, 4th behind the US, China & Japan. The future growth in the Internet audience is expected to be from Brazil, Russsia, India & China (BRIC). Needless to say, the growth in the Internet audience will of course fuel a huge growth in advertising and communication on the Internet.
• The use of the Internet will move from just being a PC phenomenon to accessing the world wide web through other devices like mobiles, smart phones, etc.
• Mobile phone are growing at a very fast pace in India, especially the CDMA segment. This augurs well for the internet access, especially since the access device is beyond the PC.
• The Internet penetration in India is just about 4.5%. Hence, growth potential is huge. In the next five years, India is tipped to be the No. 2 country in terms of Internet Audience, 2nd only to China.
• The Internet audience in India is predominantly a male audience (70% male), 50% + in the 20 to 39 years age group and the largest primary access point is office. All this makes the Indian Internet audience a highly desirable audience for any marketer.
• To put this in perspective, the overall English print readership is around 30 mn and the English print advertising market is about US$ 400 mn. Compared with this the size of the Internet advertising market in 2005 was US$ 26 mn. The growth potential, is therefore, really huge.
• Display advertising is expected to grow at a rate of at least 50% for this year. In 5 years time, display advertising on the net is expected to grow to US$ 128 mn. Adding on search, which is growing at a phenomenal pace ( In the US, search accounts for 40% of the spends on the Internet and this trend is being mirrored elsewhere), the overall advertising spends on the Internet is estimated to be around US$ 214 mn.
• This would be approximately 4.9% of the overall advertising spends in the country. Again, the projections seem quite on track as the Internet spend ratio in the US for 2004 was at 4.8% and for the 2005 at approx. 6.5%.
• If anything, the actual spends may even be higher than the current projections.

Attributes determining Google Adwords Quality Score

Below are the attributes or the factor (listed as per the order of their importance) which actually determines the quality score of Google Adwords account:

Click-Through Rate: An advertisement’s click-through rate within Google’s search results page.

Ad Text/Keyword Relevance: Static placement of keywords within an advertisement’s body copy and headline.

Historical Performance: An algorithm that collects multiple quality scores for a single keyword in order to determine whether a keyword’s performance is increasing or decreasing.

Landing Page Keyword Relevance: The placement of core keywords on each landing page.

Keyword Bid Price: How much the advertiser is willing to pay per-click.

Overall Ad Group Performance: The tabulation of every keyword’s quality score within an ad group which determines the ad group’s score.

Predictive Performance: A calculation that predicts how a keyword will perform in the future by combining past, current and predicted quality scores.

Keyword Match Type: Using broad, exact and phrase match within your ad group for each keyword.

User Behavior in Relation to other Paid Listings: An algorithm that incorporates the number of paid listings a user visits before they take an action on your landing page.

Human Review: A review conducted by real-live Googlers who review and determine if an advertisement is relevant to a specific search.

Landing Page Conversion Rate: The number of conversions generated directly by a pay-per-click advertisement.

User Behavior in Relation to Organic Listings: An algorithm that incorporates the number of organic listings a user visits before they take an action on your landing page.

Ways to improve traffic to your web site

Follow these steps and you will see quantum increase in your web site traffic-

1. Write and submit articles: E.g. ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, articlescity.com etc. E.g. Current Trends In Enterprise Collaboration
   
2. Social bookmark each and every pages of your web site, no matter how many pages are there, e.g. http://del.icio.us/syncexims07
   
3. Add your web site to important directories no matter you have to pay for it, e.g. http://dir.yahoo.com, business.com etc.
   
4. Its worth to submit your web site to www.dmoz.org, although its tricky and time consuming.
5. Create an impressive email signature containing a link back to your web site and always use it in all your email communications.
   
6. Create an RSS feed for your web site, e.g. news, events, products etc and submit it to feed directories. Its worth burning the feed on www.feedburner.com
7. Set up a social bookmarking site using facebook, linkedIn etc.
8. Start a blog and once you do it, start commenting about it on other blogs.
9. Start newsletter campaign and you will be blessed with massive amount of traffic to your web site.
10. Dont forget to speak about your web site in to magazines, publications etc.