Concept
"I know half of my advertisement is wasted but I don't know which half": An oft-heard quote at Madison Avenue, New York. Not anymore. Advertisers traditionally have been broadcasting their advertisements over press and television. This has often resulted in an anti-wrinkle cream advertisement being seen by 16-year-olds, male and female. The waste is there for everybody to see.

Caltiger brings to the advertising industry a very potent communications concept 'Narrowcazter'. Narrowcazter is a very powerful medium aimed at eliminating the 50 per cent wastage of advertising and target the ads only at people for whom the product is useful and has a value proposition. This increases the effectiveness of advertisements, a key concern for all media buyers.

Technology
Narrowcazter is a revolutionary system, which is totally self-provisioned and gives advertisers unprecedented control.

Advertisers can log on to the system using their unique login name and password, choose the target profile, upload the advertisements and pay online. The system delivers advertisements on a real time basis and also reports effectiveness by location, SEC, gender, MHI and a host of other demographic and psychographic parameters. Advertisers have the convenience of changing the creative line of the advertisement as and when they choose and all this at the click of a button. Narrowcazter is convenience personified.

Profile targeting can be done on the basis of location (Prithvi), time of day and day of week (Patriot), age, gender, MHI, SEC and also such advanced parameter viz. TV, cars, two wheelers, refrigerators and credit card ownership (Tomahawk), and also has the option of stinging the competitors website (url targeting - Stinger). Advertisers may choose to do no targeting at all and fire his ads at everybody who logs on to the net (Agni).

The high amount of narrowcasting ensures minimum wastage and practically no spill over.

Why Narrowcazter?
Narrowcazter as a concept and a technology is invaluable to the advertisers. Here are some of the reasons for advertisers to latch on to it:

• Your target audience is captive - The subscriber surfs and does nothing else while he is surfing. There is no zip zapping of channels as in TV.
• Your advertisement chases the target - Targeting is done based on user profile and not on the content of the site. So anywhere on the net the surfer with a particular profile goes, the ad banners chases him.
• Your advertisement is interactive - Target audience can watch the advertisements and can immediately respond to it. The response can be in terms of e-commerce, suggestions / queries directly to the brand executives or even something as interesting as solving quizzes and playing games.
• You can have differential OTS for different targets - Targeting is so well defined that we can even assign different OTS for different target groups.
• Extremely cost effective - Since the advertisement is highly focused and targeted, it saves the cost of run of site advertisement.
• You can intervene in the “moment of truth” - We know exactly when the surfer is about to purchase goods and immediately can start promoting a particular brand in that product category.
• Persistent adbar - Irrespective of the site you are browsing, the adbar remains on top. This ensures that ad banners always remain on top of all open windows and is not affected by horizontal or vertical scrolling.
• Persistent banner - Banners on Caltiger network are not affected by the status of page being downloaded and a blank screen being shown. The banners still keep flashing to the targeted profile.
• Size of banner - Most of the portals put a small size banner on their homepage (234X60 pixels). Caltiger has a banner size of 468X60 pixels, which immediately catches attention thereby making it a much more effective communication medium.

Content-based advertisement Vs Network-Based Advertisement
There are broadly two types of advertisements possible on Internet
i) Content-based
ii) Network-based

The difference between the two types of advertising is substantial:
a) Content-based advertising talks to the surfers on a particular website.
Network based advertising escorts the surfer through the various sites.
b) Content-based advertising is more like a TV ad where advertisement is placed in the hope that a specified profile of people would watch that particular program.
Network based advertising exactly knows the profile of the surfer coming online and starts showing relevant and focused advertising.
c) On an average, a surfer spends roughly 5 minutes on any portal, which means the banners have to be of maximum 1 minute duration.
The surfer spends on an average 30 minutes per session on the network and hence the messages can be persistent and effective.
d) While scanning through numerous sites, the advertisements may not cross the threshold OTS for the surfer, so essential for registering the message.
On a Network, you have plenty of time to drive home the message.
e) Content-based advertising is not aware of the total profile of the surfer and hence there is a likelihood of large wastage of advertising spent
Network-based advertising knows the exact demographic and psychographic profile of the surfer and hence can do very sophisticated level of targeting.

Narrowcazter gives advertising on Internet a whole new meaning. It throws open the doors to such sophisticated levels of communication that was hitherto unimaginable. The opportunity is immense and makes sense to any brand manager who values his ROI on advertising.