E-tailers slated to spend Rs 400-500 cr on ads in Oct

Moneycontrol Bureau

The pre-Diwali e-commerce sales happened on back of massive advertising and marketing campaigns run by Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal, this month.

The massive ad campaigns started just after the Shraadh period ended and Navratras began, on Oct 1. The outdoor ad campaigns covered buses, metro trains, airports and billboards across major roads in big cities across India.

Snapdeal spent Rs 200 crore on a 360-degree marketing campaign on its new logo in the run-up to the Diwali festival. There was however no clarity on what percent of this amount was spent only on advertising. Flipkart and Amazon too did not declare their advertising spends. 

Television prime time was also taken up by the online retailers as well as ad space on big websites.

However, as per the estimates of research and advisory firm RedSeer Consulting, e-tailers were expected to spend around Rs 400-Rs 500 crore in advertising during October, more than three times the usual money spent in steady state.

The massive ad campaigns and the sales coinciding each other, help the e-tailers as they are able to optimise their marketing spends. A buyer usually checks other rival websites, even if he or she is lured by an ad campaign on one e-tailer.

According to experts, the top two firms, Amazon and Flipkart remained neck and neck when it came to user experience.

The Diwali sales has not altered anything from a market positioning view because both the top two firms have done well, an analyst said requesting anonymity.

This however is not the only sale that will be run during the festival season in India. Paytm and Shopclues are expected to run another campaign this month, as sales of big giants ended Thursday midnight.

It will be followed up by another one around on Diwali and then towards the end of the year by all three big e-tailers.

“We will announce the next sale very soon … it is not very far away,” Tony Navin, Senior Vice President, Partnerships and Strategic Initiatives, Snapdeal told Moneycontrol.com.