In the world of digital marketing, businesses are constantly seeking the most effective and strategic ways to connect with their target audience. Not just that, there is a constant focus on efficiencies in digital media approaches and spends. With the growth of the two big walled gardens, Google and Meta, there has always been a full reliance on them for their sheer reach, and their dominance continues.
India’s digital advertising market is projected to reach USD$4.99 billion by 2024, with year-over-year growth at 18%. Your brand/ business spend will be in this too. And when two approaches have emerged: being present on the open web and/ or walled gardens like Google and Meta, there is always new information to consider in the equation of the media mix. Understanding the nuances, advantages, and drawbacks of each is crucial for making informed decisions about your digital marketing strategy. And this needs expertise and experience and a thorough knowledge on best practices, current trends, growth of new platforms etc.
While we look at where to spend your marketing budget efficiently, we need to understand where your TG is. The consumer’s online behaviour is no longer so straightforward as being present on one or the other platform. This has been some time in the making, especially during and post-pandemic. Recently, Kantar and The Trade Desk released a study of online consumer behaviour along with the Open. Today, Indians spend half of their time on the open internet, even though ad spend is 5.5 times higher on walled gardens.
Wait a minute? If your TG is spending time on the open internet, why is your money being spent mostly on Google and Meta? Should you relook at your spend bifurcation? Should you look at how your agency is planning and buying media for you? These are all difficult questions indeed.
To make it simpler for those who need a quick understanding, here are a few things to show how walled gardens and the open internet work, along with their pros and cons.
The Open Web: Allows you to embrace freedom and flexibility
Some examples of the open web in India are music streaming platforms, news platforms, OTT/ CTV platforms etc.
Let’s look at the Pros of the Open Web
Control and Independence: Control is one of the most significant advantages of the open web. You can have the autonomy to build your online presence without being bound by platform restrictions. Leading to the ability to create a unique digital experience that aligns precisely with your brand’s vision.
Transparency: The open web provides greater transparency in terms of data and performance metrics. This data is a gold mine about your audience’s behaviour, and gives you the opportunity to make data-driven decisions and optimize your approach effectively.
Innovation and Customization: Here, you can experiment with various content formats, ad placements, and user experiences that resonates with your brand and creates a sync with your audience.
Various Advertising Options: Beyond traditional display ads, you can figure out content marketing through partnerships/ deals, build influencer partnerships, and add affiliate marketing to your mix.
Cons of the Open Web
Fragmentation: Too many options could create a fatigue in managing platforms and channels. This can lead to complexities and laborious situations, especially if you don’t have people resources, unlike a specialist agency. This could lead to inefficiencies.
Trust Building: Your TG will be bombarded with a plethora of ads and content on a daily basis. So, building trust with your TG on the open web can be difficult and may take a longer time to establish a solid online presence for your brand.
Walled Gardens: Attraction of reach
In India, we have Google, Meta and Amazon as closed gardens.
Pros of Walled Gardens
Massive Reach: Google and Meta (formerly Facebook) offer a massive user base. This has been built over time and everybody is on them. For your brand to quickly expand your TG, this is a no-brainer.
Ease of use: Walled gardens offer the ability to be self-served platforms. You can create and manage campaigns without navigating multiple platforms.
Sharp Targeting: With the crazy amount of data, these platforms help in sharper ad targeting. Specific requirements like, demographics, interests, affinities can be utilized to build efficient campaigns.
Cons of Walled Gardens
Less Control: These platforms can give you plenty of convenience while managing and reaching and expanded TG. But you are at the mercy of their algorithms and inner workings that can impact visibility of your brand. Also, with constant updates, their changing algorithms can affect your approach.
Privacy Concerns: today, data privacy has become very important especially with the advent of GDPR and soon, the coming cookieless future. What this will mean is that you have very limited access to get user data, again, affecting your effectiveness.
Transparency: They provide low transparency into how your ads are displayed and their performance. This can make it very difficult to optimize your campaigns well.
Costs: Everybody wants to be on Google and Meta. Today, even a small business knows this and tries to be on the platforms. This increases competition for inventory. Imagine a Diwali scenario, everyone from BFSI, to Ecommerce, to FMCG, and then some will be heavily advertising. This will not allow an SMB to compete effectively and get it literally out of the game.
So, what should a brand or a business do in this kind of a reality? A marketeer has plenty on her/ his plate and wondering about what next to do shouldn’t be there as a problem. So, as an agency which has worked with national brands and managed plenty of media spends, our POV is that we need to have a combination of both open web and walled gardens on balance. We bring in the learnings across verticals and across business cycles. Here are some tips for finding the right balance:
Diversify Risk: The old adage of not putting all eggs in one basket needs to followed. So, diversify your marketing channels and reduce risk and reach a broader audience.
Data Protection: Most companies now build their first party data for their marketing purposes. If you are not as mature, start building that and ensure you prioritize data privacy and comply with regulations like GDPR to build trust with your audience.
Analytics Monitoring: Tools that can be provide insights across all your platforms for a unified view help in making decisions. Talk to us if you need help with this.
ABT (Always Be Testing): The digital playground has become actually a place to continuously refine processes by testing due to its sheer dynamism. So, the opportunity here is to keep testing out different strategies and adapt your way forward based on data.
Content will always be King: High-quality and engaging content that your TG syncs with are a must irrespective of any platform you choose. As a marketeer this is critical for your arsenal.
In the end, the open web and walled gardens have the ability to give various results for your needs. The idea is to use both of them for specific goals and budgets like how a Swiss Army Knife is used in survival. But it is critical to know what they offer and integrate them accordingly in your marketing efforts. This becomes difficult if you are lacking in resources – both people and time. If you are a brand in this kind of a situation, talk to us for a no obligation call. We will be glad to help you out here.
