Twitter India's new country director Taranjeet Singh: 'India has taken the lead as the fastest growing daily audience'
Twitter is looking to move forward in India, having plateaued as a platform after years of user and advertiser growth.
India has taken the lead as the fastest growing daily audience market in the world for Twitter in Q1
In an effort to overcome the challenge, it has promoted Taranjeet Singh to country director, charged with leading a strategy for growth on a number of fronts. Previously he led the sales and marketing function that supported the platforms and advertisers in India as its business head.
Following his promotion earlier in May, The Drum spoke to Singh. His team prides itself on having worked with brands across sectors to create campaigns that strike at the core of the message. By driving 'first on Twitter' innovations, Singh and his team have led acclaimed campaigns around the Cricket World Cup, IPL, AutoExpo and Diwali.
What is going to be your business strategy for Twitter India? How do you plan to accelerate Twitter's audience and revenue growth in India?
India is the fastest growing daily audience market for Twitter in the world in Q1 2017, we are excited by the opportunity and are committed to the country and acceleration of our business in India.
We are constantly innovating our existing product portfolio and introducing product offerings that will support our vision of expansion in the country. We are focusing on three areas to fuel our growth in India in 2017: Bringing more live video/programming to audiences in India - for example the live stream of Shah Rukh Khan’s tribute at San Francisco Film Festival, monetizing our content partnerships through our Amplify program and extending the social connection to the world for millions of Indians through Twitter Lite.
How important is the Twitter India market in the world?
India has been among the top five fastest growing audience markets for Twitter since 2014. India is at an all-time high for Twitter and has taken the lead as the fastest growing daily audience market in the world for Twitter in Q1 2017. India’s daily active users (DAU) grew nearly five times faster than the global DAU rate in Q1 2017.
The launch of Twitter Lite in India first - reinforces Twitter’s commitment to support the country’s growth as a digital nation.
What has been the response to Twitter Lite?
India is one of Twitter’s fastest growing and largest audience markets in the world today. With the launch of Twitter Lite, we aim to accelerate our growth by offering every Indian with a smartphone an accessible, faster, and affordable way to get real-time information on what’s happening around the world and to talk about it.
The launch of Twitter Lite has been very positive and we see it as a key growth driver for our Indian audience in 2017.
Twitter saw growth this year. Did Indian market had a role to play in that?
As the fastest growing daily active user market in the world for Twitter, India definitely had a role to play. And it’s not just about numbers. Twitter has grown to become the best and fastest place to hear from the most influential leaders such as PM Modi to sports personalities such as ViratKohli, and Bollywood celebrities such as Shah Rukh Khan and DeepikaPadukone, and discover what’s happening around the world.
We believe our audience growth has been driven by a combination of organic growth (reflecting some seasonal strength), product improvements (including better relevance in the timeline and notifications), and marketing.
Can you tell us what caused the lower cost per engagement (CPE) rates?
In India, CPEs have decreased by 86% in Q1 2017 (year-on-year), almost 1.5X faster than the decrease in the global CPE rate, meaning that advertisers in India are getting higher ROI improvements.
Lower CPE can be attributed to a couple of factors - increase in audience growth, constant improvement to our ad products and our focus on Video. In India, video views continue to grow rapidly. Video consumption increased 43%, comparing Q1 2017 to Q4 2016, according to Twitter internal data.
These factors have resulted in lower CPEs as the products are working better. We’ve got better products, better video consumption and better audience growth.
How do you integrate the government and sports vertical in your marketing plans for Twitter India?
In terms of the government, Twitter works closely with the government in India on public education and public service, for example with Make in India, Digital India, Startup India and Twitter Seva. In partnership with various parts of the government, the objective of Twitter Seva is to provide transparent and timely public service to citizens across the country. As an India-first innovation, Twitter Seva is currently being used for citizen engagement by 11 ministries including the Ministry of Commerce (@DIPPGOI), the Ministry of External Affairs (@MEAIndia), the Ministry of Railways (@RailMinIndia), the Department of Telecommunications (@Dot_India), Department of Posts, MTNL, BSNL under the Ministry of Communication, the UP Police (@Uppolice) as well as the Bengaluru Police (@BlrCityPolice).
Other government organisations like Tea board, Coffee board, Spice board have also started to advertise on Twitter and we have a dedicated person to manage government partnerships from content and advertising perspective.
For sports, Twitter is the best place for fans to know what’s happening in the world of cricket and to talk about it with their favourite cricket players, teams, brands through the platform. According to our research, 93% of active Twitter users in India are interested in cricket and one in three cricket fans on Twitter are actively looking out for match promotions or competitions from sponsors.
It’s a great opportunity for brands to engage with cricket fans through creative and innovative campaigns during the season and throughout the year. For example:
Keeping in mind the ongoing IPL season, Motorola India (@Moto_IND), the official sponsor of the team Rising Pune Supergiant came up with a custom #MotoRPS emoji. They also became the first brand in India to implement the customer service experience in Direct Messages to enhance customer experience for its users. They used the customer service activation to engage with users by asking them to respond to interesting cricket oriented questions. At the end, the users had the opportunity to unlock a special surprise in the form of a personal card by Motorola indicating which player does their personality match with depending on the responses shared.
Vivo India (@Vivo_India) wanted to boost brand engagement during the IPL season and being the title sponsors, they co-created a custom #VivoIPL emoji with Twitter. With the introduction of a limited edition #VIVOIPLEdition phone, #VivoV5s, the brand launched an integrated approach on Twitter with a Promoted Trend, website cards and auto-response Tweet activation as teasers for the launch. 13,000 users retweeted to unlock the VivoV5s launch video 36 hours prior to the launch.
Last year, Kingfisher worked with Twitter to co-create a custom ‘Name Targeting’ campaign, delivering personalization to cricket fans at scale. The #UnitedByGoodTimes campaign presented personalised videos featuring players from the six partner IPL teams Tweeted to fans on a first name basis as a token of gratitude for their support, resulted in over 85,000 IPL fans being pleasantly surprised on Twitter.