Byte #8: ZOMATO and PORN

WHY DID ZOMATO ADVERTISE IN PORN SITES?

With a lot of online startups emerging with little distinguishable attributes, the ROI driven marketing strategies like print ads or sponsored posts on social media sites have turned ineffective and seems to miss the cut. Social media has ramped up prices for localized ads and have made it all the more difficult for organic campaigns to reach users who aren’t within a close connections. To beat the odds, Indian companies have turned to the one thing they’re known for - Jugaad.

Customer Acquisition Cost:

Zomato, the online restaurant finder, and online food ordering company chose investing time in creativity rather than ad budgets. They wanted to target clients, yet keep the spread wide, since their product has a universal audience with moderate dispensable incomes. They found out that advertising on porn sites is significantly cheaper and has ridiculously low CPCs compared to social media platforms.

Engagement:

Video dominates content consumption and engagement in India. Take videos in which language don’t matter and makes an impact right away and it is sure to drive traffic. Being the country who contributes to the 5th largest no.of view-time to porn sites like PornHub and Xvideos (remove to open incognito mode if you want to know what they are :P) and with citizens who consumers more videos as porn after only Youtube, Zomato found Gold. They teamed up with advertising networks that operate the ads on pornographic sites like Traffic Junky and Traffic Factory.

Target Segment Overlap:

They ran ads from 11 PM to 4 AM, the time when late night delivery restaurants are at their busiest, in sites that are majorly used in India. Zomato’s target client represents the single, working professional or college student who lacks time to cook (or is lazy), and it’s no surprise then which demographic they expected to address through these sites.

They won millions of eyeballs, clicks and a phenomenal surge in of app downloads at record low acquisition costs.

According to their stats after a week of advertising,

• People in Delhi NCR clicked on these banners the most on desktops, at an average click-through rate (CTR) of 0.12% while Bangalore came (*teehee*) a close second with an average CTR of 0.11%. The campaign average CTR so far is at 0.22%.

• At a more granular level, the highest number of clicks in Delhi came from around the Hauz Khas area. We can’t say for sure why that happened, but IIT-Delhi is in the area, so...

• In Bangalore, Koramangala was hands down the naughtiest part of town, while in Mumbai, Powai gets down and dirty the most.

• The BBW/Big Beautiful Wraps ad was our best performing desktop ad (no surprises there); the “Hot Sticky Mess” and “Hot Singles” ads also did really well.

They eventually withdrew these advertisements due to an expected backlash from the conservative and concerned user demographic of India who protested against Zomato claiming they were resorting to cheap tricks and were promoting porn amongst youngsters. While it did tarnish Zomato’s brand equity a bit, it didn’t seem to affect its sales growth or its valuation. Sometimes, we’ve got to just care about those who pay!

Takeaway:

Recreate Zomato's magic by accessing their ad-platform if you've found inspiration. Checkout this amazing article on CPC marketing trends.

FEATURED

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