Airtel launches ad tech platform to tap $10 bln digital advertising market

On Wednesday launched ‘Airtel Ads’, marking its entry into the $10 billion advertising business as the company focuses on transforming into a technology solutions provider to businesses through engagement with its over 320 million customers.

“Airtel Ads allows brands of all sizes to curate consent based and privacy safe campaigns to one of the biggest pool of quality customers in India,” a statement issued by the company said on Wednesday.

Speaking to ET, Airtel’s chief product officer, Adarsh Nair said the company had already clocked close to Rs 100 crore in annualized revenue in the ad tech space during the beta launch and had run successful campaigns with over 100 brands in the country.

Nair however, didn’t comment on the company’s revenue targets for the coming years, saying that focus was currently around building business to deliver high conversion rates versus simply ‘vanity metrics’ such as customer impressions to their clients.

“Early advertisers include PepsiCo, Zomato, CRED, Tata AIG, Lenskart, Apollo 247, Cars24, Gameskraft, Vahan, Harley Davidson,” he said.

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, the company said, adding that this meant that Airtel customers received only the most relevant brand offerings and not unwanted spam.

Nair however, maintained that data privacy of customers and customer consent would be fundamental to the company’s advertising business.

Speaking of experience on Airtel’s advertising platform, Pradyot Ghate, VP , product and partnerships at Zomato said, “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”. New India Life