How ShareChat is helping local brands with language-focused advertising

As regional language media consumption soars during the lockdown, social media app ShareChat goes full throttle with brand integrations.

Local language social media platform ShareChat is engaging with hyperlocal brands, as well as helping established brands reach a wider audience through local language focused advertising campaigns, as its monetisation strategy takes hold. And at a time when brands are struggling to keep customers engaged in a meaningful manner, they find that focusing on local concerns and speaking in local tongues could help bridge the gaps.

“We have been witnessing a healthy growth since we opened our platform for brand integrations,” said Sunil Kamath, chief business officer, ShareChat. “Our regional strength in Tier 2, 3 and 4 cities, coupled with our unique UGC (user generated content) proposition for brands, is opening new marketing avenues for marketers who want to connect with regional first audiences.”

Much like what video-sharing app TikTok has done, ShareChat and several others are mining the large, mobile-first market in small towns. The 2020 State of the Mobile report by App Annie, a global analytics and market intelligence firm has found that India is right on top, when it comes to app downloads. Between 2016 and 2019, there was a 190 per cent increase in downloads by Indians, which is the highest in the world. Compared to this, globally, downloads went up 45 per cent and China at second place, grew at half the pace at 80 per cent.

Break it down further and for the majority of downloaders, the internet is an entertainment zone with the time spent on entertainment apps in India growing 80 per cent between 2017 and 2019. Also mobile-first emerging markets such as Indonesia, Brazil and India continue to spend the most time in mobile each day. And France, India and Canada saw strong growth with the average user spending 25 per cent more time in mobile each day in 2019 than in 2017.

Tinder users appropriating dating app for political campaigning: Study

Users around the world are employing it for multilevel marketing, political campaigning, and promoting local gigs, a new study says.

Although Tinder is a platform facilitating casual dating, some of the app's nearly 50 million users around the world are employing it for multilevel marketing, political campaigning, and promoting local gigs, a new study says.

The study, published in the journal The Information Society, found that Tinder's off-label use -- a term borrowed from pharmacology describing when people use a product for something other than what the package says -- appropriates its infrastructure, and sociocultural meanings.

"When people encounter a new technology, whether it's a hammer or a computer, they use it in ways that fit their needs and lifestyle," said study co-author Stefanie Duguay from Concordia University.

"However, once you buy a hammer, it doesn't undergo regular updates or develop new features -- apps do. They come with their own marketing, vision for use and sets of features, which they regularly update and often change in response to user activity," Duguay explained.

In the study, Duguay assessed media articles about people using Tinder for purposes other than social, romantic, or sexual encounters.

She also conducted in-depth interviews with four off-label users.

One of the users was using the app to conduct an anti-smoking campaign, the study noted.

Another, Duguay said, ran an anti-sex trafficking campaign on Tinder.

A third user, she said, was using the app to market health products, and the last was supporting US Senator Bernie Sanders's Democratic Party presidential nomination run in 2016.

"I also observed individual users adapting their Tinder profiles to self-promote, market local bands, participate in business networking, and conduct private sales," the researcher wrote in the study.

Response India's Ram Ray left the world of advertising a better place

He was so knowledgeable about design that any astrologer could have predicted that one day there would be a Ray & Keshavan.

When I first saw Ram Ray, he was carrying a Kodak Carousel projector in a bag slung across his shoulder.

He emerged from the Brooke Bond lift on his way to meet D P Ghosh, the marketing manager with whom I had just had a two-hour long progress report meeting. (Yes, one did have progress reports meetings in 1978.)

My equanimity had just been shattered, as two-hour meetings with D P Ghosh were wont to do. Short of physically tearing the artworks that I was supposed to have got approved, D P Ghosh had educated me on just how incompetent I was and why I should take lessons from a certain Ram Ray on how to run an account.

And there was the legend himself, about to walk into a meeting with the said D P Ghosh.

It was said that Ram Ray was the only agency man that D P Ghosh ever listened to. It actually had nothing to do with the Kodak Carousel he was carrying with him like it was a pocket dictionary. (Yes many things dwarfed themselves in the presence of Ram Ray.)

It had more to do with the fact that he knew more about every possible technical aspect of advertising as well as every conceptual aspect of advertising that there was to know at that time.

Quite often, he was ahead of his time. While everyone else was using portable chart holders for their presentations, he was using Kodak Carousel slides. While everyone else was stuck at Times Roman, he was thinking in Palatino. Or more likely, Albertus.

(Yes, I know. There was no Google in the late 1970s. A far better option was to ask Ram Ray.)

If you can imagine an account manager who knew more about design than a designer, more about copy crafting than a copywriter, more about account planning than an account planner, more about the history of advertising than a marketing historian — that would be Ram Ray.

He was so knowledgeable about design that any astrologer could have predicted that one day there would be a Ray & Keshavan.

Business Standard

49 mn Instagram users had their data leaked by Mumbai-based agency, Chtrbox

The company termed the reports of private data being leaked as 'inaccurate' and acknowledged that 'a particular database for limited influencers was inadvertently exposed for approximately 72 hours'.

Mumbai-based Chtrbox, which was allegedly responsible for leaking data of millions of Instagram users, has said database for a limited number of influencers was inadvertently exposed but that did not include any sensitive personal data.

The company termed the reports of private data being leaked as "inaccurate" and acknowledged that "a particular database for limited influencers was inadvertently exposed for approximately 72 hours".

"This database did not include any sensitive personal data and only contained information available from the public domain, or self reported by influencers," it said in a statement late Tuesday night.

On Tuesday, Facebook-owned Instagram said it is investigating whether a third-party - Chtrbox - improperly stored its user data in violation of its policies after reports that information of millions of users being available online allegedly in an unsecured database emerged.

These reports said the database found online - with over 49 million records - contained information of millions of Instagram influencers, celebrities and brand accounts. The database was allegedly traced back to Chtrbox.

The reports had said apart from public data (like bio, profile picture and number of followers), the database also allegedly contained users' private contact information such as email address and phone number.

An Instagram spokesperson had said the company is "investigating whether a third party improperly stored Instagram data, in violation of our policies. It's also not clear whether the phone numbers and e-mails in Chtrbox's database came from Instagram".

Chtrbox, in its statement, asserted that no personal data has been sourced through unethical means by the company.

"Our database is for internal research use only, we have never sold individual data or our database, and we have never purchased hacked-data resulting from social media platform breaches. Our use of our database is limited to help our team connect with the right influencers to support influencers to monetize their online presence, and help brands create great content," it added.

Business Standard

Facebook to block housing, job and bank ads that are age, gender specific

The changes to Facebook's advertising methods which generate most of the company's enormous profits are unprecedented.

Business Standard : Facebook will overhaul its ad-targeting systems to prevent discrimination in housing , credit and employment ads as part of a legal settlement.

For the social network, that's one major legal problem down, several to go, including government investigations in the U.S. and Europe over its data and privacy practices.

The changes to Facebook's advertising methods which generate most of the company's enormous profits are unprecedented. The social network says it will no longer allow housing, employment or credit ads that target people by age, gender or zip code. Facebook will also limit other targeting options so these ads don't exclude people on the basis of race, ethnicity and other legally protected categories in the U.S., including national origin and sexual orientation.

The social media company is also paying about $5 million to cover plaintiffs' legal fees and other costs.

Facebook and the plaintiffs a group including the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Fair Housing Alliance and others called the settlement "historic."

It took 18 months to hammer out. The company still faces an administrative complaint filed by US Department of Housing and Urban Development in August over the housing ads issue.

What's not yet clear is how well the safeguards will work. Facebook has been working to address a slew of social consequences related to its platform, with varying degrees of success. Last week, it scrambled to remove graphic video filmed by a gunman in the New Zealand mosque shootings, but the footage remained available for hours on its site and elsewhere on social media.

Earlier in March, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a new "privacy-focused vision" for the company to focus on messaging instead of more public sharing but he stayed mum on overhauling Facebook's privacy practices in its core business. Galen Sherwin, senior staff attorney at the ACLU and the group's lead attorney on its suit, praised the settlement as "sweeping" and said she expects it to have ripple effects through the tech industry.

Facebook agreed to let the groups test its ad systems to ensure they don't enable discrimination. The company also agreed to meet with the groups every six months for the next three years, and is building a tool to let anyone search housing-related ads in the U.S. targeted to different areas across the country.