Indian Social Networking Sites Ibibo and BigAdda Focus on Entertainment to Woo Users and Marketers

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Priyanka Joshi in Business Standard –

Around 20 million internet users actively use the social media sites in India. According to market research firm IDC, the use of social networking sites will continue to grow, but advertising may not necessarily expand along with it. The result is that Indian start-ups like Ibibo and BigAdda are innovating to get brands onto their networks. 2009 might turn out to be the year when marketers will realise the potential of cross-promoting their media buys on the social networking websites.

“Local marketers are becoming familiar with the best ways to promote their businesses and by crossing online and offline campaigns, they are getting more bang for their buck,” said Shivanandan Pare, COO, BigAdda, that commenced operations 15 months back. The brands that are promoting themselves on BigAdda include Nokia, Lenovo, Sony Ericsson and Intel among others.

Ibibo, which calls itself a ‘talent based social networking site’, is willing to bet that 2009 would be the year when targeting consumer on social sites will have a far bigger payout than any other media. Ashish Kashyap, CEO, Ibibo, has built traction for his site among the 14-28 year olds by running talent-based contests since its inception.

IDC reveals that social networking sites need to prove ad effectiveness, “and the only way to fix it is to get people to do stuff on social networks other than communicate,” reports IDC. This means encouraging activities that readily lend themselves to advertising such as sharing media, consuming media, playing games and collaborating on applications.

BigAdda is already carefully positioning its platform as a branding solution provider. “We are pitching advertisers to use BigAdda.com for brand building activities, rather than just carrying out lead generation and returns on investment (ROI) driven campaigns,” insists Pare.

Most Indian social networking sites are now trying to focus on content more than pure social networking because they realize that they can’t beat Facebook and Orkut at their own game.

Ibibo and BigAdda have chosen to focus on entertainment. Both Alexa and Compete data shows that Ibibo’s strategy of heavily promoting its contests offline is paying more dividends than BigAdda’s strategy of getting celebrities like Amitabh Bachchan to blog for it.

I think focusing on content is a smart strategy, but I don’t think it will be enough. Google, for instance, has struggled to monetize both YouTube and Orkut and it hasn’t even tried to monetize Blogger. Moreover, if social network users are resentful of ads intruding into their social interactions, content creators have come to expect at least a part of the ad revenue pie, even if they “choose” to put ads next to their content.

I don’t think that significant advertising on Indian social networking sites will happen in 2009, and if it does happen, I don’t think it will be very effective. (I’m also surprised that brands are trying to do lead generation on Indian social networking sites. What are they thinking?)

Marketing on social media is a long term, low burn game and I’m not sure how many Indian brands (or social networking sites, or advertising agencies) understand it or are willing to doing it.

Related posts:

  1. Comscore Report on Social Networking Sites in India
  2. Recap of the Social Networking Space in India in 2008
  3. What’s Wrong With Indian Social Networking Sites?
  4. Search Trends for Social Networking Sites in India
  5. Three Dimensions of Differentiation for Indian Social Networking Sites