Lintas, Pinstorm sign deal for digital ads

Lintas Media Group (LMG) today announced a no-equity performance alliance with Indian digiital advertising firm Pinstorm to scale up its digital advertising division.

LMG, together with Pinstorm, has committed to generate revenue in excess of Rs 100 crore in the first year of their alliance through the pay-for-performance model.

The move is expected to give LMG a first-mover advantage in the pay-for-performance model in India. The two companies say that advertisers in India are more keen on adopting the digital platform than ever before. This is because digital media offers an accountable and transparent method of measuring performance unlike traditional media like television and print where an advertiser can only estimate the target audience it was able to reach through advertising.

Lynn de Souza, director, LMG, said: "Ad firms have to work like brokerage houses wherein they have to manage the budget allocated by advertisers to buy media and earn through commissions. The pay-for-performance model in digital advertising is a vastly different model that gives the exact value-for-money derived by clients through advertising with us."

In the pay-for-performance model, the agency pays for the media and the creative and advertisers pay for the results. Lynn believes this model will eventually generate greater revenue and return on investment (ROI) for advertising agencies.

Mahesh Murthy, founder, Pinstorm, said: "We hope this model will change the way advertisers think about budgets, and that they are percieved less as a cost and more as an investment. At Pinstorm, we make it simple by asking a client to only pay for the results we deliver, which could be in the form of payment per consumer reached or per product sold through the digitial platform."

Pinstorm uses proprietary technologies across search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimisation (SEO), e-mail, SMS advertising, online and display advertising, online community creation and blog management. Some of Pinstorm's clients in India include Jet Airways, HSBC, Taj Hotels and Sharekhan.