The company, which helps brands get their videos seen, shared and loved across the open web and employs 300 people across 20 locations worldwide, has moved into Dow Jones's offices in New Delhi and Mumbai. Unruly, acquired by News Corp last year, has run video campaigns in India since 2007, delivering over 130 video campaigns to date for brands such as Diageo, Intel and Unilever remotely from its offices in Europe and Singapore.
The new offices will mean brands and agencies across India will now have greater access to Unruly's unique data sets, polite ad formats and premium media titles, including The Wall Street Journal, News18 and India.com. The move marks the video tech platform's continuing investment into the APAC region, which is predicted to overtake the US as the world's largest digital ad market by 2018 (source: emarketer).
Digital ad spend is rising rapidly in India, predicted to surpass USD 1bn by the end of next year and more than double by 2020 (source: eMarketer). Fuelling this rapid rise in digital ad spend across the country is India's explosive growth in mobile usage, with India recently overtaking the US to become the second-largest smartphone market in the world (source: UN), and a huge appetite among Indian consumers for digital ads.
According to a recent Unruly survey, Indian consumers like ads more than any other consumers in the world, with 62 per cent of viewers saying they like seeing ads for products and services they like compared with the global average of 28 per cent.
Unruly's Chief Commercial Officer, APAC, Phil Townend, said, "India is the next frontier in digital advertising growth. Unruly is perfectly placed to help Indian advertisers as they begin to shift ad dollars away from traditional channels and into digital. Our evidence-based approach to video content testing and amplification minimises risk and increases certainty for leading advertisers in the Indian market. Our mobile formats, distributed through our viewable video SSP UnrulyX, also help advertisers connect more authentically, intimately and effectively with audiences across India."
Vijay Kunduri, Unruly's Commercial Director for ASEAN and India, who is leading the launch, added, "We've been laying the ground for this full launch for well over a year, making sure that all of our tools, services and products have been customised especially for the Indian market. Unruly's unique end-to-end video content marketing and distribution solution fills a much-needed gap in the market."
The Unruly Future Video Survey also found that while Indian audiences are very receptive to online video ads, user experience and control are key factors. Findings include:
Indians are more likely to want to be control of video ads than the global average. 71 per cent of Indian consumers say they want to be able to control when the ad starts to play and close it whenever they want. The global average is 62 per cent; 83 per cent of Indian consumers would consider using ad blocking software. The most common reasons why they would block ads are because they think there are too many ads (53 per cent) and because they are sick of seeing the same ad over and over again (52 per cent).
Kunduri added, "Unruly uses polite outstream formats to engage, not enrage consumers. This is particularly vital in a market where the vast majority of viewers want to be in control of ads and the majority of people are watching ads on their mobiles."
Unruly's brand, agency and publisher partners are protected by Unruly Shield, the suite of technologies and the set of practices that are provided to all advertisers who run campaigns with Unruly.
BW Reporters
The author is special correspondent at Digital Market Asia, is fascinated by the evolving digital media industry, and has focussed on tracking developments in the field in Asia Pacific.
