Gayendra Wickramarathna, an IT specialist cum social media geek, as well as an innovator with many ‘first times’ and novel innovations to his credit has redefined the words ‘Virtual Advertising’, by conceptualising SriLankaWebAds Portal.
That's Mobile Video Marketing - the latest trend in online advertising, beating the traditional newspaper and TV advertising and now catching on in the world.
A cyber platform for a virtual trade or business video directory is created for the first time in Sri Lanka, as an eye catching and a colourful pictorial 'one stop shopping mall’ on the worldwide web. Wickramarathna, an old boy of Royal College and his friend Wineendra Weeraman who is in the legal profession and an old boy of D.S. Senanayake College,recently launched Sri Lanka's first Virtual 4KUHDVideo Advertising E-Commerce platform, going a step further by amalgamating a 360 Degree Four (4)Dimensional Spin-View of a customer's product.
This in fact is a rarity among the world's e-marketing platforms too.SLWA takes Sri Lankan business ventures to the world.
Mobile data traffic is increasing at a huge rate, even in Sri Lanka, and a new study from Cisco confirms that by 2020, video will account for a staggering 75% of that traffic. That's up from 55% in 2015. The statistics for North America are even higher, coming in at over 77%. By 2020, there will be more than 11.6 billion mobile connected devices, exceeding the world population
Cisco's latest annual Visual Networking Index forecast (VNI) states that mobile data traffic has grown 400-million-fold over the past 15 years, and the increased number of users, mobile devices, and innovations in technology are driving mobile video consumption through the roof. The study predicts that by 2020, there will be more than 11.6 billion mobile connected devices, exceeding the world's projected population at that time (7.8 billion). That's going to have a huge impact on video traffic.
Mobile video traffic predictions for the future
Mobile Video Traffic Predictions for 2020 - By 2020, over 75% of global mobile data traffic will be video content.In U.S. video will account for 77% of total mobile data traffic by 2020, up from 61% in 2015.Video accounted for 55% of mobile traffic in 2015.
Smartphone use in watching videos increase
Smartphones will account for 81% of total mobile traffic by 2020 - up from 76% in 2015.4G connectivity share is predicted to surpass 2G by 2018 and 3G by 2020.By 2020, there will be 432M global WiFi hotspots (inc household) - up from 64M in 2015.There will be 3x more mobile connections than people in the UK by 2020.7 trillion video clips will be uploaded in 2020 - 2.5 daily video clips for every person.Global mobile data traffic will reach 30.6 Exabytes per month in 2020, up from 3.7 Exabytes in 2015
What's going to drive the increase in video consumption between now and 2020? Unsurprisingly, it will be the ease at which consumers can access high-end mobile devices, and how they use them to access online video footage. Smartphones have become so sophisticated that they are capable of generating 41x as much traffic as a basic mobile phone, tablets even more so with the capability to drive 113x more traffic.
Mobile video marketing strategy is needed for Sri Lankan Business enterprises
Video is set to have the highest growth rate of any mobile application in the next 5 years, which is why a ‘Mobile Video Marketing’ strategy is essential for brands. India is far ahead than Sri Lanka. Sri Lankans are too slow in getting on board the Band Wagon, which leaves them way behind world standards and thus becoming losers. Very high infrastructure rates - politically motivated - are another stumbling block.
40% of baby product consumers actually live in homes without children
A 2015 study by Google/IpsosMediaCT found that 40% of baby product consumers actually live in homes without children! This is also true for 52% of baby product influencers. Who are these people? Well, they could be grandparents, cousins, friends, or co-workers. And their #1 way of finding out about these babyand children products is via a search engine - whether that's Google, or YouTube. In other words, search is social.
SriLankaWebAds holds the largest amount of categories for an E-Commerce site
SLWA holds the largest amount of categories which are very explicitly depicted in Hi-Rez photos for any e-commerce site in the world.It's layout is in an unorthodox manner. As an example, the Home & Garden section has all the subjects included forbusinesses who would want to advertise their products relating to Home Building, from a Septic Tank to a Granite Tile.An internal search engine is included for users to search for a category or company.
Local Businesses should take this opportunity now
Local Businesses should take this opportunity now, provided by SLWA to advertise their services / products to improve their sales. They should understand that by advertising in a virtual trade or business directory, a person who wants to build a house as an example, can surf SLWA and find various dealers in the same subject and get quotes from them, in the comfort of his bedroom. It is a virtualised ‘Yellow Pages’ trade directory.
Wiki insists that the government should drastically reduce the charges for ICT related tariffs, so that more entrepreneurs could capitalize on this and earn more revenue thus generating more cash flow amongst citizens and the government via taxes.
Voice Messaging and Appointment Scheduling
SLWA has a feature where a customer can be contacted by a voice message or scheduling an in-office appointment. It is an interactive portal. This too is a rarity for local e-commerce sites.
Individualistic and doing what others dare do
Being individualistic & doing what others don't do, the site sportsa very vibrant color profile filing up the entire monitor screen with the content and with a logo on a rare color combination of pink and blue depicting males and females in a backdrop of an universe, meaning the site belongs to the whole world, making it stand out amongst many drab commercial websites.
Photoshop graphics, animations, web designing, backend programming, photo cum videography, video editing and search engine optimisation are all handled single handled by Wiki himself who is a professional in all these subjects and now proved beyond doubt.
Many Awards & Accolades to Wiki's credit
Wiki has won awards in Photoshop as well as photography and represented Sri Lanka through ICTA at the 1stManthan Awards, held in New Delhi, which is South Asia's largestIT Awards. Out of the Sri Lankan contingent he was the only person to have held discussions with international IT personalities, do a presentation and his profile included in the officialManthan website in 2008. This was on his own ‘Sri Lanka Almanac VidhyuthKoshaya Portal’, the name coined by Wiki himself & the word ‘Portal’ used for the 1st time in Sri Lanka in 2006. One of the pioneers in innovative web designing in the country.
Innovative design for the National Youth Services Council website
Wiki designed the website for the National Youth Services Council under the Ministry of Sports, where the menu icons were free standing rotating Lotus flowers on a black background, when it was a taboo to use black on websites. He says he was even rejected by a so called leading professional institution, not on websites but on marketing, but he stood his ground& succeeded. The site was launched in Scotland during the International Youth Services Council gathering and was appreciated by the Duke of Edinburgh due to it's innovativeness. He further states that most people are stereotype & orthodox, the reason why Sri Lanka has not become a designer's or an innovator's paradise.
Recipient of a World Bank CAP Grant
A grantee on a project named ‘Indigenous Building Methods Using Indigenous Knowledge’, Wiki showed the world how ancient monuments such as Jethavanaramaya which was the 3rd tallest building in the world at that time, only to be dwarfed by the 2 Pyramids in Gaza, was built using basic raw material & indigenous knowledge.He has nearly 100 subjects digitized on Anuradhapura for the 1st time in the history of Sri Lanka. He officially handed over his rights recently to another company recommended by ICTA.
4K UHD videos are the latest in video standards
SriLankaWebAds also hosts many 4K UHD videos of a customer which is another 1st time in the world for a Cyber Advertising company. 4K is the latest video standard with a resolution 4 times higher than the present 1080p horizontal resolution nearing 3840lines. SLWA would visit the location of a customer and videograph his factory or products which cannot be taken out to the SLWA studio.SLWA does a complete 4K UHD cinema resolution documentary using a large sensor 4K video camera on a client's business, service or product and then promote it through the internet for a worldwide audience.
SriLankaWebAds Channel on YoutTube the world's largest video search engine
Wickramarathna,says his next step will be to host Blue Ray videos with a higher quality than 4K which still hasn't even come to Sri Lanka's TV standards. In Japan he points out that 8K TV transmission is been tried out by NHK and shows how backward we are in the electronic broadcasting field. YouTube and Netflix now supports 4k videos and SLWA have their own channel named SriLankaWebAds on YouTube which permits them to run videos 15mts in length.
SLWA were the first to upload a 4K
SLWA were the first to upload a 4K video filmed with a real 4k video camera and not a GoPro type, in Sri Lanka.Customers can view their viewer rankings on SLWA, through Analytics which Google provides us. Google bought over YouTube which has over a billion users - almost one-third of all people on the Internet - and that audience will get larger now that Pakistan has lifted its ban. SLWA gets a customer's video ranked in the latest #1 search engine- the Video Search Engine-YouTube!
360 Degree 4D SpinView product advertising will take your company to the next level
Wiki's recent trip to USA enabled him to purchase modern equipment at B&H Photo in New York, which is the largest photo retailer in the world. Wiki's novel idea of making 4 dimensional multi spin views of a shoe as an example, makes it real cool for a client to get the feel of touching the product and even having a look at the sole of the shoe by turning the image by the finger on a smartphone or with the mouse on a desktop. This is definitely a first time in Sri Lanka and a rarity in the world too. He has made a sample for a Baker where the Cake can be rotated to see the filling of the cake and then the icing or the topping can be seen in an enlarged view separately.Going one step further he even spins a SUV to see all the sides of the Jeep and also the interior in one photo, all filmed in 4K. From a massive Jeep to a miniscule Gem or a Wedding Ring - Wiki spins them all.
SriLanka WebAds has accounts with all the major social media platforms
SLWA has many social media platforms where a client's profile cum documentaries are uploaded and linked back again to a website that a client has. Wiki leading in the field of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in Sri Lanka has another exceptionality, where he makes a ‘Thumbnail’ of a video of the client appear in the first few Google Chrome search pages, when a surfer searches for a certain name of a trade or service.
‘Video Thumbnail’ appears when searched for client's trade
This colorful little thumbnail attracts the eye of a surfer and makes it tempting to click on it. As an example, if a surfer searches for ‘Sri Lanka One Day Printers’, a thumbnail appears of a client's video which he has made on one of the first two pages in Google Chrome. SLWA is linked to Google pages too. Out of hundreds of thousands of websites in the world, only a handful of websites are capable of making this happen, thus proving Wiki's SEO capabilities. Wiki further states, that many proudly tell him that they have a website and do not want our services. But, he explains that having a website without getting it ranked according onit's' subject’ is worthless.
A surfer who knows that ‘A’ person has a website, will visit or contact that business directly, but a person who doesn't know that ‘X’ company manufactures a ‘Y’ product, will search for that ‘Y’ product on the internet. This is what most people do not understand Wiki says. Also, if anyone searches for a company name by typing the name of the company, obviously that URL would come 1st, but rarely of a product that particular company offers. This is Search Engine Optimization- which SLWA does. SLWA's forte is ranking a company or a product through Videos, which is a difficult and a rare task.
SLWA uses the latest web technology
SLWA uses the latest html5, css3, responsive, bootstrapping & mobile friendly technology. It is also a ‘secure’ site using the ‘https’ security certificate, so that customers are safe with their data with us, says Wiki, an ethical hacker during the 2008 / 2009 period.
Smartphone ready
With Mobile Video Marketing and 360degree SpinView E-commerce platforms becoming the latest trend in the world with a gigantic market share, SLWA is not only a ‘responsive' site, but ‘mobile friendly' too, where words are readable automatically rather than increasing the size by dragging it with your fingers. Wiki says that he has seen many multinational and leading companies in Sri Lanka still using outdated technology in their corporate websites. We have our own App on Google PlayStore too, he proudly says.
Signing an Agreement with Universal Granite
Wineendra says that they promote and market the client's services or goods locally &globally 24/365. Unlike TV commercials, a surfer could go through a customer's site as many times as he wants and whenever he pleases.
A newspaper is cumbersome and an advertisement is read and the paper thrown away. But, an online ad can be watched time and time againwithin a minimal space of your palm. The amount paid for a yearly newspaper ad measuring a measly 4 inches by 3 inches is only a fraction cheaper, than the amount paid for a slot in SLWA with all the perks mentioned herein.TV and Newspaper advertising is simply incomparable with virtual advertising. We make a Portal for a client with equipment used for documentary making and don't worry him for content. We do it all.
He further states, ‘we sign an agreement with the customer initially for 1 year as with all internet related matters.
We provide the customer about four to five 4K UHD video clips which they can use for their own promotions too, including for TV or Cinema advertising, plus Search Engine Optimization and global promotion through our many Social Media platforms having a large amount of followers worldwide.SLWA audience is global according to Google Analytics.
This novel concept is the first time in Sri Lanka and maybe a very few in the world, if at all.
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