People Interactive has signed a site representation deal with DGTL Media/AdMagnet, and at the same time, People Interactives National Ad sales team has joined AdMagnet Select, handling the same account. People Interactives national national sales force was working out of Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. AdMagnet Select is the site representation business of DGTL.
People Interactive claims an inventory of 200 million impressions across these sites. They did not disclose the growth in ad sales revenues year on year, but said that around 8%-10% of their revenue comes from ad sales, and they’re hoping that this will increase to 15% over next 2 years through the partnership with Ad Magnet Select.
The team will be responsible for managing ad sales of People Interactive sites sites, including Shaadi.com, Makaan.com, Fropper.com, Astrolife.com and Shaaditimes.com. We’re quite surprised that Fropper remains a part of this deal, since a social networking site is more of an integrated branding play than the rest.
People Interactive has an ad network called People Network, targeting the South Asian community in the UK. The company claims a “substantial presence” and that it “figures amongst most media plans targeting ethnic Indians”, and will continue to stay in that business. It’s the Indian inventory that AdMaget Select will sell.
People Interactive also claims had to have worked with over 100 large advertisers, including Airtel, Raymonds and Nokia. According to People Group Chairman Anupam Mittal, “In the domestic market, selling advertising is a core competency of companies like DGTL Media/Ad Magnet. While we have always been clear that selling advertising in India is not our core business we needed to demonstrate the viability of advertising on vertical sites such as ours for advertisers which we have done over the last 2 years. Now that the revenues have scaled and the model is proven the upside is best left to the specialists.”
Also, do note that DGTL Media, as a company, is an entity that is separate from Interactive Avenues, the digital agency. This appears to be a means of indicating a separation between the Digital Advertising Agency and the Ad Network businesses. And maybe even raising money separately for both.
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