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The challenge in India comes down to education and encouraging adoption of new methods, Atique Kazi and Arshan Saha tell Sangeeta Tanwar
Has programmatic advertising taken off in India? What are the opportunities and challenges for brands pursuing this?
Kazi: All advertising will eventually be digital and that all of it will be programmatic. Programmatic in India has lagged behind the rest of the world. Programmatic represents 67 per cent of the total display ad spend in the US, in India it is still in single digits.
One of the biggest benefits that programmatic can provide is the ability for advertisers to coordinate their campaigns across multiple channels at the same time. The result is higher performance and less waste.
However, not all programmatic platforms offer this benefit - many are channel-specific. So they let you buy mobile programmatically, for instance, but then you have to go somewhere else for PC. Doing programmatic channel by channel is much less effective than using a platform that allows you to do everything from a single space.
I don't see major challenges to getting started. Much of it comes down to education and a willingness to adopt new methods. The Indian market is still heavily wedded to traditional output metrics like clicks and views that are much more susceptible to fraud and don't necessarily translate into business outcomes. We are working to push the industry towards "outcomes-based" metrics. So the question isn't how many people saw my ad, but how many people exposed to the campaign actually made a purchase.
With rapid advancement in technology and greater access to consumers' digital footprint how have data management platforms evolved?
Saha: There's no doubt that data is the new currency in the digital ecosystem. The better your data, and the more effectively that data can be actioned across the best inventory, the more successful you will be. We see advertisers, publishers, agencies and data management companies developing these platforms in their own ways. For instance, large publishers are able to provide high-quality audience data, but it's restricted to their own media. Many ad tech companies offer data management platforms (DMPs) but they're often restricted to a single channel. What is ultimately important is the ability of a DMP to keep up with the way in which consumers access media across multiple screens and devices to provide a comprehensive audience portrait - and do so in real time.
How can brands use a data management platform to decipher complex in-market purchase signals to increase engagement throughout the consumer journey?
Saha: Brands first need to start managing their owned, earned and paid audiences on a data management platform. This will help them segment their own audiences into visitors, clickers, converters, drop-outs, products interests and various other segments. These segments can then be referenced onto other DMPs that have in-market information about what these audiences are interested in. Doing this provides much greater insight into a brand's owned audience.
For example, a fast food outlet could map the entire consumer journey with all possible touch-points and drop-outs on the DMP. The company is then able to vary ad messaging and creative depending on whether an audience is a vegetarian or not; systematically re-engaging people who may have added items to their cart but then dropped off without purchasing them; identify what time of the day is the best to target audiences for better conversion; and find what type of creative works and which doesn't.
What are the pitfalls advertisers need to avoid to ensure they aren't flooded by data?
Kazi: Data quality and the ability to effectively analyse data are critical. Considering the massive amounts of data it can be difficult for advertisers to make distinctions. Therefore, third-party validation is important. Another way to evaluate is to look at the results. Programmatic techniques should help you define an uplift on campaign performance using the right metrics. If the data quality or the ability to analyse them aren't there, advertisers aren't going to see results.
