Apple Launched iAds for iPhone, iPods and iPad

Apple recently launched a new mobile advertising platform which may be first of its kind. So far when users click on any mobile based advertisements they had to leave the application and brought to a new browser where getting back to the application was very much difficult. But now iAds is such a mobile advertising platform that combines the sizzling ,hilarious and  sensational effects of television ads with interactive web ads. Now the users will be able to watch the full ads in its original forms and nature with easy back navigation to the application. Apple has launched this mobile advertising platform early of this month April 2010.

Apple just after its launch of the great iAds asked for $1 million from the interested advertisers to display their ads and promotional messages on iPhones, iPods and iPads. This may be really a great risk for them but according to Apple this will make advertisers feel like a real deal. As this application will work on several iphone models, ipads and ipods, it is also compatible with iPhone OS 4.0. As it is known that on OS 4.0 a user can easily develop an embedded mobile advertisements within their applications. These ads would be dynamic and Apple will share 60% of the revenue to developers earned from sale and serving of ads .  

Now this is good to know hot the iAds would work. It will work quite similar to Google Adwords and Adsense but impression based only. Whenever a user will see the ads the advertiser will have to pay more than $2 for each impression. So far  Apple has sold 85 million iPhone and iPod touches, and ad-targeting technology will allow brand marketers to put their messages in front of people who are most likely to be interested in their products. The ads will be served based on a user's iTunes preferences, according to the Wall Street Journal.

On Wheels Advertising : Carrying a brand on the wheels.

While going to your offices and homes you would have noticed that the "cab" (a rented four wheeler) standing by your side has got some banners ads placed at its doors. Actually this type of advertising is called On wheels or Car advertising. In such advertising sources banners of products and services are placed on each side of the car, if the car owner agree. These ads are placed solely after the confirmation of the car owner, for these ads the car owner earns a good monthly amount as well. Previously in such advertising only rented car companies were interested to earn some extra income getting few banners placed at their car doors, backside and front-side of the car.

Now the private vehicle owners have started to show their eagerness towards making some extra income for their monthly petrol expenses. The concept of car advertising firstly initiated and applied in European Countries and United States of America where both advertisers and car owners were interested to earn exposure & money respectively. Cashurwheels.com was the first online marketplace which connected the advertising companies, the car owners and signage making companies altogether. The concept was just to bring closer all these three aspirants to single place for their own interest.

On wheels advertising is not constraint to income prospective only rather it also proved to be a great source of advertising in local area. Somehow this is equal to Outdoor Advertising, But the difference is, Outdoor advertisements are posted on immovable properties and locations whereas On wheels ads are carrying brands on its wheels. Wherever the car would be there you can find the ad. Even in the parking places. So its not a bad deal for advertisers as well. For such advertising mode the advertisers select the car owners from different parts depending on the car daily rotations.

As there is dual aspects of everything why not here. Cars are hired for displaying ads in its area depending on the daily rotation schedules. But what if a car standing on the same location for a month without following the terms and conditions. To avoid such types of misleading activities, GPS (Global Positioning System) navigation devices are installed in each car from the very beginning once the car owner and the advertiser signs a deal. These GPS navigation devices help advertisers in monitoring the allotted cars.

Is Advertising Important for customers ?

 "Hey Tata Sky has recently launched a mobile plus internet recording device inbuilt in its new Tata Sky connection". "From where did you got this good news?". Ram asked to Suraj. Suraj told that he got this news through an advertisement campaign shown in the television. Here we can see that how an advertisement can help people in being aware about the changes in products and services offered by the companies. If there would be no advertisement people would not be able to know which product is best and suitable for them according to their needs, tastes and preferences

 There are thousands of products in the same line, say in cosmetics you can find Fair & Lovely, Fairever, Olay, Ponds Magic. These all are fairness creams of different companies, if there would be not advertisement, people would hardly be able to know most of them and their utilities. The advertisements keep customers and the products live to each other. For an instance, Intially the concept of detergent powders was initiated by "Nirma". At that time, advertisements and ad campaigns help Nirma to reach its potential customers. 

When competition arises and other market players like HUL, P&G came in detergents along with Active Wheel and Tide followed by Ghari, Nirma saw a deep fall in its sales volume. This is because these forthcoming companies came to the market with an aggressive marketing & advertisement strategies. Today you will rarely see an ad of Nirma. So Advertisements are really important for the customers. Apart from making them aware about the existing products, it also make them able to compare the products and services. 

Advertising help customers in making choices. Just leave business terms aside, when government has to announce something massively, it convey the message to whole through an ad campaign.

Advertising : Beneficial or burden on wallets.

This has always remained a great topic of discussion among all the customers while having a cup of tea on tea stall among their groups. According to most of the customers, apart from the government fiscal policies, advertisements are also the important factors which are liable for price hikes on products and commodities worldwide. As per their opinions, advertising on television, radios, newspapers and magazines are very costly. The advertising cost incurred by the companies are collected by the companies after rising prices of the products. This is assumed that any product which is produced or manufactured costs, 30% - 40% of their MRP.

 Now if a product MRP is Rs 10, it means it would have been produced at a cost of Rs 3 - 4 (30% - 40% of the MRP). Then why a customers pays Rs 10. As it would be very much difficult for customers to buy their products direct from the manufacturing units, due to a great distance. So the distribution network of distributors and retailers are acceptable and necessary. The distribution network help a customer to get products on comforts. It means if this chain comes after the production and profit margin of the company, the products should cost not more than 60% - 30% of the MRP.

Then why we are paying 100%. This is because a major portion of the MRP includes advertising expenses incurred by the companies in promotion of their products & services. This was what most of the customers think. They think advertising is an extra burden on their wallets. Is this true ?  

Mirror to B2B Marketplace portals.

May be it would be wrong to say that "Still clutched in traditional approach of marketing". That's the reason I chosen to give it the above heading. Today every businesses related to products & services, most of them would have got business expansion plans from B2B marketplace portals say" IndiaMart.com, Tradeindia.com & justdial. May be they would be benefited of that. But the fact is that are you really getting the business you expected after investing a part of your companies funds in such business leads plans.

Actually These sites have a better page rank in Google with different searched keywords related to businesses. I am a professional search Engine Optimizer and a Web Developer as well. So I can really understand the facts behind the curtains. Now once these sites get a better page rank in Google they have an option of free listing, Here free listing option is provided to get the clients contact details through the registration form.

Once you fill the form and get your business listed on such sites on the very second day you would receive a call from their telecallers for  an appointment to explain you the benefits of being a paid member. Next day the Client Acquisition Manager or Business development Manager along  with his laptop, will walk in to your office and demonstrate you that, how much their (Indiamart, trademart) sites are popular on Google.

Here I would like to tell you that today more than 30%of the business comes from Internet (Google). Lets back to the issue, as the BDM would be explaining to you about the ranking of his companies sites on Google, he would definitely tell you " Sir, What will happen if your company got listed in the top ranking of our listing.

• More Exposure than the other free listed companies.
• More Buyers inquiries
• Trust Seal of the respected portals
• A professionally designed web page.

So, Here for a moment just think, for top listing among 15 on a single page of their search results these B2B sites are asking for more than 30K. We should also keep in mind that when a visitor would be going to such sites they would be definitely trying the others as well. So how you are differ from them.

The last but the most important point, Is it really feasible to pay so much to remain in a herd. If trademart having a better page rank can get more visitors, why not our sites if half of that amount. Got confused ?

Actually I am trying to say, as IndiaMart.com, Tradeindia.com, Justdial.com are sites who can perform better due to few Search Engine Optimization Techniques, Why not your sites, Where a Visitor would not find a list, but only you. So which would be the most beneficial.

Hope you would think about it. For  better guidance on

• Domain Registration
• Web Designing & Development
• Search Engine Optimization
• PPC Campaign Managements

And other more valuable resources which can ethically increase you sales.

Outdoor Advertising : Successful but limited.

You would have seen several banners and hoardings containing advertisements of different products and services while driving on roadsides. These types of advertising is called outdoor advertising. For such advertising, local bodies of each states select successful bidders of advertising agencies. These advertising agencies pay a huge sum to get the registered advertising spaces from the local governing advertisement departments or administration.

After the payment of the amount each of the advertising agencies are eligible to charge a fix price for advertisements from advertisers who are interested to get their hoardings and banners posted on the permitted locations. The advertisers are free to choose any of the preferred packages provided by the advertising agencies. But the fact still remains the same here " if an advertiser will choose for a short period, he would not get the maximum exposure and better ROI (Return Over Investments), but for longer period its really work.

There are more than thousands of registered advertising agencies who have been selected by the local governing bodies after successful bidding procedures. As it should be kept in notice that displaying ads on any residential & commercial properties, vehicles without prior permission of the Municipal corporations of each state is a punishable offense. If permitted, the advertisements should not be vulgar and deceptive in any aspects. There are also fixed formats of ad sizes determined by the local authorities which should be carefully followed by the advertising agencies.

 Here we should be known to the fact that outdoor advertising also got some limitations, but if any company tries to overcome that, they would have to draw a heavy check to the advertising agencies. The outdoor advertising regardless of a successful way for advertising has got a major limitation of area and regional boundaries. For example if a company launched a product and started with outdoor advertising in specific location say "India", then its quite obvious that people of other countries would not be able to know the latest product of the company.

Once again Outdoor advertising is an expensive method of advertising. So this type of advertising medium should be chosen by those companies who are visioned to serve a particular location, area or region. This would help them in making their products and services more familiar and known to the customers. The Indian Outdoor Advertising market is more than 12.4 billion. This market is under surveillance of Indian Outdoor Advertising Association.

Web based Advertising : An exciting source of Media for Advertisers.

No doubt, two decades ago many of us would not have expected that internet may be the future source of advertising for advertisers. But growing usage of internet searches, social communities and social networking sites have caved a new way for advertisers to reach a large number of customers. Initially there was no "Google Adwords and clicks and impression based advertising systems. But when it was seen that more and more visitors are coming to the site for searches, Google Adwords came to existence for providing paid better rankings to unknown sites and products.

 This not only attracted online sites rather the business organizations as well to promote their products among customers and to live in their minds. After Google Adwords, advertisement can also be seen in yahoo mail, which is the worlds most used web mail service. Most of the users who uses internet for emails they use Yahoo. So advertisers can also bid for the spaces in yahoo mail as well. Gmail ( a web based mail service from Google), hotmail ( web based mail service from microsoft) are also the next options available to advertisers.

Apart from advertisements in mailing spaces, social networking sites like Orkut, facebook, myspace and hi5 also provide ad spaces to advertisers. Now a days companies are more interested to display their ads on social networking sites, because of the growing numbers of social networking sites users in each countries. Social networking sites are those sites where we can find our friends, colleagues, relatives and kins as well. In this way more and more people get used to stay on such sites for several hours. Their stay on sites is profitable for such sites and the companies whose ads are displaying on these.

 Affiliate marketing, referral programs and ezine marketing are also some of the popular ways of advertising on net. The most important place to advertise your products and get sales on commission basis is commission junction. For referral programs you can look for the various affiliate marketing sites like share a sale.com & dgm pro (India). Ezinearticle is one of the most popular site for articles in the world where more than thousands of articles are uploaded in a single day. Here an author has some spaces to rent. These spaces are occupied by the advertisers for ezine advertising.

Ezines not only provide advertising on page but as an author is subscribed by a large number of people, he or she can send advertisements to their mail as well. This is called ezine marketing. In spite of all these advertising sources, Google adwords still ahead of them and make the ads available to thousands of viewers at the same time on Google and the partnered publishers sites.

Television Based Advertising: Electronic Media

So far,the television advertising market has crossed the benchmark of more than billions of dollars. Actually television advertising is such a source of advertising that keeps the products and services of any companies live among the existing customers. That's the reason FMCG, IT, Pharmaceutical & now mobile manufacturing companies are in queue to bid more and more so that their products could be featured in most seen tele soaps. All the advertising costs are calculated on behalf of TRP (Television Rating Points). The channels which have more TRP, obviously they would charge according to that.

Today in India there are more than 220 television channels approved by Ministry of Information & Broadcasting. All these channels have been differentiated on their genre. But the major category of channels belong to news. According to the channels report, despite of majority of news channels, Star Plus, Zee TV and other channels which feature women based serials are seen most by the majority of women in India and somehow they have got better TRPs than the other channels. The TRP of such channels has now increased by the reality shows.

When a company has to advertise on any of these channels, firstly they had to get their ad campaigns made by any of the professional ad makers. Actually the campaign videos are made by the experts as the concept of the advertisement should reach in viewers mind in that given period of time. Generally these videos are of 15 - 30 seconds. This is because screening of such videos on television channels are charged as per second.

Now you can make an idea of the costing of any of the products of which the bollywood stars are campaigning. While making of the ads these actors and models are paid a huge amount. After them, ad making companies take a huge amount as well. According to one of the media expert in New Delhi (India), if a campaign would be shown for a minimum of six months it will cost more than 70 lakhs.

Advertising brings sale to companies but increase a price load on customers and its too bad.

Paper Based Advertising : Print Media

No doubt a paper printed with text on it have a great impact on anyone, just remember your school time, it was your book printed with lessons on it taught you a lot at that time. Today, in the era of electronics, still print media has got its own importance in the form of newspapers, magazines, booklets and pamphlets. There are number of people who prefer to read daily served newspapers along with their cup of tea. So far, there are more than hundreds of newspapers read daily in the various parts of India. The total number of copies which are sold a day are more than 1 Cr.

It means that the words printed on newspaper is read by a minimum of 1 Cr population. That's gave the newspaper companies to earn money selling their spaces for advertising. This was also beneficial for advertisers, they got a chance to promote their products through newspapers. Hence, it brought a new way of advertising. That is in the form of print media. Advertising in newspapers can cost you from 10,000 to 1 lac depending on the sizes of the ad formats.

The other next option is advertising through magazines. But here the advertisers prefer to put their ads on the related contents magazines. For example, if the advertiser or a company from automobile would definitely prefer to publish their ads in automobile magazines like, Over Drive, Auto Car India. This would bring their autos in the groups of targeted and prospective auto buyers. The other advertisers also think in the same way.

All the above mentioned advertising sources are some how cheaper than the other mediums of advertising in print media. But still there are few companies or organizations who choose to promote their products & services through pamphlets. But the cost of advertising through pamphlets is more costlier than newspapers and magazines. Secondly it doesn't have large numbers of viewers due to limited distribution network.

But here is the most important question "Does print media advertising really works?". For last 5 years it has been seen that the newspaper publishing companies are growing at a faster rate. Even you can easily find district wise newspaper publishing companies in most part of India, publishing the local news in the local languages. You know why? This may be because of the advertising revenue earned from the major newspaper companies would have been observed by the little players in this sector.

Actually on the name of news the local and the growing newspaper companies publish weird news details which does not worth to be published in public. But as the newspaper companies have to give 22 pages printed paper along with highly paid advertisements and to collect big bucks they publish these mess. Probably you would have learn law of diminishing marginal utility. This law states that when a product reaches its maximum, a consumers interest towards that product starts declining. Ironically, the same law applies here.

More newspaper companies, the same news with different headings and different images can't make the people, fool. No doubt, copies of the newspapers are sold but very small number of population assumes those to be true and reliable. So may be they would have now come to know what exactly these newspapers are carrying in 29 pages books. These contains 80% advertisement and 20% news. So any one can figure it out that how many readers would value these newspapers.

Chain Systems & Network Marketing

This was really a memorable day, when one of my school teacher told me how can I drive my own earned car at the age of 15. That was really a nice day. He started to describe me the path which was followed my most of the successful personalities who earned a lot of money following the same path. It was really interesting when he showed me the full plan that how easy it is to earn money now a days. But what I found, I found that my total earning depends on sales volume generated by me and my team.


Actually then I got that, as my teacher is explaining to me to introduce me in such a business structure, I will have to do the same. It means I will also have to bring more and more people to increase the sales and to earn money. Consequently I understood that, this is purely based on Chain System or you may say Network Marketing. Yes, this is the way, chain systems work for any organization to get more and more sales. I such type of marketing, company saves expenses on hiring marketing executive, reduces their budget in advertising.

The best example for chain system & network marketing as we discussed earlier are Amway, Oriflame, Modi and recently, RCM. In the beginning the concept was firstly introduced in India by Amway then followed by the others. These companies got approved from FDI and other accredited institutions so that they can easily execute such concepts. Later on more and more companies started to follow the same path to generate sale, as it was the cheapest but more effective way of selling.

Network Marketing works on a predefined structure where one person who joins a network brings more and more person to his team to increase the sales volume. For Example "A" join a network then he will bring "B" "C" & "D" to the group. These all three would also having a personal interest to earn more and more money. Now "B" would also introduce three new members to the group. The same way "C" & "D" would Day. Now "A" team has 13 members. Gradually the team would grow and hence the sale would increase.

When more such groups are made, sales increase and give companies a large volume of profit to the organization. This is what " Network Marketing" is. But as every thing has dual aspects, it has too, this concept steadily started to be applied in the form of scams and later on it got neglected in various parts of the countries. But later on, after arrival of internet, it got a new structure and a new name " Affiliate Marketing".

Mouth Advertising & Network Marketing - Free & Paid

We, the human beings have one habit in common, if we like or dislike something we appreciate & depreciate it among our friends and familiars. Today I bought an i pod for me, it is really beautiful in design & appearance, when I shown it to my friends, the first question was "from where you bought this?. I told them that I bought it from Nehru place, secondly they asked about the shop and resulted into buying the same. Here the shopkeeper didn't pay anything to me but what I did, I promoted the shopkeeper free of cost.

Mouth advertising is a free of cost advertising medium for business organizations depending on their quality of products and services. Whenever a person would be satisfied he would definitely promote the product & the company without expecting money from the promoted company. Now for a moment just think, you told about a product to 10 people free of cost, and what if you would be paid for that. Yes, you will tell more than 100 a day. Based on this concept, company started to pay commissions on each sale to anyone for promoting their products among their friends & relatives.

This concept brought a new way of advertising & promoting a product called " Network Marketing. This really doesn't cost anything to advertisers as they pay the network marketers on the sales volume generated by them. You must have heard the name of Amway. Amway is an MNC company that market their products through network marketing followed by HUL, Oriflame, Modi group. Network marketing really worked across the world but was successful to a limited extent (FMCG only).

Mouth advertising and network marketing both are based on same concepts of advertisement but one is free and other is paid. So you are the better judge to choose between them. So far, you would have noticed that some how advertising & marketing both are similar in few ways. These both tools are used to spread word about products & services.

Advertsing & Marketing : The Great Tools For A Business.

Advertising always remained an integral part of any business whether its a small scale, medium or giant business structure. Each and every business groups use different kinds of advertising methodologies to promote their products among customers. No doubt, the monopolistic market structure has reduced a great extent but it lead to an extensive competitive market. Here is there were 1000 of customers, you may find more than 500 product manufacturers satisfying these customers' needs.

So, it becomes a confused situation for customers to decide with which products they should move on. For example if we talk about FMCG (Fast Movable Consumable Goods) , we would find, HUL (Hindustan Unilever Ltd), Procter & Gamble, ITC & other renowned brands having a large market capitalization in FMCG market. This really depicts the competitive face of market structure. This is not constraint only to FMCG products only, even the same level of crowd can be seen in Technology, Engineering, Pharmaceuticals & other categorized industries.

Here advertising plays a vital role in making customers aware of the products. So all these business groups apply various of advertising & marketing strategies to have greater exposure & large number of satisfied customers base resulting into a large sales volume. So far the traditional way of advertising say Print Media ( Newspapers, Magazines, Brochures), Electronic Media (Televisions, Radios) were available in 90, but the arrival of internet broaden the application of advertising & promotions.

Once web language arrived and people started interacting with internet media, then it was found that advertising may have a new approach and that can be Internet Marketing. The best example of Internet Advertising is Google Adwords. As people started looking for anything on Google it became the worlds' no. 1. search engine where you can search for any information that you need. Increasing number of Google users attracted big companies who always remained in some new source of advertising to reach a large group of audiences.


Apart from Google Adwords, companies started peeping into the personal emails of the customers through e-mail advertising , e-zine advertising, affiliate marketing & other internet based mediums of advertising & promotions. So, start from the beginning we saw a dramatic change in the forms of advertising. According to a site the internet based advertising was worth $ 38.8 million. And the accelerated pace has added more worth to advertising market.