Wnat India holds for Mobile Advertising?

India being a land of demographical diversity, huge population base and growing economy is the best market for any technology to get flourish.


Currently India has a subscriber base of 300 million and 100 million are adding every year. These statistics show that India promises a larger market for mobile business. In such rosy scenario, the business related to Value Added Services will help entrepreneurs and leaders in telecom sector. Cell phones are the best pals of people in current busy life schedule. They can not imagine a life without cell. So definitely as per me, mobiles will revolutionize the business in India.

Gradually every player small or big has sensed the flow and has started to race in the same direction. They are trying hard to capitalize on this on-going hype of mobile advertising. They have realized the marketing quo and opportunity that this small gadget is offering. But at the same time it has many competitors to battle with in the advertising business.

Mobile advertising is not just any data; SPAM is a big NO. It seriously does not include any unwanted calls but it deals with sending of informative and permission based marketing messages to willing consumers.

When analysts and market watchers share a common notion regarding that India is the next most powerful nation, even has the capability to lead the world, and has the larger base for computer and software professionals, Internet advertising can be the most powerful competitor for mobile advertising. I feel that Indian generation is waking up and is becoming tech savvy, thereby making Internet more popular.

In India, Internet Advertising is around 1% of the total advertising pie. Internet advertising market in India in 2007 was Rs 450 crores which is speculated to rise to Rs 2250 crores by 2009. No doubt still the penetration is very low but it has a long way to go.

On the other side mobile devices being very handy have higher prospects to grow. According to Rajesh Jain, Managing Director of Mumbai-based Netcore Solutions, a mobile marketing pioneer in India, "Mobile advertising in India can be bigger than Internet advertising in the next three-four years." Even the company has been very successful in mobile advertising for its brand MyToday. Since its launch in 2006, MyToday has registered more than four million subscribers and continuing the same pace it will hit 10 million in a year.

Walking the same stride, Hyderabad based mobile advertising company Way2SMS claims that it reaches 6.5 million unique users per month.

In my opinion, the mobile advertising is at very nascent stage but it is projected to touch $10 billion by 2010. With iPhone and 3G in the offing, researchers believe that mobile advertising market will shoot up.

As per me, the market will definitely scale up as cell phones have larger penetration and in future it will further increase. But yes this will face many threats if content delivered will be Spam. The content makers will influence the fate of this advertising market. They should understand that it is not telemarketing but invited advertising.