WestCharge Debuts a Disruptive Advertising Medium for Brands & Marketers

Updated: Jan 30, 2020

According to GroupM’s “This Year Next Year” report released last month, ad spends on Digital media in India ($4bn) will far outpace spends on both Print and Outdoor media combined ($3.3bn) for the second consecutive year in 2020. The indication that brands are more willing to experiment with performance related ad mediums like digital, is especially relevant for India’s mobile-first market.

Another crucial takeaway from the report is a scenario every marketer has been grappling with – where media spending growth outpaces growth in ad inventory, and produces inflationary conditions for like-for-like inventory. To combat this, marketers must continually develop alternative approaches to their communications – this includes advertising on new mediums.

Addressing both of the trends mentioned above, we at WestCharge have developed our wireless charging tech to serve as a disruptive new advertising medium. Our charger face serves as branded real estate, and transforms into an engagement platform for brands.

We have been evangelising on the potential of the wireless charging ecosystem for the last year. As people and their devices become more power hungry, we believe using convenient and ubiquitous wireless power as a utility, can help drive engagement. Right now, there are approximately 1.5bn devices that can charge wirelessly, or 20% of all smartphones. We see the adoption of wireless power increasing and becoming a device norm (like face unlock and fast charging features on phones).

We wanted to walk the talk, and so we entered into an exclusive partnership to test our tech with Carnival Cinemas – India’s most widely spread Cinema Chain. In mid-December 2019, we installed our chargers in Carnival’s premium recliners in their biggest Cinema Hall in Delhi NCR. We devised a targeted campaign for Carnival - the display on our chargers included a call to action of their choosing, and a QR code - with the intention of drawing consumers to download the Carnival app. The results were, needless to say, surprising:

• We saw conversion rates of 6% to 8% of all premium cinemagoers towards Carnival’s app, with an average cinema occupancy of 50%. (Industry standard cinema occupancy rates vary between 20-30% on average). Moreover, our offline to online conversion rates followed the cinema’s occupancy rates on average.
• No OOH media owner tracks conversion on ads. Further, QR Codes are a powerful medium to bring offline traffic online. We not only combined elements of OOH media and QR codes in our campaign; but we also tracked daily offline to online conversion rates
• The closest performance equivalent to our campaign are the click through rates (CTRs) in online advertising. Google ads see average CTRs between 0.5 to 3%, while CTRs of 1 to 2% are good for Facebook. WestCharge’s ad platform had an equivalent CTR of 6-8%, more than double that of Google and Facebook.
• There was a 50:50 even split between iOS and Android users.
• For users that didn’t have wireless charging enabled devices, they could still be engaged by our chargers. In essence, 100% impressions are guaranteed even if users don’t scan, or if they don’t charge their phones.

The biggest takeaway for us - our offline to online conversion results with Carnival cinemas were completely organic! We didn’t do any offline or online marketing push about our installations, nor any word of mouth! The idea was to allow users to intuitively play around with our new advertising medium. We asked ourselves the question – what’s as personal but less intrusive than reaching people’s smartphones? The answer – anything that comes close to it. By focusing on future-proof technology that can charge smartphones and other personal devices; we’ve developed a platform that brings advertisers within one palm distance of consumers.

The offline to online consumer journey occupies the longest part of most brands’ sales funnels. By shortening this funnel, our engagement platform offers significant opportunities for brands looking to drive more effective and targeted engagement. We urge any brand looking to expand its media mix to consider partnering with us. We see exceptional value for banks, payments companies, fin-tech firms, E-commerce firms, F&B, and any brand looking to engage with users through a digital experience.

We’re excited about the future, and open for business. To know more about our technology, and to partner with us, visit our website – www.westcharge.com

Author

Noel Thomas

Startup Ninja, Amateur Futurist, Dog Daddy