IPL and TV Advertising

When IPL had just started, I heard about this new advertising technique where advertising really broke into the game of cricket harder than ever.
At the end of every 10 overs of IPL, there would be a longer break for commercials, of around 8 – 10 minutes. And this information was given out clearly in all the media. The first question that came to my mind was – if the viewers already know this information, then will anyone actually bother watching 10 minutes of commercials waiting for play to resume? Would this not, instead, entice the user to change the channel when he knows exactly how long it is going to take before play resumes? This is fairly obvious. And if it is obvious indeed, can’t the advertisers predict this much? If people are not watching their advertisements for those long breaks, then are they really having any return on investment from putting up their ads during IPL?

On further probing on the topic, I realized where the flaw lay. When you use TV as a medium of advertising, it is very difficult to actually predict how many people saw your advertisement, and whether they actually observed it, or whether they actually made an attempt at analyzing the purpose of the ad, and finally whether that analysis converted to purchase. The only data that an advertiser gets is the popularity of the channel where ads are being shown, and the TRP ratings of the programme in between which the ads are being shown. And it is just on the basis of this that advertisers decide whether to invest in this channel / programme for displaying ads. In fact, it isn’t even the advertiser who looks at it.

Say you are Bru Cappuccino. To make your product famous you want to advertise on TV. So what happens is that you contact one agency for making your ad, and then another agency which acts like an exchange in between advertisers like you and TV channels. So the advertiser never actually “bargains” with the publisher of the ad. It’s all done by this intermediary exchange. Thus, you have no idea when your ad is going to show up, and more often than not, it is not effective. In fact, you might actually see the same Bru Cappuccino ad 3 times during the same programme broadcast on MTV (for example). So you pay for each of those 3 times, whereas you would have probably preferred if it had come 1 time each for 3 programmes. And the whole process is so much of a black box that ultimately what you do is just sign a cheque and give it to the advertising exchange.

So what happened in case of IPL? IPL obviously has better viewer stats than most other running serials on TV. So advertisers must have bid more in the advertising exchange for putting up their ads during IPL. Also, more advertisers would have signed up for putting up their ads on IPL. As a result, a whole lot of ad inventory was built up for IPL. Now, Mr. Lalit Modi must have done this calculation and realized that he cannot satisfy (or rather extract the last penny out) all the advertisers and their total view demands with just 59 matches (breaking it down to approximately 50-60 (20 + 20 over breaks + 20 wickets) advertising opportunities). He had more ad inventory to look at publishing. So what does he do now? He actually introduces a change in the game called “Strategy breakout” where each team can take a break to think back on how they should plan their next 10 overs. Looking at it from the perspective of cricket, this definitely adds a new dimension to the game – making batsmen resettle into their game – making the resettling period quite a wicket taking opportunity for the bowling team (as Sachin Tendulkar figured in his match against Deccan Chargers on 25th April. He was playing beautifully till the break, and when he came, he was completely unsettled, and lost his wicket in no time, and eventually his team lost).

TV advertising is definitely an effective technique of reaching your potential and existing customers. However, the way it is done can be really improved to ensure that advertisers can better calculate their ROI of advertising on TV. No prizes for guessing which form of advertising offers the best estimate for Return on Investment for the advertiser.

Google Profiles

Yet another product from Google. This time it is Google Profiles. It is a single stop for connecting all your Google Profiles (Gmail, Orkut, Picasa, etc.). So now you need to update stuff at just one place for it to reflect everywhere.

Apart from that, how I see it, for consumers, this is like a mini – Orkut. Mini because you don’t need to write about yourself for that 1 hour which it takes to make an Orkut Profile. This is just a 5 min exercise where you will put in your place of birth, where you have studied, and stayed. A few other details here and there. So if you want to search for people from your school who you haven’t contacted for years, you can use the Google Search Profile option which will take you to all people who are from that place. Orkut of course has a perfect search algorithm, where even if you make as have as an alphabet out of place, the search will not return relevant results. But Google Profiles use the regular Google search algorithm, which significantly corrects your search. A very plain example, if you search for “College of Engg TVM”, it will also return results from College of Engineering Trivandrum.

Now, let’s look at it from Google’s perspective. Why would Google want to do this (apart from the fact that it is useful for people in general :-)). This is to build a huge, structured database of characteristics of people. And why would they do that? To further improve their content advertising. You might have already noticed the ads you get on the right doing your Google searches or in Gmail. These are based on a lot of things like what you search for, what your previous searches have been, and what your IP address is. With the “what you search for”, they match it with keywords that advertisers have bought (called Google Adwords), and if there is a match, then they put up that ad. Similarly in Gmail, the ads you see on the right come up because some of your mail content looks like it matches with what an advertiser is hoping for when he / she is looking for a target customer. And finally, your IP address – that tells Google that you are probably sitting in India, or to be more specific, say Mumbai, and hence Mumbai based ads would be most relevant.

Google has always been trying to improve how they display ads to us. Some examples have been the Google SearchWiki – where if you have logged in to any Google account when you search, the results will be even more relevant to you, and you can customize how you see results. By doing this they were actually collecting what you search, and then improving their ads.

Now have a look at Google Profiles – they take basic data about you. Now with this data, they are going to be able to better make their algorithms to ensure the ads they put up are more relevant on their pages. This way there is a better probability that the ads would get clicked and therefore a greater probability that Google gets the money from ads.

To access your Google Profile, click here.

Blogging Ethics

In this new world of internet, blogging is slowly but surely taking centre stage. Blogging is not just about writing your thoughts - it is a new dimension in the world for a way of doing things. It is a marketing channel for advertisers to meet the long tail of the audience. It is a way of being acknowledged on the internet. It's a way of finding yourself in Google Search results!

Of course, with every new dimension that is added to the way we do things, there is a good side and a bad side. The good side, as mentioned above, is all about having the freedom to express your thoughts, and free flow of information. The bad side, is of course, abuse of this free service that has been provided. Some supposed bloggers use blogs to vent out their frustrations at being losers by abusing others in their blogs. Some people try and de-market some of their associations, be it their college, their work place, or some more successful peers.

But should such negative posts be punished? Of course, there is a simple way of filing an FIR if people want to do it - but at times, it is better that the immaturity of the negative bloggers be handled differently. Credibility comes not just by posting - but by posting sense. Otherwise it just shows the lack of development of the mind of the blogger.

Thus, while blogging is every person's right, I think it is also the duty of each blogger to exercise certain discretion in the language and comments they write on their blog.

Reducing File Size of Images

Ever since the inception of the Digital Camera, it has become far easier to secure every moment of our life. However, something that has been completely overlooked is the acute wastage of space that has come in with the improving technology.

With every new advancement, file size has been going up drastically. The average file size of a photo these days is 3 - 4 MB. However, these images are mostly viewed only on the computer, and rarely are they used beyond that. So while all one needs is an image that looks clear, and fits the screen size on their monitors, they end up using these heavy images, which of course take up a lot of space, and are practically not worth the effort.

One simple solution to reduce file size and maintain good quality is by using Picasa. This is a Google product, which lets you view images on your computer, and also lets you upload images onto your Google Picasa account (upto 1 GB). So let me give you an example.

I just collected some of my convocation Pics (93 in number) which had a file size of 236 MB. I then opened this folder in Picasa, and right click on this folder in the Left Menu, and said, Upload to Web Albums. It then gave me the option of making a new folder in my online Photo Account, and then 4 options for file size to upload.

1. Original size (slowest Upload)
2. Recommended: 1600 pixels (for prints, screensavers, and sharing)
3. Medium: 1024 pixels (for sharing)
4. Small: 640 pixels (for blogs and webpages)

Now, since I wanted a decent amount of clarity for the convocation pics, I used the option 3, which is medium file size. I then uploaded this album online. Next, I went to the online web album and went into this particular online folder, and on the top left, clicked Download - Download to Picasa. This again downloaded my conovcation pics back to my hard disc. And this time, the file size was just 10.7 MB. And photos were of good quality too. So basically I reduced the file size by more than 20 times, I also have an online copy of the files, and in all, I have saved loads of space on my computer.

Let's all be responsible people and not waste storage space on our Hard Discs. This is a simple process for reducing file size and sharing it with friends as well. Of course there would be loads of ways of reducing file size - but doing it on a large scale, with no software installation required as such, makes life really easy.