Apps, mobile sites are best channels of advertising for ecommerce brands in India: Criteo

Criteo has released its new Performance Marketing Asia report that highlights how mobile is king, and apps and mobile websites are the best channels of advertising for e-commerce brands in India. The report in partnership with Worldwide Business Research (WBR) was a result of interviewing 400 senior marketing professionals, and gives an insight of marketing trends as well as consumer behavior in the APAC region. According to the survey, 36 percent of online traffic for major retail, e-commerce & travel companies in India, comes from mobile websites and apps generating overall sales of 32 percent. Some of the challenges faced by advertisers, according to the survey, include identifying the best technology partner and accuracy solution, difficulty in managing the latest privacy standards or best practices and lack of knowledge/skills to run the program. But, talking specifically about the Indian market, hasn’t app-only strategy failed, and caused huge losses as well as embarrassment to one of the pioneering e-commerce sites in India. We had a quick chat with Dushyant Sapre, Commercial Director of Criteo India, who explains, “A user starts the discovery from mobile devices visa app, and that’s why a lot of traffic you see is from mobile/apps. However, we find that the transaction ends up happening on desktops. So, as a marketer I can no longer assume that I can have different campaigns running on different devices and browsers. There will be scenarios wherein we wont know what the user waned. This is when Criteo solution becomes useful for marketers to seamlessly understand where the user is, what he really wants, what kind of product messages should be delivered and on what device.”  However, he is of the firm belief that mobile is the place to go for marketers as the shift in pattern will gradually happen. “In emerging markets, majority of transactions are still driven through app. Desktop is not a standard device. So, the massive shift will continue. And over the time, this may start standardising,” he said. Talking about India, he said, “The first 100 million people who came online had access and the means to, and then began the influx from tier 2 and tier 3 cities wherein the access is via mobile phone or a smaller device, and definitely not a desktop. This had led to the massive shift towards discovery from smartphones and transactions from smartphones. As this will increase, the access via these smaller devices will eventually increase,” he added. Talking about cross device advertising, 78 percent of digital marketers and advertisers expressed the importance to engage customers with a more personalised and focused approach. When asked about what marketers can do at this point that involves a lot of cross device integration, he said how the last couple of years, companies have tried driving app only, or driving traffic through app by making users install app. However, looking at the current scenario, profitability is become a major factor. App or number of users isn’t the only performance driver or business driver. Sales transactions have become an important parameter to drive business. “Now, combining these two factors, looking at people coming online as well as the need to create more sales transaction, companies have to started looking at something Criteo is trying to do. We are trying an linear approach wherein it doesn’t matter if users come online on phone, may transact on secondary device or on another device, use credit or cash on delivery, and so on. Online companies have to try drive engagement on various platforms, and that’s what Criteo’s marketing technology works at. If there is user engagement, irrespective of device, it will help online companies engage with users a all times. Our marketing performance technology helps drive sale,” he further went on to explain.