How brands are mastering the art of search and sell

Digital marketers are coming to grips with the technology that helps personalise ads for users and streamlines revenues for advertisers

At the Google Think Platform Summit, earlier this month, advertising professionals and brand managers rubbed shoulders with Google’s top thinkers discussing how programmatic advertising has changed the way they reach out to their audience. From automobile majors to FMCG multinationals, entertainment networks and digital apps, the unanimous view among all participants was that the role and power of big data is all set to grow manifold as enabling platforms for programmatic advertising gain size and acceptance in the market. 

To an advertising novice ‘programmatic’ is just jargon but to an advertiser it implies thousands of rupees saved daily on selecting the right target audience for their content. And as brands look to get more out of every buck spent on advertising, all eyes are on the way agencies and technology partners can help maximise their returns using every trick in the technology tool kit.

This spells opportunity for firms such as Google. “India is at a 20 per cent stage (in terms of maturity of usage) compared to an Australia or US that are in the 40 to 60 per cent range of maturity,” said Matt Brocklehurst, programmatic and platforms marketing lead for Asia Pacific at Google. “Having said that there are a lot of mature players in India and they are quite sector agnostic thanks to a very ‘online’ world,” he added. The technology has been around for almost 15 years now, but the surge in digital platforms has helped deliver it in a form that is more easily adapted by brands in India. 

Google sees major traction from clients like TrueCaller, Voot, HUL, Ford, Nissan who use programmatic to establish better connection with customers. Auto major Nissan found the use of programmatic advertising helped break through the clutter. It used data and automation for its ads during the T20 World Cup matches held in 2016, using dynamic scoreboards and interactive website banners. Advertisers designed a campaign with extensive programmatic inputs on user profile, the time they usually log in to see updates and their browsing history. For instance, if a viewer logged in before a match she would see a banner ad with the brand’s logo and product that would ask her to participate in a poll about who would win the match. If she logged in during the match, the same banner would give her the latest score and if she logged in after, it would ask her to predict the next winner and so on. One who does not follow cricket would not see the ad at all. The company said that this helped generate 10 times more brand interactions. 

“The advent of digital has made the scale so much wider with different devices, millions of websites and numerous ways of displaying ads within this space,” said Priya Bellubbi, head of strategy for ad operations and business finance at Amagi media, one of the players in Indian TV and digital advertising space. 

Voot is another platform that used programmatic to target its viewers and keep them coming back for more. It profiled users based on their favourite entertainment genres and pitched short clips of relevant and similar shows in those genres. The entire procedure was automated through programmatic. “To sort through thousands of hours of video content and create the right mix that generates the right kind of user reactions would not be possible without technological help,” added Broklehurst. Voot noticed 75 per cent more video views, 80 per cent reduction in advertising cost and saved over 24,000 man hours per month.

The best part is that the entire procedure from identifying the right audience to bidding for ad space on smartphones or desktops, to bidding for the right keywords can be completely automated. It helps save several hours of grueling work for an executive in identifying opportunities while utilising a large advertising space simultaneously. 

Almost 30 per cent of digital advertising in India passes through the programmatic channel compared to almost 70 per cent in the US, said Bellubbi. She adds that this technology works as much for TV as digital especially with the availability of TV content on personal devices. A recent report by Adobe found that over 75 per cent digital users in India preferred seeing personalised advertisements while almost 60 per cent found online ads more interesting.

 “We have technology today that allows us to identify advertisements within TV content and replace them with targeted advertisements. Advertisers will look for return on investment now. ROIs increase when programmatic is combined for digital and TV, according to reports,” she added. 

Advertisers expect to get more accurate about their use of programmatic over time. And the platforms hope to see rates jump, for they reason that brands will  get more supportive when Broadcast Audience Research council (BARC) India and consumer analytics firm Nielsen provide relevant data and ratings on digital viewership. 

Pitching it right

• 25-38% of advertisers plan to spend nearly half their advertising budgets on programmatic ads on any given channel; social media and display (a type of online advertising) lead the way

• Targeting, media mix and ad allocations are seen as the three big benefits of programmatic advertising

• Personalisation, say, 39 per cent and relevance, say, 33 per cent of Indian marketers are the best ways to improve returns on advertising. Programmatic advertising helps achieve both

• For auto major Nissan, programmatic brought in 10 times more brand interactions than previous efforts in the Indian market, at the World T20 championship

Source:  Digital Advertising India 2017, Adobe India and Google Think summit