Digital advertising is considered a game changer threatening traditional advertising media including print, TV, radio and outdoors. However, despite all the advantages such as lower costs and relatively efficient response tracking, advertisers are still not fully ready to accept online platforms, say industry experts. Unless marketing initiatives are innovative and devised specifically for digital media, the effectiveness will remain questionable, they add.

“The audience has adopted so much more quickly to digital platforms compared with advertisers. There’s still an inertia in brand managers to pursue active digital advertising,” said Raj Narain, MD of Chennai-based Optima Advertising. The company handles brands such as ITC’s Vivel, Kaya Skin Clinic and Star Health Insurance.

From being fully search-based, advertising has grown to engage and interact with users. Earlier ads would appear on search engine pages when specific keywords were typed. A technique called search engine optimisation is deployed to strategically place text and marquee ads on search pages. Now advertisers are co-creating products, getting instant feedback and improving their offerings using online platforms especially social media, Narain said.

Despite the advantages, a large number of success stories haven’t emerged from the online medium primarily for lack of innovation, according to Preetham Venkky, business head at KRDS. The French firm develops applications for Facebook and works with brands like Samsung, Reebok and Renault.

“Traditionally, content developed for print and TV is ‘copy-pasted’ on the digital medium. Otherwise, there is just spamming. Don’t do anything online that you won’t do offline. Would any brand collect a group of people in the middle of the road and shout out its promotional messages? If that’s not the case, then please don’t spam online,” he stressed.

However, the scope of advertising online has expanded fairly in the last two years, he added. Online advertising was allocated about 1.5 per cent of ad budgets till last year. Now it has grown to about four per cent and a few brands that have most of their target base online, such as e-commerce sites, spend close to 10 per cent. Firms now spend about 0.5 per cent of their budget on Facebook, Venkky added.