With the Internet coming of age, the difference between Ecommerce and Advertisement is fast diminishing. This is simply because of the interactive nature of the internet. Unlike in other mediums of advertising, Internet is not a static medium of advertisement, which gives information about the company’s products. Internet can provide a guided tour of the product’s features including the capability of ordering it On – Line, which is infact E commerce.
Let us now understand the future of Ecommerce with relations to the Advertising.
Advertising on the Net to triple in 4 Yrs.
On – Line Advertising on the Internet is approximated to 7 Billion US Dollars. This figure is going to triple in 4 yrs. and grow to 22 Billion US Dollars. This is a phenomenal rise considering that most people believe that On – line Advertisement is saturating in the West. This figure is very interesting. Advertisements on the Internet can be of different types, the most popular ones being the " Win a Million Dollars" kind of attractive slogans, meant to attract the old and young alike. You also have the crawl advertisements that keep flashing some information. The conventional Classifieds are also popular. What one has to understand is that the information on the internet does not stop at the advertisement. The simplest way to give additional information is to have a link to the parent site from the advertisement.
Slogan competitions
One of the oldest ways to create awareness of your product is to have a slogan contest. Such slogan contests along with opinion polls are very common on the on the Internet. The number of responses on the Internet are much more compared to the traditional mediums of advertisement. Also information about these polls / slogan competitions can be very easily forwarded to many other web surfers. I remember having received a lot of emails to vote for India’s nuclear policy on CNN’s web site.
Understanding the Psyche of the Web surfer
The average age group of the Web Surfers in India is 25 – 34. One also has to understand that 80 of the each 100 Indians surfing on the net are males. I hope some Women Organizations take the statistics seriously and even the ratio. With the current ratio, many organizations operating in the business of cosmetics may not look to the web as the medium of advertisement.
This is where I would again like to stress the linkage of advertisement to Ecommerce. Such companies may find it difficult to push sales, as they will realise that Internet is the best medium of Advertisement. The only logical way out is to improve the standard of advertising on the net and manage to get a number of first timers on to the site.
Comparison of TV (Satellite and National Doordarshan) with Internet
It is estimated that there are over 20 million TV sets in India (Information Source CNBC Asia Ltd.) with almost over a half of them Cable Ready. Though I am not sure of the exact number, we also have a very high number of STD / ISD booths not only in India, but also in rural India. Cable Television Infrastructure can be used as a medium for a small scale Internet Service Provider (ISP). The proliferation of Satellite Television with Cable is going to help smaller ISPs operate in rural as well as urban India with a very low installation and running costs.
Also the rural market in India is maturing as they too have assimilated the invasion of Satellite television. It is thus expected that advertisements for Indian products on the Internet, will have to cover the rural market very soon.
Cyber Laws and Impact on advertisement and E Commerce
Cyber Laws have already been drafted and are slated to be introduced in the winter session of the new Parliament. As per the statement of Mr. Rajendra Gupta, Secretary, Department of Electronics, Netizens can expect to have a full-fledged framework of Cyber Laws to govern business via Internet, by the end of the next year. The government is also planning to amend the CopyRight Act to include Ecommerce. Once the laws are in place, Ecommerce will take a real boost in India.
Finally why the Internet is such a Important Medium
The radio Revolution took 38 Years to reach the 50 million mark, telephone took 30 Yrs., the Personal Computer took 16 years and cable TV took 10 years, while the Internet only took 5 years.
The author is Director, FANDS group of companies and can be reached at sandeep@fandsindia.com