The Digital Profit of Mobile Devices

Imagine an ad of HMT Tractor going left to right on your mobile screen as soon as you open a new game recently downloaded. Seems irrelevant, right? But this will be the future.

Google has recently launched ‘affordable’ Android One mobile phones, exclusively in India in the wake of the rising demands of this category. India was the first to get Firefox based mobile phones. Also, there has been a series of mobile launches by global and Indian manufacturers in the 3k to 5k, a.k.a the affordable category.

This sudden eruption of love of affordable devices is thanks to a set of reasons. For one, as the mid-level category (10-15k) nears saturation, the affordable category will be the least exploited. Moreover, this category long dominated by feature phones, generates the maximum sales overall.

However, it is not just the new products that are exciting rather its effect on Indian online marketplace that will send chills down the digital spine. This will soon solve the biggest problems of the industry.

Currently, the problem that we as digital marketers face is that the online media space has limited target audience comprising of the youth of upper, upper middle and lower middle class. Reaching out to the general population is still considered as a game play of conventional media.This is especially true when we talk of products and services that are targeted to the suburban or rural areas. Thus, the media and marketing strategy targeted for such markets ignore digital media completely.

However, these phones can make a dent on the trend. They cater to the lower middle class majority of which live in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Thus, they will build a digital route to reach people in the most remote corner of the country. An automatic response to this will be the increase in the demand of internet usage and web based services. With about 162% growth rate of social media penetration in India, the sky on the horizon looks blue.

Apparently, this will bridge the target audience gap between traditional and digital media. And advertising strategy, approach and tonality of messaging will respond to it significantly. For instance, FMCG products currently have small presence in digital media. If digital media establishes its presence amongst mass audience, these brands will need strategic digital campaigning and advertising to reach them. This new strategy will be different from the way we approach digital advertising today.

Digital media will soon resonate with traditional media in terms of language and tonality. In other words, we can see more localization in terms of content and creative. Don’t be surprised if we see a ‘desi’ twist in every campaign in the near future. They might include local dialects and popular characters depending on the region being targeted.

The messaging will need to be more visual and simpler than we currently use. Remember the ‘Harry Potter Newspaper’ with the moving pictures? We might see similar advertising with messages in the near future. These messages will be understood by a person who has basic education. The messages will become hyper local to the extent that we might need to apply different strategy to reach audience based on demography.

And then, there will be demand for different ‘man power’.  Originally, digital marketers have been English centric and up to an extent ‘uni- cultural’. We might want to employ local strategists and thinkers to bring diversity and ability to target the audience of a region individually and hence effectively.

One more challenge that might soon be a matter of past, is the budget constraints. With every company needing help of digital strategists, agencies will no longer need to impress companies with fascinating presentations of ROI on digital spends.

These developments will also change the way digital media and advertising industry messaging functions. Brands that utilize digital campaigns currently focus solely on social media. On the other hand, to reach a larger audience, future digital campaigning would need to shift its focus to mobile applications and instant messaging.

The ever changing media landscape is going to witness yet another revolution that has begun with ‘affordable ones’.  It is now up to digital marketers to get ready and exploit the trend in order to stand out in this dynamic and competitive world.