Increasingly competition is going local: Baskar Subramanian

Interview with Co-founder, Amagi

Geotargeting-led businesses are highly scalable because brands are no longer targeting a universal lead, Baskar Subramanian, co-founder of targeted advertising platform Amagi, tells Sangeeta Tanwar

Geotargeting may not be an entirely new concept, but it is not widely understood. What does a geo-targetting platform bring to advertisers and marketers?

We largely enable advertisers and brands to target specific regions of interest with communication messages. We work with TV channels, buy inventory from them and then beam it through satellite. By splitting the beam, Amagi offers different advertising options in different regions. This way we are able to bring in huge targeted efficiencies for brands which have been lacking from television. India is a diverse market and Indians are very different from each other in terms of our habit, cultural leanings and behaviour as consumers. This diversity poses a big challenge to fast moving consumer goods companies in terms of reaching out to their target audience with the right product accompanied with an apt communication message. We essentially provide such marketers with tools to create communication and brands that are specific to that market. That's the core of what we do in India.
 

As regards to our international business, we are leveraging that technology-based footprint for geo-targeted advertising as well as content targeting. What that essentially means is that you could have a TV channel that covers all of Europe but you could still have the option of broadcasting it in Poland or Turkey alone. So instead of creating (beaming) a new TV channel, by splitting the satellite beam we can create different channels in different locations basis specific content. Internationally, Amagi has created a cloud infrastructure where the content is pushed into cloud which is subsequently delivered to different regions.

Given your scope of operations, Amagi seems to be an intermediary between the media agency and the broadcaster. Broadcasters look at you as buyers of media whereas agencies and advertisers look at you as broadcasters. What are the challenges with such a dual role?

The television industry never had an intermediary prior to Amagi's debut in the market. Industry folks were comfortable with the standard and familiar set-up of advertisers talking to the agencies and agencies talking to broadcasters. With the entry of Amagi in 2008 as an intermediary initially people did not understand how we were going to impact the entire value chain.

Over the years, people have acquired a clear understanding of the whole value chain and the role that Amagi plays in it. Larger advertisers look at us as an alternative to regional TV channels whereas smaller brands that don't have access to larger media agencies come to us seeking guidance on their brand and media strategy. For smaller brands we strive to understand their marketing needs and translate that into advertising possibility for them. We work very closely with smaller brands. When it comes to broadcasters they consider us as an aggregator of advertisers. We have been able to build a relationship of trust with different industry stakeholders over a period of time and in the process we have addressed the confusion around our role and place in the industry.

In that case, the biggest limitation for your business model would be that larger brands with a national footprint might prefer to align with larger media and advertising networks. In such a scenario, how do you hope to scale up your business?

We have an extremely scalable model. The reason why I'm saying this is that brands are no longer targeting a universal lead. We work with a number of large advertisers such as Unilever, GlaxoSmithKline and Wipro. The challenge that they face is that either they have a regional brand to be marketed or have to pursue regional promotions for specific brands. The second problem for them lies in the heterogeneous nature of the Indian market - that is, the same product cannot sell equally across all regions. Therefore, they need targeted advertising solutions.

Could you explain it with an example?

Let's look at the advertising dilemma that brands face through an example. Regional advertising has witnessed huge growth over the last few years. However, a large part of that growth has come from the southern part of the country, from markets such as Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala. In all these regions, 95 per cent of viewership is in vernacular channels. Now consider Maharashtra and Bengal. In case of Maharashtra, while Marathi accounts for 27 per cent of the viewership, Hindi accounts for the rest, which is the larger chunk of the viewership. In case of Bengal, the viewership is split equally between Bengali and Hindi. The point I'm making is that as we move northwards, to markets such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Punjab, Hindi viewership is much higher compared to vernacular viewership.

Besides having to addressing the language-led diversity, brands are also up against a growing number of local brands. A lot of new brands are coming up across markets in categories such as flour, detergents and biscuits. In such a diverse market, advertisers continuously struggle with the question as to how can they start targeting or communicating more in particular regions to increase their market share or what I call share of voice. They are always on the lookout for solutions that will equip them to boost their communication in specific regions.