Is online sponsorship market making life easier for brands?
One of the most challenging tasks for an event organiser today is gathering fitting brands to sponsor their event, similarly a brand too is always on the lookout to spend advertising money in the right space to engage its core target audience effectively. With experiential marketing properties, be it large or small, popping up every now and then in the country, for both event organisesr as well as brands, the online sponsorship marketplace seems like a viable option to explore opportunities that can be mutually beneficial.
For a couple of years now, online sponsorship startups have come in to being to bridge this gap between organisers and brands. On these platforms, brands can assess and earmark marketing budgets for experiential marketing opportunities to engage their core target audience. Similarly these platforms also help event managers and experiential marketing organisers to list their activations in lookout for brand sponsorships and partnerships. But how strong is the online market for sponsorships in India? And do marketers find online sponsorship platforms a feasible option to park their marketing and advertising spends?
Tenzing Niyogi, Business Development Director, India, Sponsorium International believes that it is imperative to filter or evaluate the unsolicited and untargeted proposals coming a CMO and his team's way and Online Sponsorship platforms places various optional properties/ events/ sponsorship packages in a marketplace model. It becomes a two way street where events makers/ sellers congregate to avail sponsorships requests.
According to Statista, the total market size for sponsorships is 55 billion dollars with North America being the biggest market with 20 billion dollars and Asia around 12.5 billion dollars. Most of the above entrepreneurs believe, with the advent of online medium; and the need for reaching out to the customers in right geographies in the right way; online search, evaluation and engagement for right sponsorships is set to grow and develop.
Are sponsorship startups eating up agency services?
Agencies on record, be it public relations or activations, have always been the ones that have notified brands of external IPR opportunities and have pushed marketers to spend or park advertising monies with annual properties. With the growth of ad- tech startups such as Onspon, SponsifyMe or Sponsorium, do agencies lose out on one of the services in their offering?
It seems the way job portals have actually helped recruitment agencies; and online real- estate marketplaces have helped consumer interfacing organizations achieve better engagement parameters; online sponsorship marketplaces has helped communication executives in reducing time-to-market and better decision making for clients. Event planners have started engaging with brands directly by increasing their brand outreach multi-fold without investing in their fixed infrastructure.
Mr Niyogi feels that business is still very agency driven as far as option gathering is concerned for a brand. Brands nowadays are keen to look at newer platforms which reduces time and increases efficiency. The rapid adoption of technology has been re-defining the way we do things. No sooner than later, the ability to provide multiple layers of options will surge ahead than a singular entity providing information.
All the players feel that sponsorship startups will be in demand more due to their real-time data mining and analytics, which might see newer collaborations between agencies and start-ups in the future. It makes economical sense from the promoters and right holders perspective to achieve multiple client touch points with leading brands with pre-screened client criteria which essentially means more engagement with minimal effort.
In 2015, the game changing trends that Mr Niyogi saw were exposure and customisation as sponsorship no longer is attaching a corporate name to a property. Rather a triangle of association between the sponsor, the event and the passionate fan or consumer in case of brand activations.
In the next half decade, the space will become a competitive marketplace as cloud based systems which build thousands of cross-referenced reports and access a real-time dashboard of a brands portfolio will bring about the need to approach each sponsor systematically.
Ask the expert: I represent a FMCG company. How much portion of my budget should be via programmatic at this point?