It’s Emperor’s New Clothes Time again…
There was a recent survey run by Inmobi for management students at IIT. Now, the following isn’t a criticsm of the survey or Inmobi – it’s a call to put the PR generated by bloggers around this story into perspective.
Reality check time:
We are reading “Indian Youth Love Mobile Ads”
Let’s examine this statement:
* The survey covered 205 college aged consumers
* 57% browsed the internet on mobile (=117 people)
* 1/3 of these “engaged with brands that advertise) (= approx 40 people)
* “of those who engaged with ads, 10% woud call the company and 17.5% would buy the product” (= 7 people)
So reality check One: 7 Indian Youth said they would buy the product as a result of mobile advertising
(The youth population of India is 550 million). Go figure.
Also let’s look at the nature of the survey
* The survey took place with management students (you need to consider whether conclusions such as “Indian Youth” can be drawn from this niche group)
* The survey was conducted at IIT (Indian Institute of Technology – an elite college drawing in less than 1% of the country’s student base)
So reality check Two: Management Students at IIT are an elite survey sample and will inevitably be early adopters, technically minded and enjoying certain economic & social privileges.
In Summary
* 7 people in India does not represent “Indian Youth”
* Management Students at an elite technology college are not representative of Indian Youth
However
* All of the above case presented to put the PR in check is irrelevant because it’s like telling kids Santa doesn’t exist. Remember when Ebayers bid $28,000 for a piece of toast that looked like The Virgin Mary? It wasn’t because it actually looked like Jesus’s Mother, it’s because they wanted to believe. The evidence doesn’t make any difference. It’s the worldview, and tech marketers are still of the opinion that youth love products and youth love technology. No weight of evidence will change that and media will still cling to the most tenuous of evidence to support their case.
* This is the challenge facing most marketers – that most brands and tech companies want to believe youth (like themselves) have fallen in love with their products. I’m afraid that doesn’t help anybody.
If
If brands and tech companies really woke up bearing in mind that youth don’t wake up thinking about them, then the world would be full of many more meaningful products and less waste. And that starts with the ability to question the received wisdom that got brands into the mess they are in now where youth just aren’t paying attention anymore.
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"Indian Youth Love Mobile Ads" is Bull**** – here’s why… http://tr.im/zCap
“Indian Youth Love Mobile Ads” is Bull**** – here’s why… http://tr.im/zCap
RT @grahamdbrown: "Indian Youth Love Mobile Ads" is Bull**** – here’s why… http://tr.im/zCap
A great response to Inmobi and it’s PR machine. The PR when originally launched 2 weeks ago claimed that 57% of India’s youth were browsing the mobile internet but I guess that that they soon realised the ridiculous nature of their claims on the basis of surveying 205 of India’s most elite and technologically literate city-dwelling students.
I doubt that even 57% of India’s youth have even heard of the Internet – it is worthwhile remembering that almost a quarter of the population is illiterate.
Hi,
Your post shows how journalists (and PR, advertising executives) abuse consumer research for trivial gains. Its regretable that informed professionals resort to such abuse. The real story in the survey was that ONLY 57% of India’s best students used the mobile internet!
Regards,
RT @reachstudents: Calling out flaky research used for PR: "Indian youth love mobile ads" http://bit.ly/nwAUt
RT @reachstudents: Calling out flaky research used for PR: “Indian youth love mobile ads” http://bit.ly/nwAUt
Two things:
Most youth are using phones that don’t have GPRS activated. Very few own phones that do have free Wifi enabled, but since there aren’t too many wifi hot spots in India, the browsing is also minimum.
Students engage with media on the mobile phone through other mediums such as mginger or 160by2. These are services that rpovade people with free smses (80 characters for message and 80 characters for the ad) or pay people to read the ads etc.
Also which IIT was the study conducted in? (There are 16 of them now I think)
Some of the IITs are in rural areas like Kharagpur or tier 2 cities like Kanpur, where as some are in metropolis such as Bombay or Delhi, that also plays a crucial role.
Thanks for your post on our recent survey. We, at InMobi, are continuing to build market intelligence on mobile advertising and this IIT survey was the first in many we plan on releasing. India is a massive country and our survey points out some interesting trends around engagement despite the targeted survey sample which we’ve stated in the findings. We plan to run larger reports as reporting techniques and methods become available in the country. If you have any other questions that you’d like us to include in future research reports, please email us at media@inmobi.com.
Major observations:
There are 7 IITs, while some are in urban locations like Bombay, Delhi, some are in tier 2 and tier 3 towns such as Kharagpur.
A very small portion of Indian students use GPRS, also, only a hand full possess mobile phones capable of wifi, speaking of which, there are very few free wifi spots.
Indian youth get to view mobile text ads through services such as mginger and 160by2.com(which lets you send free smses)