Loading ...Motley fool did a write up on Rediff. The interesting items to me were
Users - 53.6 million Revenues: $30MM annually ARPU annual : 0.56 cents.
10 advertisers accounted for 55% of revenues. Maybe all revenues were not advertising related. If say Rediff has 10% ( wild guess) of all online ad media spend then total online ad media spend in India would be $250MM.
Does this look high or low and how does it compare to other countries.
These numbers seem to suggest that the market for ad backed plays in India is limited. Will these numbers grow exponentially. How much will total media spend in India be in 2012 and of that how much online.
Does anyone know of reasonably credible estimates.
Entrepreneurs who are trying to pitch ad backed critical mass plays will need to address what share of the media spend they hope to get and how will they get it.
Sanjay, in my understanding, most of rediff revenues are not online advertising based. The total display market for online ads is believed to be in $60m range currently, and then there is pay-for-performance on top of that. The overall number might be just south of $100m.
I agree with your conclusion regarding ad based businesses,
IMAI looks like a credible source…
Internet Users (IMAI)
—————
04 25m
05 end: 38.5m
08 100m Est
http://www.iamai.in/IAMAI_new.html
Advertising market (Rs Crore)
2003-04 42
2004-05 107
2005-06 162
2006-07 218
aditya kumar
Most sources peg the current Indian online ad size in the range $60-$80m. Projections for 2010 are in the range $250m-$300m with 50% annual growth.
There can be some variation depending on one defines/measures Indian Online Media Market. Whether we include money spent on only Resident Indians or do we also include that earned by Indian firms from NRIs. In case of Rediff for example, $20m of $28m came from resident Indians, rest came from NRIs and others.
Likewise, whether we see only earnings of Indian Focused Firms or do we include earnings from Resident Indians by sites having no Indian focus/presence such as say youtube/myspace.
there is no way Rediff has 53M users.. how I wish that was true hahahaha… I mean seriously I am disappointed to see Rediff put out that number, to say its misleading is an understatement.
The IAMAI - IMRB reports are credible, er, sort off, they have some misleading heads such as “ever users” which are irrelevant, and also active users are defined as “logging in atleast once a month”; but if you dig deeper you should find what you need.
Given that the Indian AD market is ~$3Bn, assuming penetration (for internet advertising) as high as that in the US (10%), one gets a cap on the internet ad spend (across all categories: display, search, classifieds, with the first two accounting for about 75% of the total internet ad spend) as ~$300M. Obviously internet advertising in India is not as mature as in the US, so expect the total Internet ad market size to be anywhere between $100M & $200M.
A small number (in the US, this is $14B). One can expect this to touch $400M over the next few years as both ad spends & share for Internet ads grow.
Google already has a dominant share (~40%), so limited scope for startups. To establish a successful business in such a small market, you need flawless execution, not to mention tons of luck.
Media will grow only where there’s Opportunity To See (OTS)…!
I think for a market for ad backed plays to grow, the productivity of the medium and its economics matter. It drives the width of user adoption and its base. TV and Print (dailies, not magazines) media has shown that. They have more user base because they are cheap and are getting cheaper (added no. of topical supplements, features, advertorials)…You can get a good newspaper for as low as Rs.3/-.
TV is a one-time investment and no recurring charges except for power and cable rental (which is optional). No upgrades, no virus attacks, no AMCs and normally doesn’t need frequent service. Hence OTS indicators are high…and that drives brands to spend more on this media…
Internet has ubiquity, but it still is dependant on uneconomic hardware and worse, it’s rickety too with its frequent hang ups, viruses, need for costly upgrades (MS has to survive, agreed !) and can’t be serviced locally spending Rs.50/- or below. One visit of the service engineer (yeah..sounds elitist…he doesn’t call himself a friendly `mechanic’…another deterrent) costs minimum Rs.250/- or go in for costly AMCs. All while pirated software is the norm (on assembled desktops…try turning legit and it is clearly out of bounds for average user)…
So I think the starting point has to be affordable hardware, low maintenance, and IPTV (minus Virus / hangups / need for frequent upgrades)…and then see how OTS indicators drive up north which in turn will spike up user adoption leading to increased media spends.
Cheaper broadband has enabled it to a certain extent, but the hardware costs (desktops/laptops) are still high. Even cost of surfing at a cyber cafe ( Rs.25/- per hour) is not cheap enough. This restricts the users to send a few mails, job searches, accessing marriage portals (weekly or fortnightly)….the low frequency not being considered often while arriving at user numbers by research firms.
http://investor.rediff.com/compfilingsDt.asp?path=cofilings/2007/6-k16052007.html&y=2006
says:
India Online revenues for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2007 totaled US$20.76 million, an increase of 71% compared to India Online revenues during the fiscal year ended March 31, 2006.
US Publishing revenues for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2007 totaled US$7.92 million, an increase of 21% compared to US Publishing revenues during the fiscal year ended March 31, 2006.
–
This means India ad + fee revenues. For jobs, matrimonials, travel, Finance and IT products gets $21 million, which is around 80 crores.
Naukri makes about 140 cr. but then most of their income is fees, not ads. (or so I think)
With about 50 lakh pc base and about 40 million users (4 cr) do we really see anyone spending Rs. 250 per internet user in the market? And Rs. 2000 per pc. owner? I don’t think we’re going to reach a 1000 cr. ad market in the next three years. Perhaps in 8-10 years we will have 5 cr. pcs. and 20 cr. users. That’s probably when the online ad market will be able to pierce 1000 cr.
A bit late to this post but the stats seem to be here…
http://www.startupdunia.com/2007/04/15/online-advertising-market-in-india/
Yahoo is the number 1 palyer in india nad the calim a number of 19-20 million unique users(UU) from india…in all their properties together
Google will be reaching to in excess of 14 million UU and is the clear leader in online search
Rediff to the best of my estimates will be reaching to around 13 million Unique users monthly and will be number 2 to Yahoo in advertising revenues…
Indiatimes and Money control are other significant players with 7 million and 2 million user base