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One year has passed since the first post on ExoClick's Pay Per Click Blog.

We've gone a long way since then and ExoClick has evolved considerably, I'm very happy to write this article after one year and see all the work that has been done.

I'm also happy to see all the possibilities we have ahead of us and I can't wait to see the next features that we will release.

I know you love numbers, so for this "one year post", I'll reveal a few numbers to you.

• ExoClick has now 7,716 clients signed up in its platform, mixing advertisers and publishers but the large majority being publishers.
• We generate about 7,000,000 impressions and 40,000 clicks each day.
• The domain exoclick.com is now ranked 8,916 on Alexa.
• I'm 26 years old.
• ExoClick platform runs on 6 powerful servers.
• Searching for "exoclick" in Google send back 84,200 results.

Ok, I think that's enough numbers for today, you'll have to wait another year for more :)

Thank you to all the people trusting us, and stay tuned because we are going to keep improving ExoClick and make it a powerful platform for all of you.

India is a vibrant country with more than 1.1 billion people. It comes second to China in terms of population. With more than 150 million Indians speaking English, India is a excellent prospect for the Internet Marketers and all those business that want to open up to a new vibrant market. India's middle class is young and they are well aware of US brands. The American effect is increasing in India with people now becoming more and more brand conscious and doing more things online from buying items to paying bills and even getting mobile contents.

India is growing very fast and has turned its economy from no where to world's second fastest growing economy in just a decade. Marketers in US think that India is fast developing economy but the truth is that it has developed in a quiet small scale and there are lot more areas still to be touched by development of technology and internet.

Demographics & Internet Usage

India's gross national income per capita is only US$630 for 2004, Though there are 150 million English speaking Indians but this is just 14% of total population, so this leaves a huge room for more development. Hindi is the official language of India, along with other 22 regional language. About 500 million Indian are under age of 21 and 70% of them live in the India's 5,00,000 villages and remaining in 200 towns and cities. The light of development has only touched the major towns and cities and still huge numbers of villages still wait to receive first electricity connection in their village.

India is a very traditional and conservative country. Family values and norms are highly respected and children live with their parents even after the marriage. The business of marriage is a big business in India. Websites like, Shaddi.com, Bharatmatrimonial.com are few sites who find marriage partner for those people who are looking for spouse online.

By the start of 2006, India had only 1 million broadband subscribers which is less that 0.1% of total population. Till today only 4.5% of the total population is online 55% of them are from households and remaining 45% accounts for business. Typically, 60% of Indians who use internet routinely use the 20000+ cyber cafes scattered all over India. It is rare to find internet connection in most Indian households, though this phenomenon is rapidly changing.

According to the survey done by Paul Budde Communications, an average Indian spends only 3 hours per month on internet. On an average 89% of those who use internet are using it for emailing, 86% regularly read blogs, 57% send e-cards through internet and 53% look for jobs online. Besides this Indian consumer's online activity also includes music, video and software downloads, playing online games and instant messaging.

Though, internet has taken a backseat in Indian economy but mobile technology has been embraced hugely by Indian consumers. By the end of 2005 India had 77 million mobile subscribers which is growing at the rate of 60% per year.

Challenges for Westerners Working in India

Westerns find very tough to start their business in India. Though its tough but there are tricks that can make business run smoothly in this close society. Business has too embrace the culture and tradition of Indian society to flourish in this market.

Indians like to feel the product before buying

Indian people want to touch and feel the product before they buy it. That is why very few people tend to go online for shopping. They feel it more secure to buy products from their store rather than buying it online.

Delivery issues

Most people feel insecure while buying online. They fear of lack of timely delivery and damage of product while delivery. This creates problem for online shopping site to raise security among their users.

Online fraud hinders ecommerce

Indian consumers have credit cards, debit cards and they use it frequently but they avoid using it online. They fear of online fraud and since the cyber law is not so good in India so majority of people don't feel safe to use their cards online. There are certain startups in India like Wallet365 that are trying hard to change it through high secure system but they still find it hard to implement in masses.

Price factor

Indian consumers have a habit to bargain while shopping. Even if the sellers quote the lowest rate, they will still try to reduce it through bargain. Since people cannot bargain online so most people avoid shopping online for such reasons.

Three India-Specific Online Marketing Tips...

1. Go viral

Viral marketing is one of the strong options to promote your product in Indian market. Spread your words among people and they will further spread it within their network. Rather then using banner ads, its better to send SMS messages directly to consumer's cell phone and emails into their inbox.

2. Learn Hinglish and get local approval on copy and creative

Indians have their own style of speaking English. It's a blend of English and Hindi which brings up a new language Hinglish. Most popular brand in India use this language as it easily relates to the majority of English speaking Indians. Hinglish is more and more becoming popular because it is being spoken by most urban youth and has a direct effect on their mind set when translated into ad jingle.

3. Static banners and telemarketing

The Indian version of Yahoo!, MSN, Google and portals like Rediff.com, Indiatimes, com, zapak.com are high traffic Indian sites. These sites are lot similar to sites in US with same type of content, design and news feeds. Moreover the Indian and US version of Yahoo and MSN have normally same advertisement running since the advertisers are same. The click through rate on banners is between 0.5% to 2% on these sites. People easily enter their contact information on the landing page but fear not to enter any financial information.Once the information is in the database, now its telemarketers job to call the consumers to promote their product.

One more thing marketers should know that India is a huge country with 28 states and more than 100 local languages. Its is not necessary to translate your ad campaign in all these language but be sure that campaign for one region doesn't hurts the sentiment or values of other. Ultimately, India was a former British colony so people still use British spellings. "Color" is spelled as "Colour" in India.

ExoClick has just released a beta version of its market place.
This allow advertisers to browse the different sites of the Network in a friendly way and get detailed information about each site.

Advertisers have total control as the campaigns targeting is very deep. Ads can be displayed on the FULL network, or be restricted by country, category, or to specific sites.
This open a new way for publishers and advertisers to create relevant advertising and generate the highest revenue for both.

Please, join us on ExoClick Forums to give your feedback on this new feature! Your thoughts are always much appreciated.