Road to 2020: Native Advertising Trends to look out for

Sandeep Balani from Outbrain India sheds light on native advertising trends in India on the Road to 2020.

India may be looking at various macroeconomic changes soon. According to recent reports, the advertising sector will record an Rs. 776 billion shifts mostly due to massive digital advertising spends and smartphone penetration. We predict that these changes will be introduced or solidified come 2020. Due to the drastic forecasted changes, the following native advertising trends are bound to form:

Advertisers will change their approach to fit the new reality

Advertisers have begun to note the government’s positive momentum to improve the Indian economy and its impact on consumer behavior. The majority of the development will be driven by consumers' increased adoption of cell phones, expansion of internet usage and the significant drop in data prices. The lowered interest rates will surely bring about a change of sentiment from the Indian people. Deeper internet penetration will bring about the expansion of digitalization in the country. Advertisers have waited years for these changes and are excited about the prospects it will bring.

The first industry where big shifts will be recorded is in the Banking and Finance sector. This industry is the largest buyer of digital media, spending about 38% of its budget on media. The Real Estate industry will not be far behind. Their recent focus has been to engage and convert customers through digital ad content which will have them spending about 25% of their budget on the medium. Slowly but surely, other sectors will be impacted by this highly effective and sought-after wave.

Programmatic will gain further momentum with the growth of native
advertising

Spending on programmatic advertising has been growing steadily over the last few years. Now with the addition of new native formats and incremental supply, we can expect to see even more advertising dollars invested in Programmatic.

The efficiency of programmatic combined with the non-intrusive, high engagement Native formats, will be a powerful combination for marketers to leverage in 2020.

Outbrain launched its native DSP Zemanta in India to programmatically bid on and execute ad buys on ad exchanges which enables optimizing campaigns for post-click performance, optimizing for KPIs such as Cost Per Visit, Bounce Rate, Time on Site, Cost per Lead or Sale.

Data rates to remain in control:

When Jio entered the telecom market in 2016,
a price war started that disrupted the telecommunications sector. Three years
have passed and the war has not shown signs of receding. With the launch of Jio
Fiber, the challenge has now shifted to broadband. Jio Fiber Broadband will be
a game-changer as the recorded rate of progress is already alarming. As many as
1.5 crore homes across 1,600 cities in India have opted in with substantially
higher value subscriptions.

For the first time in a long time, data rates
have increased towards the end of this year. However, when you consider the
many years of cheap data in the past, this challenge is not significant.

We are a part of an industry with a habit of regular reinvention but native would be a force to reckon with. More advertisers are looking to diversify their spends in digital advertising. They also plan to ease out brands to identify the right audience interests in a fragmented media landscape.

This article piece is authored by Sandeep Balani, Head of India at Outbrain.