Bluetooth advertising: the new mobile advertising model for Indian market
Mobile advertising is the next big mantra in the Indian advertising industry. The mobile advertising market in India is still in it’s nascent phase.
Mobile advertising market in India:
- Worldwide mobile advertising market is pegged at $1 billion currently. IDC believes with more than two billion mobile users in the world, it prevails as the first medium through which advertisers can reach such a large audience on an individual basis.
- The mobile advertising market in India currently stands at Rs 5-6 crore market, set to grow to Rs 20-25 crore by March 2008.
Bluetooth and mobile advertising: How and Why?
Now that TRAI has announced Do-Not-Call registry service, Indian advertises are exploring innovative ways to reach out to customers. Apart from Permission Marketing, the next wave in Mobile advertising is via Bluetooth device.
Well, marketers will use your Bluetooth device to push ads/ring tones/mobile games and several other value added service.
One of the major ad placement for Bluetooth advertising is at the PoS (i.e point of sale). Imagine this :: you are at the Foodworld outlet and while you are paying the bill (lets say you bought some beer and cigarettes), you receive a contextual ad of a chicken outlet near the FoodWorld location!Leaving the contextual ad part aside (an Indian startup is currently working on this idea), companies are going gung-ho about pushing ring tones/mobile games ads to user’s bluetooth handsets @ hangout outlets (like Coffee day/Pantaloon etc).
“ARPUs are bound to go down unless operators come up with some value added services, and mobile advertising could be one of them,” agrees Ernst & Young national telecom leader Prashant Singhal. According to him, though the size of mobile advertising is miniscule, it has potential to grow at 200% a year, giving operators a new revenue source. With the average revenue per user (ARPU) constantly falling, it could be a saving grace for operators. From Rs 356 in March last year, the ARPU in December 2006 has declined by 115 to touch Rs 316.
Adds Rajiv Hiranandani of mobile2win: “Even though Bluetooth existed for quite sometime, it was only used for transferring of data for individual uses. Now the companies are setting up Dongles (servers) that beams the data across a shopping complex or a mall enabling commercial use of the technology”.
Challenges in the growth of mobile advertising thru’ Bluetooth?
Though the number of bluetooth enabled devices have increased, what’s really interesting is this is a sort of “if..only” advertising model. i.e. the entire viability of this model relies on whether the consumers have kept bluetooth switched on. Given the fact that most of the users aren’t tech savvy to even understand the usage of Bluetooth, I do see a huge challenge for advertisers.
At the same time, opportunities are immense, so is the possibility of spam content as well as virus attacks.
Only time will tell how Bluetooth advertising fares in the Indian mobile market. What do you think of future of Bluetooth advertising?
Do you keep the Bluetooth switched on by default? I’d love to know that!
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They won’t get me for sure… I don’t keep Bluetooth on by default .. apart from eating away my battery, keeps me immune from Blue Jacking
Keeping one’s Bluetooth on is first of all not at all a healthy practice. But apart from that, its not too intuitive to keep one’s bluetooth on. And as you said, most of the users have no idea abt wht is bluetooth!
[...] and consumers will be fed with multiple advertising offers using the technology. (we covered the bluetooth advertising in detail [...]
Definitely a damp squib. No way am I going to keep my Bluetooth on. And that too, if I get these damned ads … NO WAY!
no to bluetooth ads. this is like invasion of privacy. I think if this were to take off, we should have a campaign – turn off your bluetooth.
let advertisers spend some money on conventional press/tv ads.
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[...] Read: Bluetooth advertising in India, | Report on online newspaper readership in [...]
[...] Bluetooth advertising is in (and is being tested in several cities) – this medium will see a rise and more takers. [...]
No Way. It’s foolish to keep bluetooth open as some with sitting near to you can steal your data from the mobile.
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There are 2 aspects,
Consumers would turn on if there is value.
I did turn it on and so as my class mates when there was a contest and when there were free video downloads. We did turn it on in cricket matches to receive great updates
I have seen several of my friends using this when they are in shopperstop and other malls.
COming back to advertising
As a management student I think there is a value in delivering rich media content to users mobile explaining the benefits of a particular product. Is it not better than a SPAM SMS or an SMS sent to users who are receiving it only because it would give them 5 pc. Comeon guys. Be positive
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Agree with you Shashi,
I did bit more research and was great to know that it is an Indian company (www.telibrahma.com) which is doing. AgencyFAQ says no one else has done it in the world (what they have done in cricket stadium).
Interesting business model.
We can only wish them all the best and bit more open to new things
As with all advertising mediums, quality and relevance of content are king. When Bluetooth is used to reach targeted consumers, such as beaming coffee shop coupons before customers pay, exclusive MP3s at concerts, score updates at football matches, or bank rates at DBS Bank, it has been highly successful (typical 35-50% acceptance rates). Try getting that from print or TV marketing.
Concerning spam, the right software allows you to blacklist users who decline content. Imagine seeing a billboard you don’t care about one day, being removed the next because you were uninterested. The same can be done with Bluetooth ads.
Definately, an ordinary person would think many times to switch on his blueetooth for an advertiser, butwhy not if i can get some exciting offer out of it, or lets say some discount on it. Even though its a challenge for the advertisers to convince consumers to switch on bluetooth, many people would like to do it, only if they are sure thaat its safe and beneficial…
Let’s say you are at a multiplex, and want to decide on which movie you want to watch.
Giving out movie trialers, through bluetooth is a great idea.
I would definately say yes to the technology.
Bluetooth should be on all the time. I do that. I never have problems.
Yes to Bluetooth ads. But they should be carefully planned and made attractive by discount coupons.
The issues with ‘bluejacking’ etc are grossly exaggerated.
[...] are other mechanism of mobile advertising, for e.g. permission marketing (mGinger, 160by2 etc), bluetooth advertising [...]
I do keep my Bluetooth on at times…but I am really wary of receiving/accepting any data from an unknown party..so it beats the purpose anyway
Bluetooth Advertising is quite captivating without a doubt. Although the Indians are not ready for it just as yet. Out of the entire bandwidth of mobile users, how many use gprs, bluetooth, datasync etc? about 2%-4%. We are still not all that tech savvy. Mobile culture will come up in India only by 2010 or early 2011.
bluetooth marketing device is very interesting tool for sending ads, if you use this , you can keep many E-discount coupons, when you use them , you can be easy to use it, however, if you still use old ways, such as paper discount coupons, you can not bring it everyday,. but mobilephone you had to bring it every day. if anybody interesting —-bluetooth device and can talk with me.