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NEW DELHI: Paytm, the mobile commerce platform, has taken an unusual advertising spot — the back of the Delhi Metro travel card, used daily by lakhs of commuters in and around the Capital.
“We are looking at innovative ways to promote the Paytm brand and advertising on the back of the Delhi Metro travel card is one of those tools,” said Shankar Nath, a senior vice president at Paytm.
The Delhi Metro, which also covers parts of Gurgaon and Noida, has become a medium for a wide range of advertisers, offering slots inside trains and at stations. Of late, companies such as IndiaMART have wrapped up entire Delhi Metro trains to promote themselves.
Lakhs of people travel on the Delhi Metro daily and ridership hit a record 27.6 lakh on August 8 last year. An estimated 70% of the commuters use smart cards and about 16,000 such cards are sold every day. Card users get a 10% discount on fares and don’t need to stand in line to buy travel tokens.
According to Nath, if you put anything on that card, you have ensured that on an average, the person is going to look at it twice a week. A card stays with the person for about six months on an average, he stressed.
Noida-based Paytm rolled out the travel card marketing initiative in February, with branding to be done on 1 million cards, Nath said, declining to provide details on how much the company is spending on the campaign.
Nath said only that the cost of advertising on the Delhi Metro travel card is reasonable and it is a cost-effective way to reach out to the masses and promote the brand.
According to Nath, Paytm is looking at advertising on television, especially the cricket and news programmes, the only two time-sensitive content streams.
“One is sports, which you always watch live. The same thing goes for news, where you watch the content as it happens,” said Nath.
Paytm has been advertising during the Cricket World Cup 2015 that’s currently under way in Australia and New Zealand. It will also be associated with the Indian Premier League.
“We will be present in the upcoming season of IPL in a big way. We are looking to become the associate sponsor of the IPL, the talks for which are at an advanced stage. Nothing has been finalised, though,” said Nath.
In July last year, Paytm rolled out a Rs 100 crore advertising campaign.