IPG Mediabrands pads up for a digital future

Agency ties up with MediaMath to launch data management platform in India

At the annual general meeting of Reliance Industries last month, chairman Mukesh Ambani drew loud applause when he said that data was the oxygen of digital life. With nearly one billion mobile phone subscribers and over 400 million internet users in the country, data is the lifeblood of the Indian economy. And as companies begin demanding more data-led informed decision making from marketers, agencies such as IPG are shoring up their data management capabilities. 

Ambani was bang on in his assessment of data and its importance in a world where customers are living their entire lives online. A recent study by a Singapore-based agency, We are Social, says that Indians spend nearly eight hours on the internet per day, putting it in the top nine countries of the world. China, with a larger base of internet users, is ranked seventeenth, behind not only India, but also the US.

Thanks to the digital affinity shown by so many Indians, the country surpasses China in terms of time spent on the internet by almost by an hour-and-a-half, but lags the Phillippines, the world's top-ranked country for time spent on the internet, by an hour. Also, time spent on the internet in India via mobile phones is lower than desktops and laptops. It stands at almost three-and-a-half hours per day for mobile phones versus four-and-a-half hours a day for desktops and laptops, says the study. This could change soon once the market is flooded with affordable feature phones with 4G access. 

Internet usage via mobile phones is expected to grow exponentially, say market experts, as India’s over 500 million feature phone users become an addressable market for telecom players keen to push their data services.

For media agencies such as IPG, who plan and buy media for their clients, identifying avenues and channels where they can help advertisers be visible and induce a sale, the relevance of data has never been as important as it is now. It helps bring greater rigour to the decisions they make as does it help meet advertisers’ expectations of greater efficacy with respect to their spends on digital advertising. 

With digital advertising ranked third after television and print advertising in India, pegged at around Rs 9,500 crore in size, agencies, say experts, have to necessarily pad up for the future. It is in this context that IPG Mediabrands India’s latest initiative stacks up, indicating that this could be the way ahead for the entire digital marketing services industry in the course of the next few years. The agency group has just launched the country’s first data management platform (DMP) in partnership with MediaMath, an international technology company.

Keeping in step with customers 

What is DMP? A data management platform or DMP is a buyer-side platform that allows advertisers and agencies to take control of their own first-party audience and campaign data, comparing it with third-party audience data, to make smarter media buying and campaign planning decisions. In other words, it offers a central location for marketers to access and manage data from all sources, giving them a holistic view of consumer digital behaviour. First-party data, for the record, is data or information available to a company from the actions of its consumers on its digital properties such as the company website or social media channel. Third-party data, on the other hand, is audience data that is made available to companies by third-party service providers.

A DMP, say experts, can help advertisers and agencies solve their most pressing challenges, by putting audience data at the centre of their online advertising programmes. Amar Deep Singh, chief executive officer of digital agency Interactive Avenues, part of IPG Mediabrands India, which has launched the DMP in partnership with MediaMath, says by using it the agency can activate and adapt communication on a real-time basis to match the speed of the target audience.

“A DMP can help marketers control their campaigns in terms of better targeting and communication, all on a real-time basis. A DMP will also use machine learning and data science to drive responsive audiences to close the loop. It will also enable the marketer to acquire new customers, re-engage lapsed customers and upsell and cross sell accordingly,” Singh says.   

Crafting brand experiences

The use of a DMP also becomes relevant in the context of unique brand experiences that advertisers/marketers are demanding, experts say. “One of the biggest challenges today is the gap between the ‘planning and buying’ audiences and the audiences who actually engage with brands,” Singh said. “That gap is effectively closed with a DMP,” he says.

Rahul Vasudev, managing director, MediaMath APAC, says, “We are excited to partner with IPG Mediabrands. Their vision for this space, and ambition to bring data to the core of all digital media decisions for their clients, is something their clients will really benefit from.” IPG Mediabrands India will integrate the new DMP into Cadreon, which is its existing real-time marketing and programmatic buying unit.

HOW BRANDS USE DMP

• A data management platform or DMP is asoftware that houses audience and campaign data
• In digital advertising, data sources include publishers’ websites and apps on which advertisers buy advertising or an advertiser’s digital properties 
• A DMP offers a central location for marketers to access and manage data  to create targeted segments for  digital campaigns
• Effectively, a DMP helps map audience data gathered from all sources and presents a complete picture of consumer digital behaviour to companies or advertisers