Airtel enters advertising industry with adtech platform

Telecom services provider Airtel has entered the advertising business with the launch of Airtel Ads, which allows brands of all sizes to curate consent-based and privacy-safe campaigns to customers in India.

Airtel has over 320 million customers across its businesses – Mobile, DTH and Homes. Airtel’s Mobile customers have the highest average monthly data consumption at 16.8 GB and the highest monthly ARPU of Rs 166. Airtel’s fast growing DTH and Homes networks serve premium households across the country.

Using Airtel’s deep data science capabilities, Airtel Ads allows brands to create high engagement and high impact campaigns to the most relevant customer cohorts. This also means that Airtel customers receive only the most relevant brand offerings and not unwanted spam.

“Airtel Ads breaks new ground in the USD 10 bn Indian advertising industry. By abstracting Airtel’s unique strengths of quality customers, best-in-class network and world-class digital platforms, Airtel Ads offers innovative channels for brands to reach the right audiences. What truly differentiates Airtel Ads is its razor-sharp focus on quality over quantity and real impact vs vanity metrics,” said Adarsh Nair, Chief Product Officer, Bharti Airtel.

Airtel Ads delivers superior returns on brand spends and focuses on relationships with customers rather than just delivering online impressions. Its rigorous compliance with ad-tracking standards and norms allows complete transparency with advertisers and ensures zero ad frauds in the form of false impressions and clicks.

“Advertising is an adjacency to our core business of delighting our customers with great services. Therefore, we combine the privacy that is paramount to our customers with the trust and transparency that is vital to the brands we serve,” Nair added.

During the beta phase, Airtel Ads delivered successful campaigns for over 100 brands across multiple categories – FMCG, BFSI, digital startups, et al. Early advertisers include PepsiCo, Zomato, CRED, Tata AIG, Lenskart, Apollo 247, Cars24, Gameskraft, Vahan, Harley Davidson.

Gajendra Jangid, CMO, Cars 24, said, “Airtel Ads is a marketer’s delight and offers the most comprehensive set of customer cohorts, including premium. We believe that going forward telco platforms will emerge as an important platform in the media mix for brands to deliver high performance campaigns in a digitally connected world.”

“As a brand, we are always on the lookout for more engaging and authentic ways to interact with our customers. With Airtel Ads, we were able to build a high level of engagement and traffic on our platform,” said Pradyot Ghate, VP – Product and Partnerships, Zomato.

Meanwhile, Om Jha, Associate Director of Media at PepsiCo India had this to say, “We have had a great experience of working with Airtel Ads, which brings fresh perspective to the advertising inventory available to brands in India. Youth is at the core of our brand strategy, and we always look for innovative ways to interact with them. Through Airtel Ads, we ran a focus digital campaign on the Wynk music app for the launch of new packs of 7UP and Mirinda. The outcomes of the campaign were really impressive given the customizable ad formats and quality audience base.”

The Indian advertising industry is expected to grow to USD 19 billion by 2025 from the current USD 10 billion. Airtel Ads is well-positioned to capture a meaningful share of the growing pie with its sharp focus on quality, it said.