NDTV Convergence has outsourced its mobile ad sales to Affle, after outsourcing the mobile portal development and management to July Systems. Affle is a mobile applications company, with investments from the Times of India Group.
So the Mobile Advertising revenue share around NDTV Active is now split 3 ways – with NDTV Convergence, July Systems and Affle each getting a share. One should also look at this development in a slightly different context: a little over a year ago, NDTV Convergence had brought online ad sales in-house, from sister company NDTV Media. So why then have they outsourced mobile ad sales? And how does bringing Affle into the picture affect NDTVs relationship with July Systems?
Sanjay Trehan, CEO of NDTV Convergence told MediaNama “July is our technology partner. They power the back-end, and will incorporate the new products and channels that we will launch in the future. The Affle deal comes with a minimum guarantee to us. NDTV Convergence does syndication, events and online ad sales. Mobile is a specialized cell, so we have decided to get out of advertising on the mobile space, and tie up with Affle for 2 years. They’re a large aggregator of mobile ads. Our revenue sharing relationship will continue with July.”
Also worth noting is the fact that this is a form of diversification for Affle – they were primarily a mobile applications company, well known for their application SMS 2.0, which is available to Airtel customers. The application is advertising supported, so they do have a mobile ad sales team. Now they’ve expandated their mandate to include ad sales for other companies as well.
Interestingly, at a discussion organized by MediaNama last year, both NDTV Convergence and Affle had claimed that they’re not taking CPL deals. NDTV Active claims to have 3.8 million pageviews on the mobile, while Affle claims to have delivered over 100 campaigns, and a “125Mn monthly mobile media inventory”.
Related:
– NDTV Convergence Ties Up With TutorVista; Our Take On Their Strategy
– NDTV Q2-09 Revenues At Rs. 128 Crores; NDTV Convergence FY08 Loss At Rs. 5.5 Crores
– SMS 2.0 Integrates Search From Google, MSN, AskLaila And Others; The Opportunity For Affle
– @MoMo Delhi: Video Ads On Mobile; Need For Mobile Ad Standards; Do-Call Registry; Personalization
– @MoMo Delhi: Airtel WAP Banner @ Rs. 5 Lakh/Day; Affle & NDTV Active Not Taking CPL
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8 Comments until now.
Interesting tie up. I guess that with a partner like Affle (which I think is the only one actually doing good mobile ad sales in India), NDTV in all likelihood should make some good mobile ad dollars.
Gurpreet , Admob is doing quite well in India . They count India among their top 3 markets. They are doing millions of impressions per month in India
Ya i read the Admob reports quite frequently too, so know that India is big market for them. However dunno of many advertisers (outside game,wallpaper guys) who are putting too much money there, which is what I guess makes the difference.
LOL, None of you got the subtext of the deal .here is the translation
[NDTV] its recession . mobile is not making money for us . heck we don't have any idea how it can
[affel] : its recession . we are not finding the publisher to apply our add inventory
[NDTV] : you can use mine
[affel] you can use mine
[ndtv] ,[affle] : deal! Lets call medianama and get some press .
so much for "strategy" .
:) LTLRC: Interesting and provocative.
Fact is that they didn't call us…we called them for an explanation, since we perceived a conflict of interest between July Systems and Affle…we were under the impression that July Systems plans to sell advertising on the media sites which they power. Secondly, we found it surprising that NDTV should outsource ad sales, when they had actually brought ad sales in-house last year.
July system , AFAIK this company was started by Ashok Narsimhan ( a great guy btw see this http://www.nus.edu.sg/nec/globalwireless/2003/spe...)
His name is nowhere in executive bio page now .
NDTV's Problem is simply a failure to cross sell the Mobile value proposition to the advertisers who had signed up for there TV Business . i am surprised why didn't they choose to signup with Airtel and increase the reach of their channel and than command a premium from advertisers .
instead they outsourced it to affel .
Apparently Dr. Roy & Mr. Trehan has hired a lot of " Suits" who don't want to do hardwork .
(PS: Nikhil, Name field of your new comment system don't let me type my name . please increase the character limit for the filed )
I checked, and it doesn't allow a name as long as Long Time Listener Repeat Caller, with no option to increase the name length.
U definately have strong veiws on the deal! However you seem to be overlooking the business logic with which the bottom lines are maintianed. If you had taken the time to study the deal in finer detail you would have understood the mutual advantage both the sides were getting with optimal utilization of the affle sales force(and hence ndtv not to replicate the same). As far as the cross selling ability is concerned I am not sure you understand the nuances of mobile as a medium and the specialsation and focus required for it to grow this exponentially.Hope you have a better veiw of the deal.Cheers.