Flipkart Makes A Revenue Push, Launches Ad Platform For Brands And Mobile Wallet

Ecommerce giant Flipkart has launched an advertising platform, Brand Story Ads, on the mobile app. The platform has over 50 leading brands on board including Yes Bank, L’Oréal, Micromax, Intel, Gillette, Datsun and Sony that have already signed up to launch their ad campaigns.

Ravi Garikipati, Senior Vice President, Flipkart, said, “With Brand Story Ads- we are offering a platform where the brands can target and engage with largest qualified commerce audience in the country at the right time for the right intent. Thus, the propensity to click on the advertisement is only higher and stronger.”

Brand Story Ads is a native, interactive story format with content images and product guides that enables brands to tell their stories in a crisp and impactful manner. In the initial phase, the campaigns will focus on awareness creation with brand story and category pages. This will be extended to product listings, checkouts and other areas.

Apart from the brands that retail on Flipkart, the service will also be available to other non-retailing brands in sectors like real estate, FMCG, BFSI, auto, telecom, etc.

Flipkart is pitching the platform as a new form of advertising called Commerce Advertising. Commerce Advertising delivers a holistic view of consumer’s purchase journey post ad interactions and highlights the effectiveness of the advertising campaigns. Brand Story Ads claims to provide a universal solution to brands based on superior data and buying intent of over 50 Mn consumers.

This comes at a time when last week Morgan Stanley marked down Flipkart shares by 27%. Prior to this, in February 2016, as a restructuring move by CEO Binny Bansal in a bid to focus only on profitable ventures and to offload liabilities, Flipkart reportedly shut down its grocery delivery division ‘Nearby’.

In a recent development, Flipkart launched its wallet and new payment method, Flipkart Money, reported ET. This comes after the company acquired FX Mart last year, which is expected to be powering Flipkart Money.

Flipkart Money can be topped up with INR 10,000 at a time using credit card, debit card and net banking. However, the balance is limited to INR 10,000 only on the wallet and a total of INR 25,000 can be added to it a month. Flipkart’s local rival Snapdeal also has wallet called Freecharge while Alibaba backed PayTM operates both a wallet and marketplace.

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