Tata Group among the five biggest online advertisers: Nielsen AdRelevance

Nielsen Online has released a report, which lists the top five sectors, biggest advertisers and preferred websites in online display advertising in India, during June to August 2009.

The results are based on the number of display ad campaigns executed on 275 websites, which were crawled by AdRelevance, an online advertising tracking system owned by the research firm. The firm has monitored the media schedule of advertisers on all the websites and determined the duration and placement of campaigns on the websites.

Travel booking services came next, with 320 display ad campaigns; followed by the education category, which had 288. While the consumer information category ran 241 display ad campaigns, employment related products were advertised through 168 display ad campaigns during June to August 2009.

As expected, the top three online advertisers are companies that run their businesses online. Consim Info, with 286 campaigns, was the biggest online display advertiser. It was followed by People Interactive and Infoedge India as the second and third biggest advertisers, which carried out 143 and 122 display ad campaigns, respectively.

Consim Info owns portals such as Bharamatrimony.com, Indiaproperty.com, Clickjobs.com and Indiaautomobile.com; while People Interactive runs online properties such as Shaadi.com, Fropper.com and Astrolife.com. Infoedge India is the owner of portals such as Naukri.com, Jeevansathi.com, 99acres.com and Shiksha.com.

Among traditional advertisers, Tata Group, Reliance ADAG and ICICI Group made it to the top 10 list of the biggest online display advertisers between June and August 2009.

Interestingly, Tata Group, with 82 campaigns, led among traditional advertisers. Overall, it stood as the fourth biggest advertiser in online display. Meanwhile, 75 and 57 campaigns were carried out by ICICI Group and Reliance ADAG, respectively. While ICICI Group was at No. 7 among the top 10 biggest advertisers in online display, Reliance ADAG was at No. 9.

Speaking to afaqs!, Karthik Nagarajan, associate director, online division, The Nielsen Company, reveals, "Tata Group mainly advertised Tata AIG, Tata Indicom, Tata Motors, Tata Tea and Tanishq brands. ICICI Group ran insurance and consumer related ads. Reliance ADAG pushed ads for its gaming portal, Zapak.com, and Reliance Mobile."

No big FMCG advertiser has made it to the top 10 list. Other advertisers in list include Bennett & Coleman Company and Firefly e-Ventures, owned by HT Media.

Nagarajan also points out that the websites owned by Times Internet, Yahoo! and Sify, Zapak and Sulekha were the preferred destinations for online display advertising, based on the number of campaigns carried out on the sites.