Digital advertising is growing and ads customised to platforms work best: Kantar

• The best performing ads are customised to the platforms, says analytics company Kantar.
  
  
• Bharat is a fast-growing market for the premium segment, but its ads have to be different.
  
  
• The rural consumer wants her product first, entertainment next; and the ad message needs to be clear and simple, says the Kantar report.
  
  
• Low testing of ads is the reason why some campaigns have to be withdrawn.
  

Advertisers have 15 seconds to make their point, before ‘digital’ India either flips, skips or switches off from the ad in front of them. And these shorter ads are getting better if a report by marketing analytics company Kantar is to be believed.

As of 2022, 17% of the shorter ads that were tested, cleared the threshold for creativity and effectiveness— as opposed to 7% a year earlier. The rampant popularity of short form video content has made it tougher for advertisers to keep it sharp and singular with vivid dramatisations.

Digital advertising is growing but those ads that are customised to the platforms are the ones which do better, Soumya Mohanty, managing director and chief client officer at Kantar, tells Business Insider India. Content can be the same, but it has to be customised.

“Earlier, a TV ad used to be put online – that’s changing. It has to be customised to the platform, but the challenge is to do so in a way without losing coherence. When I see an ad on FB (Facebook) or YouTube, they turn out to be totally different and that doesn’t help, so integration has to be there,” Mohanty says, explaining how the ad world is fast-evolving.

The importance of coherence in the performance of an ad has doubled in importance since 2015, as compared to the pre-2014 era, the Kantar report says. While mediums are different, communication should be similar across TV, YouTube, OOH, print and banner videos. OOH refers to out-of-home advertising and includes billboards, posters etc.

What does Bharat want?

The eyeball share of ads have been suffering as the number of screens are rising, but the essence of what India wants in ads is the same, observes Kantar. “India wants stories and emotions,” says Mohanty.

Then there is an emerging area of buyers who necessitate brands to customise it to their sensibilities too — Bharat. The pie of rural and small town consumers is rising.

The market is seeing 2.4x faster growth in rural areas compared with urban areas across premium segments in home, personal and food & beverage (F&B) categories, says the Kantar report.

The rural consumer wants her product first and entertainment next; and the ad message needs to be clear and simple without metaphors, and should signal cultural familiarity. “It’s not that you can’t show them an aspirational product or a lifestyle, but do not show them something they are not comfortable with,” says Mohanty.

In the last few months, a lot of ads have failed both at the urban, rural and even national level. Mohanty believes that the reason for the same is low testing of ads. “It’s because people decide to go with their gut feeling instead of testing. During testing, red flag ads always get caught. And brands should never do anything that they have to take back,” Mohanty says.

Kantar has assessed a multitude of ads to pick the most effective ones across categories. Hindustan Unilever won the most laurels with wins across three categories — ‘food and beverage’, ‘home care’ and ‘un-stereotype’ for Red Label, Surf Excel and Bru, respectively, for TV medium. Welspun walked away with the top honours in the digital category for its QuickDry towel ad.