The Venture Intelligence Blog

From Businessworld: Now, Sistema Shyam Teleservices (SSTL), that offers CDMA-based mobile services to 17 million subscribers under the MTS brand, will offer free talk time to subscribers soon, provided they watch a 15-second video advertisement before making a call. The video mobile ad platform—MTS mAd Call—will initially offer this service to MTS subscribers with Android devices. Over the next few months this service will be extended to all devices on the MTS network.   On a given day, the subscriber with data connectivity on the MTS network will have the option of watching four such videos. Should callers choose to watch an ad, each call will fetch them 60 seconds of free talk time. There are no data charges for downloading the advertisement. At the end of the day, the subscriber can accumulate up to 240 seconds (4 minutes) of free talk time with lifetime validity, which can be used to call any mobile or fixed line in the country.    ...As the s...

From Businessworld Amagi’s key message was to explain the benefits of local advertising to television channels and cable and DTH operators. In June 2008, the trio purchased a set-top box from the US for $5,000 only to realise that it used an archaic analog technology that used cables and was server-based. But they decided to make it work on chipsets and consumer digital signal processing. So, they decided to create something that would not only be easy to install but would also be easy for the DTH and cable operators to adapt their set-top boxes to. Once the technology was sorted, they had to sell the idea. The business model was simple: buy inventory from television channels and sell that to local advertisers. Amagi initially started with retail, jewellery and real estate, and currently works with regional FMCG brands and SMEs who need regional (state-wide) advertising. There are 160 million television sets in India and 600 million viewers, with cable and DTH covering close to 120 m...

Businessworld has an article explaining how and why there's an ad for SBI in the free version of Angry Birds that you download on your tablet/mobile. In a country obsessed with mobile devices, cool new apps on smartphones or tablets are often part of watercooler conversations. This viral growth of apps is creating an ecosystem for a new genre of mobile app advertising. Apps such as Angry Birds — which has registered over 7 million mobile downloads in India across platforms such as Android, iOS and BlackBerry — are creating captive audiences for brands. ...Sponsored advertisements allow interactivity that advertisers hope will lead to engagement and brand building. The advertisement rates depend on the number of downloads, time spent on the game, among other things...The usual revenue split is that for every Rs 100 earned through in-app advertising, Rs 30 goes to the app store, and of the remaining Rs 70, 60 per cent or Rs 42 goes to the publisher and the rest goes to the advertisi...