July 23, 2014: In its pursuit for a greater share of the country’s retail market pie, according to sources Mobile commerce company Paytm to launch Rs100 crore advertising and marketing campaign this week. Paytm which is owned by mobile internet services firm One97 Communication and backed by SAIF Partners, SAP Ventures, Intel Capital and Saama Capital has engaged Mumbai-based advertising agency Contract Advertising to run the campaign. One97 Communicaton would be funding Paytm’s advertising campaign. The three year old company would be running a campaign across print, digital and social media.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and chief executive, One97 Communication was quoted as saying about this development, “Our business has reached a level where small spends will not achieve anything… Consumer trust comes only after one advertises heavily in mainstream media.” The Indian online retail market has recently been witnessing a rise in the ad budgets of major players like Myntra, Flipkart and Snapdeal.
According to experts, the ad budgets of these online commerce companies will continue to grow up to 40 per cent in the next fiscal. E-commerce companies will spend about Rs900 crore on advertising over the next 12 months. This amount is nearly three times the amount spent last year.
According to a report in ET which appeared in May, World’s biggest online retailer Amazon would be spending between Rs100 core and Rs 150 crore for advertising and marketing in India so as to increase its presence. Other players like Flipkart, India’s largest ecommerce company, and Snapdeal, the country’s largest e-commerce marketplace are also believed to be spending between Rs70 crore and Rs80 crore. Myntra is estimated to have set apartR s60 crore for mobile marketing and has engaged Ogilvy India Worldwide to handle its private label branding. Lowe Lintas and Partners handle advertising for brand Myntra. Recently Myntra has launched a new ‘Look for Likes’ campaign.
The companies are allocating more money for advertising as more and more people are taking onto online buying and the customer acquisition costs have come down. India’s overall organised retail sector is estimated at $40 billion, of which e-commerce contributes about $3 billion.
