MAM
MMA releases ‘Mobile Ecosystem and ad-Sizing Report’ 2018
MUMBAI: Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) along with media investment group GroupM has released the its ‘Mobile Ecosystem and ad-Sizing Report’ 2018 highlighting an in-depth analysis of India’s mobile reach, smartphone penetration, rural and urban usage pattern, with an emphasis on gaming, and mobile advertising spends. Advocated by GroupM, the report is a collaborative effort by the marketing and mobile industry.
The report offers an insight into how India is moving towards a new era of mobile marketing, seeing rampant growth in both usages and spends. It explores how programmatic works along with updates on the latest trends in data growth, content play, and device status. The report also reveals that Xiaomi became the most shipped smartphone, the first time any smartphone crossing Samsung in the last five years.
The report highlights the ‘mammoth growth’ of Jio, which is now 18 per cent of the total market and has added more than 200 million users to the mobile ecosystem. It also states that rural India is bringing online three times more people than urban areas. “India will cross 500 million mobile internet users by the end of 2018, we foresee that this growth will be led by the rural populace,” it adds.
It mentions that India is in the top three countries in programmatic spends growth with the spends growth of 81 per cent in the past year. Programmatic adoption in the country is growing; standing at 32 per cent right now and poised to grow to 52 per cent in the next 24 months. The propensity for programmatic guaranteed increasing in India – penetration to grow from 6 per cent to 17 per cent by 2020.
Talking about the key verticals in mobile advertising, the report states that gaming, vernacular, OTT video, and OTT audio are leading the segment. “Mobile gaming in India is dominated by freemium games. 2016 saw a 200 per cent increase in gaming app revenue, which will grow at a CAGR of 87 per cent till 2020, crossing the $1 billion mark,” it reveals.
The report claims that vernacular language users in India will grow 12 times by 2021. “In the next five years chat application, government sites, and digital payments will lead to more vernacular content consumers online,” it mentions.
The report further mentions that on-demand video platforms have crossed 100 million users in India with Hotstar leading the market. The user growth on these platforms has got maximum traction from tier 2 and tier 3 cities.
MMA Asia Pacific managing director Rohit Dadwal said, “Mobile Marketing is now a main stream advertising and marketing medium and it is imperative that we start to decipher the various parts of this burgeoning media. We hope the ecosystem study would provide insights to marketers and the industry on the whole on the opportunity and will help in making the right investments for its continuing growth.”
GroupM CEO and Mobile Marketing Association India co-chair Sam Singh noted, “The number of smartphone users is expected to only go up and it just shows how much potential these digital screens have. Hence, we as marketers must understand various facets of mobile marketing. Times are changing fast and we want to enable marketers with the knowledge that can help them in a long run.”
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Abhay Duggal joins JioStar as director of Hindi GEC ad sales
The streaming giant brings in a seasoned revenue hand as the battle for Hindi television advertising heats up
MUMBAI: Abhay Duggal has a new desk, and JioStar has a new weapon. The media and entertainment veteran has joined JioStar as director of entertainment ad sales for Hindi general entertainment channels, adding 17 years of hard-won revenue experience to one of India’s most powerful broadcasting operations.
Duggal is no stranger to big portfolios or bruising markets. Before joining JioStar, he spent a brief stint at Republic World as deputy general manager and north regional head for ad sales. Before that, he put in three years at Enterr10 Television, where he ran the north region for Dangal TV and Dangal 2, two of India’s leading free-to-air Hindi channels. The north alone accounted for more than 50 per cent of total channel revenue on his watch, a number that tends to get attention in any sales meeting.
His longest stint was at Zee Entertainment Enterprises, where he spent over six years rising to associate director of sales. There he commanded the Hindi movies cluster across seven channels, owned more than half of north India’s revenue across flagship properties including Zee TV and &TV, and closed marquee sponsorships across the Indian Premier League, Zee Rishtey Awards and Dance India Dance. He also handled monetisation for the English movies and entertainment cluster and the global news channel WION, a portfolio that would stretch most sales teams twice his size.
Earlier in his career Duggal closed what was then a Rs 3 crore single deal at Reliance Broadcast Network, one of the largest in Indian radio at the time, before that he helped launch and monetise JAINHITS, India’s first HITS-based cable and satellite platform.
His edge, by his own account, lies in marrying data and instinct: translating audience trends, inventory signals and client demands into long-term partnerships built on cost-per-rating-point discipline rather than short-term deal chasing. In a media landscape being reshaped by streaming, fragmented attention and AI-driven advertising, that kind of rigour is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.
JioStar, which blends the scale of Reliance’s Jio platform with the content firepower of Star, is doubling down on its advertising business at precisely the moment the Hindi GEC market is getting more competitive. Bringing in someone who has spent nearly two decades doing exactly this, across some of India’s most watched channels, is a pointed statement of intent. Duggal has spent his career turning audiences into revenue. JioStar is clearly betting he can do it again, and bigger.
