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Quick Summary: I was quoted recently in Indian newspaper Deccan Chronicle’s story on online advertising in India.

I was quoted recently in a Deccan Chronicle story on online advertising in India, along with advertising legends Alyque Padamsee and Piyush Pandey and fellow blogger Chandrachoodan.

Basically, we all agreed that online advertising will become the core of the Indian marketers’ marketing budget in the next few years. I also pointed out that the internet works best when marketers use it to reach one person at a time. So, search advertising for generating leads and social media initiatives for building community engagement are both great, but not plain-vanilla banner ads.

Here is the complete text of the story –

Consumer Caught in the Net
Online or web advertising is the next big thing in the sphere of advertising
Ashlin Mathew
Sunday, June 15, 2008

The Online pie is getting bigger and better. Of course with almost every youngster choosing to buy tickets or shop online or even home in on the optimum brand through the Internet, even conservatives are willing to put their thumb into it.

New York Times has reported that Yahoo is planning to buy Right Media, which owns an online advertising marketplace, for $680 mn -

Google and Yahoo each dominate one segment of the online advertising market. Google is best at selling text ads that appear alongside search results and on other websites. Yahoo, which has lagged Google in search, is a leader in selling graphical ads, mostly on its own sites.

With Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick and Yahoo’s acquisition of Right Media, both Google and Yahoo have moved beyond their traditional strengths and are now pitched squarely against each other in the battle to dominate online advertising.

Google’s Doubleclick acquisition for $3.1 bn is not only about the consolidation of online advertising; it is another step in Google’s quest to own the Internet.

From a study reported on Science Daily -

People are less able to recall the brand of products advertised during programs with a lot of sexual content, than if the advert is placed in similar program that has no sexual content.

Men had higher recall of the brand of products whose ads contained sexual images than ads that did not. Women on the other hand were actively put off by sexual content in ads.

So, if you are selling something almost exclusively to men, like sports cars, make a sexy ad and put it between non-sexy content to ensure that it stands out by contrast. But if you are selling something that is not so narrowly targeted, like bathroom tiles, please don’t use sex and turn off the women.

Guy Kawasaki wonders if the findings are also applicable to websites. Of course they are! If I’m looking at sexy women, why would I look at ads anyway!