The Indian government’s official in-house advertisement placement agency, the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP) has extended its advertising pilot project yet again. The project is now to officially conclude on the 10th of October 2014, close to four years after its launch on the 21st of November 2010. DAVP had initially shown interest in the mobile telephony, digital cinema, Internet and other forms of media as a platform for publicity back in December 2009. The project was initially meant to end on February 20th 2011, three months after it began, but will now continue late into its third year. The DAVP works by empanelling publications before advertising on the platform. The terms for empanelment state the websites should have been continuously operational for 5 years under the same name, the website should see a minimum of 1 million unique visitors for English sites or 0.75 million in the case of Indic sites in the 6 months preceding empanelment and should provide Campaign Data to certified auditors. The empaneled publishers are divided in Group A, Group B and Group C based on the number of unique Indian visitors to the website - Greater than 5 million, 2-5 million and less than 2 million respectively. The current list of empanelled websites is the same as last year: DAVP will pay publishers based on cost per milli (CPM) rather than Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPTI). The rates quoted by the agency are inclusive of all costs except cess and service tax…
