Indian firms slowly begin to weave Threads into their marketing strategy
While Threads has raced to 100 million users globally within five days of its launch, Indian companies have not gone all guns blazing to capture audience attention on the new app. Some, though, are slowly beginning to weave it into their marketing strategies. Most firms, however, are in a wait-and-watch mode to see what Mark Zuckerberg’s new app, dubbed as ‘Twitter killer’, offers for connecting with users and how it fits into their larger social media strategy. Firms such as Zomato, Swiggy and Tinder, known for their strong presence online, have debuted on the text-based conversation app, but their posts, or threads, so far remain limited and infrequent. Swiggy has posted three times on the Threads apps since July 6 compared to putting out over 12 tweets in the same period. The food delivery app has over 44,000 followers on Threads and close to 200,000 on Twitter, as on July 14. Lenskart has over 37,000 followers on the Threads app since July 6, compared to 720,000 on Instagram. Netflix India boasts 8.2 million followers on Instagram versus 821,000 on Threads. User interactions are also at a stage of infancy for Indian companies. The reason is the overall lower number of users compared to established social media platforms, and how users are also figuring out what sticks on Threads. A report by digital market research firm Sensor Tower finds that globally, active users and time spent on Threads is down from its initial peak. This is despite the app clocking its highest number of downloads in India on Day 1.
Digital ad impressions grew by 33% this quarter
TAM AdEx-Digital Advertising Quarterly Report reveals that Digital Medium witnessed an increase in ad impressions by 33% in Jan-Mar’23 compared to Jan-Mar’21. Services was the leading sector with 45% share of Ad Impressions followed by banking/finance/investment with a share of 8%. The top two sectors together added 54% share of Ad Impressions on Digital. However, personal accessories and textiles/clothing were the only two new entrants in the Top 10 list of Sectors with a 2% share. Among the service sector, ecom-media/entertainment/social Media retained its 1st position with 8% share of ad impressions, followed by online shopping and gaming services. Cars, ecom-food/grocery & life insurance were the new entrants among the Top 10 categories in Jan-Mar’23 compared to Jan-Mar’22. The top exclusive advertisers (Present in Digital and not in TV)of the quarter were Snapchat, RBI, Government of Uttar Pradesh and Canara HSBC & OBC Life Insurance Company. YouTube leads as both a web publisher and an app in terms of ad impressions, followed by Aajtak.in. Among apps, Youtube’s lead is followed by Cricbuzz. Mobile Display was the leading Digital Platform with 29% share of ad impressions during Jan-Mar’23 followed by in app display and in video display with a 27% and 19% share respectively. Programmatic was the most popular method for promoting ads on digital platforms.
Twitter starts sharing ad revenue with creators
Twitter has said select creators are now eligible to receive a share of ad revenue earned from ads served in replies to their posts. To be eligible for the payouts, a creator must:
Be subscribed to Twitter Blue or Verified Organizations
Have at least 5M impressions on your posts in each of the last three months.
Pass human review for Creator Monetization Standards.
Myntra launches program to accelerate Made in India D2C brands’ growth
Myntra has launched a program seeking to accelerate the growth and scale of 200 Direct to Consumer (D2C) fashion and lifestyle made in India brands. The company has announced ‘Myntra Rising STARS’, a comprehensive program dedicated to strengthening the D2C ecosystem in the country. Myntra will provide end-to-end support services to brands across fashion, footwear, accessories and home segments, as a part of this program “Brands will be able to unlock their growth potential by leveraging Myntra’s proven expertise in brand-building which in turn will drive scale at an optimized cost for brands, propelled by significantly enhanced on and off-app visibility and strategic guidance,” the company said. The program has been designed for both renowned and emerging D2C made-in-India brands with unique offerings for customers. It will help brands by strengthening brand and intent building, optimizing the cost of doing business and optimizing customer acquisition cost. Brands will also have the opportunity to get deeper insights into evolving trends and preferences while getting access to millions of customers on Myntra from across the country.
Twitter threatens to sue Meta over Threads
Twitter has threatened to sue Meta Platforms over its new Threads platform, it was reported on July 6, citing a letter sent to the Facebook parent’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg by Twitter’s lawyer Alex Spiro. Meta, which launched Threads on July 5 and has logged more than 30 million sign-ups, looks to take on Elon Musk’s Twitter by taking advantage of Instagram’s billions of users. “Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights, and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information,” Mr. Spiro wrote in the letter. Mr. Spiro, in his letter, accused Meta of hiring former Twitter employees who “had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information,” the report said.
Elon Musk launches AI startup xAI
Elon Musk has launched an Artificial Intelligence startup xAI. The firm is reportedly a challenge to build an alternative to ChatGPT. The startup will be led by Musk who has been voicing concerns about AI’s potential for “civilizational destruction”. Announcing the launch, Musk, an investor in OpenAI, said this was part of efforts to build ‘safer AI’.
Google Bard expands to nine Indian languages
Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot Bard is now available in nine Indian languages — Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bangla, Urdu, Malayalam, Marathi, and Gujarati. Overall, the smart chatbot supports over 40 languages globally. Google has also introduced a sound icon in Bard to get audio responses. Users will also have the option to change the tone and style of the response; this feature is live in English and will be expanded to new languages in the future. Google is also tapping on Lens to let Bard users add images to their prompt to make any analysis or add a photo caption. It is now available in English (US) and will be expanded to more languages ‘soon’, the company said. The feature was first demonstrated at the Google I/O conference held on 10 May. Previously, Bard could only include images in the responses. Other new features of Bard announced by Google include the ability to pin and rename conversations, and share the entire chat with other users.
Online Sales may’ve Outpaced Offline in Food, Fashion Segments
Online commerce — particularly in the food and fashion segments — is expected to have fared better than offline during the quarter ended June 30, amid continuing slowdown in most consumption categories, says a report by ICICI Securities. “As noted in Q4FY23 (January-March 2023), we believe (the) consumption slowdown continued in Q1FY24E (April-June 2023) in most business-to-consumer (B2C) consumption categories. We think this is due to sustained consumer inflation and its impact on disposable income as ‘return to office’ continues to be implemented across the country. However, online commerce seems to be faring better than offline,” the report, dated July 10, said. ICICI Securities pointed out that most apparel retailers had been struggling to increase their revenue in the first quarter of FY24, while Nykaa is estimated to report an 11% year-on-year increase in its fashion revenue. On Zomato, the ICICI Securities report said the food-delivery company is expected to have outpaced most quick-service restaurants (QSRs) “on a like to like basis”.
Ecommerce Logs 24% Q2 Growth as Premium Products Click
Ecommerce sales volumes have grown by about 24% in the April to June quarter, data from ecommerce-focused warehouse solutions provider Unicommerce showed. Ecommerce sales volumes have grown by about 24% in the April to June quarter, data from ecommerce-focused warehouse solutions provider Unicommerce showed. This does not include smartphones but according to several ecommerce executives and research firms like Counterpoint, the growth in smartphones is being led by premium phones and the increase in demand continues for mass-market phones. The 24% quarterly growth follows a slower than expected growth of 16% in the January to March quarter, in May. While certain segments like pharma and eyewear have grown at a healthier rate, senior ecommerce industry executives said there is a trend emerging of slowdown in online sales of low-priced items across categories like fashion, appliances and others. This affects overall volume growth for ecommerce marketplaces even though the demand for high-value items recoups for the drop in volume. Data from Unicommerce showed health and pharma, eyewear, and fashion and accessories grew by over 47%, 30% and 24%, respectively, during the June quarter. Rural consumer spending, including the urban poor in this category, has been extremely sluggish over the past six months.
Personal Data of Indians in Public Domain may get Shielded from AI
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) platforms such as ChatGPT or Google’s Bard may not be able to process the personal data of Indians available in the public domain, as per the latest draft of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Bill, 2023, which was approved by the cabinet earlier this month. This latest version has dropped a clause that had earlier created an exception for search engines to process publicly available personal data. If generative AI platforms scrape the Internet to use such data, they may be opening themselves to the threat of lawsuits in the country, like the ones they are facing in the US currently, experts said. This will impact search engines as well as online telephone and email directories along with credit rating agencies. According to a technology expert, “Removing Clause 8(8), which listed any ‘processing of publicly available personal data’ under public interest as a criterion for deemed consent, might impact new AI evolutions like ChatGPT.”
Meta Unveils its New Gen AI Model CM3leon
Meta has introduced a generative artificial intelligence model, CM3leon (chameleon), that does both text-to-image and image-to-text generation. “CM3leon is the first multimodal model trained with a recipe adapted from text-only language models, including a large-scale retrieval-augmented pretraining stage and a second multitask supervised fine-tuning (SFT) stage,” Meta said. With CM3leon’s capabilities, the firm said image generation tools can produce more coherent imagery that better follows input prompts. According to Meta, CM3leon requires only five times the computing power and a smaller training dataset than previous transformer based methods.
AI to play a key role in hiring
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will play a key role in both recruitment and essential talent in India Inc. The use of AI based tools is getting popular in reaching out to a larger pool of candidates, reducing biases and finding a better match for the organization. ‘Talent insights’ report, which studied responses from 291 job seekers and 215 companies, found that AI will play a significant role in getting the best candidate in competitive sectors. Over half (53%) of the companies interviewed in the study believed that AI could play a “big role” in supporting recruiters’ jobs in the near future and 35.8% see “some role”. However, just 8.4% said AI could completely replace recruiters, and 2.8% of the companies believed that AI won’t support recruiters in the near future. Insurance companies have turned out to be the early adopters of AI and chatbots in recruitment processes. However, expunging human intervention in candidate selection may not be preferred. Of the respondents who saw only “some role” of AI in HR-related tasks, the study report said AI’s support for recruiters was acknowledged by companies, but they also consider “human involvement essential for nuanced judgment and relationship-building”. Meanwhile, around 58.1% of the candidates in the survey said they would want to interact with a human HR professional for initial job-related inquiries, and 38% would be okay with a mix of both human and AI. Only 3% would be okay with just AI. In fact, the study highlighted that human programming introduces the potential for errors and biases. ‘Relying too heavily on AI without maintaining human interaction can lead to a feeling of disconnection in the work environment’.
India’s UPI to be interlinked with UAE’s IPP
In another step towards increasing the international usage of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Central Bank of the UAE signed an agreement to link UPI with its UAE counterpart Instant Payment Platform (IPP). The linkage of UPI and IPP will enable users in both the countries to make fast and cost-effective cross-border fund transfers. It must be noted that the UAE is home to a large Indian expatriate community. The number of resident Indian nationals in the UAE are estimated to be at about 3.5 Mn. As such, the linkage of the digital-payment systems is expected to help these expats easily transfer money to their family and friends back home.
