 "Pradeep Hejmadi")
How has the platform buying and selling function evolved over the years? Since Aidem is managing inventory for broadcasters, what’s your equation with big media agencies?
We have very strong relations with media companies. They will remain the custodians of planning and buying decisions. We will also look at multi-touch engagement points for the media agency to transact with us. Gone are the days when you would try and reach a consumer only through a single medium. Today, all the mediums are under pressure to prove their value in terms of return on advertising spending.
Media agencies will continue to play a key role because they spend a lot of time with the advertisers understanding their challenges, expectations and they plan the impressions that they want to create. We are the go-to agency for multiple touch-points including online and digital media space.
What are the key trends to watch out for in digital media?
Digital operates in a very different ecosystem. A lot of programmatic engagement happens at a transactional level. On the linear side, that is, in traditional broadcasting, there are need-based hierarchies. In the broadcast space, the key motivation for innovation over the last two years has been driven by the need for self-actualisation and the need for achievement. So you find a lot of mergers and buyouts, that were unanticipated, happening. In the future, there will be a lot of consolidation in the media space because it is getting a lot more difficult for large companies to keep their margins intact because of the fragmentation. In a rapidly fragmenting environment, the media channels as well as brands are beginning to carve out their special areas with specific consumers, enabled by digitisation.
Our aim therefore is to create a sum of parts that is bigger than the whole. We still operate on a channel-level basis. So the profitability of none of our partners gets threatened even when we represent multiple brands. The sync between digital and linear is difficult to come by because in linear, you don’t know for sure who the customer is — their profiles are segmented either geographically or demographically. In digital, you can target better but it has its own challenges.
In this scenario how do you assess the role of an agency like Aidem in facilitating the growth agenda of a brand?
We are in a very strong position to create a pivotal role for young and new networks. With our sales and technology-specific solutions, the company has helped a number of budding channels to come to a point where they are confident enough to manage sales on their own. We helped them grow and gather the confidence to explore on their own. We are also very strong on the content side and our priority areas are pre-production and post-production. Aidem Sporty is another arm that offers an opportunity to support brands through linear, digital and on-venue engagements. Once we integrate them well, we will start looking at consulting.
What sort of solutions does Aidem Sporty offer? How is it different from another sports consulting firm?
It is a new product. For instance, we represent Discovery Sports for advertising and sales. Besides that, we are also focusing on content creation and visualisation in the sports domain. We will announce more innovations as we venture out in this space. There are many layers to it and we will have to analyse the prospects of each layer through partnerships, strategic alliances or build our own tools to explore opportunities available in this space. Our focus will be on newer sports offerings. Cricket is like religion in our country. So there is no point spending too much energy on it. Besides, there are a lot of high-end consumers who like to engage with alternative content. We will be looking to build sustainable and scalable products for companies that are like-minded.
What are the other innovations that you are currently working on?
Let me start with Aidem Tech which currently has one new product under it. This product is a market leader and gets advertisers or creative agencies to ingest and distribute the commercials digitally. It is a nicely set up interface. From here, we are looking at building business-enabling products that media agencies or advertisers can use. Technology is at the core of operational efficiency in every business. So our aim is to help the businesses do what they have to do while we focus on providing hi-tech backend services. We have also been successful in getting some of our broadcast partners to do end-to-end backend integration with us. Once we sell the inventories for them, we do the booking, the log management and the publishing for the broadcaster right up to the level of revenue reporting.
