afaqs! news bureau
Digital

NDTV outsources ad sales of its mobile portal

Affle, a mobile marketing service provider, will exclusively represent NDTV Convergence and sell ad inventory for its mobile portal

NDTV Convergence is all set to monetise its mobile portal, NDTV Active (mobile.ndtv.com), which it claims receives 3.6 million page views per month.

The company, which was handling the ad sales of its mobile site on its own till now, has tied up with Affle, a mobile marketing service provider, to exclusively represent it in the market and sell the ad inventory available on NDTV Active.

Speaking to afaqs!, Sanjay Trehan, chief executive officer, NDTV Convergence, says, “Basically, we have outsourced the ad sales function of NDTV Active to Affle, which has guaranteed us a fixed amount of advertising revenue on an annual basis. The advertising outsource deal will be based on a revenue sharing model between NDTV Convergence and Affle.”

NDTV outsources ad sales of its mobile portal
He adds, “Affle is already in touch with a number of mobile advertisers, so it is in a better position to bring in ads for our mobile portal.”

The type of advertising inventory to be made available on NDTV Active will consist of display or banner ads, contextual text ads, video ads and content sponsorships. To begin with, Affle will target advertisers across the automobile, consumer durable and financial service categories. Ads will start appearing in a week on NDTV Active.

This is the first time that Affle is moving into the direct ad selling business for a mobile portal. The current tieup with NDTV Convergence has nothing to do with SMS 2.0, which is Affle’s core business.

For the uninitiated, SMS 2.0 is an SMS marketing service which enables advertisers to carry out brand building or lead generation campaigns on mobiles. Technically, it is a text messaging application for GPRS based mobiles. Users can download this free application from the mobile operator's portal. Currently, the service is available only on Airtel and, according to Affle, it is used by one million mobile users.

Anuj Kumar, executive director, South Asia, Affle, tells afaqs!, “We have already carried out around 100 ad campaigns on the SMS 2.0 platform. We will leverage our current relationship with advertisers to get ads for NDTV Active.”

Kumar adds, “Doing ad sales for mobile portals is an add-on to our current business line and we have ventured into it to leverage our ad sales capability and become a holistic mobile marketing solutions provider in the future.”

Affle is also talking to other premium mobile portals for similar business arrangements.

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