Bangalore: The Advertising Club Bangalore recently held its inaugural edition of the‘Knowledge Conclave – Driving Growth Through the New Era of Measurement’. C-Suite SME speakers from different spaces of the data-tech world spoke and interacted on some of today’s most important topics.
Gowthaman Ragothaman, CEO Aqilliz Singapore spoke on ‘Unlocking the power of blockchain for business growth’. With value being exchanged on Internet, both authentication (proving validity) and authorization (official permission) are needed – therefore criticality of blockchain. Globally blockchain is powering efficiency returns, consumer ID returns&instant loyalty program redemption. In media, entertainment & marketing there is monetary benefit on optimization, visibility to publishers improving yield and hosepipe enabling multi-level attribution. Payments are enabling cashflow management. Multiple data streams going onto chain, with smart contracting algorithms for both authorization and authentication, unlock value. Blockchain can build trust, transparency and convenience and help grow business.
Hemant Mehta, Managing Director, Kantar & Chief Strategy Officer, Kantar South Asia spoke on ‘The new imperatives in research data & insights’.Research is asking less, observing more& stitching diverse data sources together. In world swimming with data, filter out only unaddressed areas for fresh research. Mobile is platform of choice. AR/VR and Chatbots are enabling in-moment behavior capture real time. Focus is on passive tracking –E.g. Ecommerce using ongoing transaction data and OTT using real-time content consumption. Kantar’s platform Athena allows big data integration from multiple sources –E.g. brand track, purchase, social & investment. Enriched with its Data Alliance partners, game is shifting to a different level.
L V Krishnan, CEO TAM Media Research spoke on ‘Science & Art of Data Monetization’. Data monetization is about channelizing entire pipeline of past & present data for higher ROI. It works with extensive multi-layer database meta tagging & synchronization. AI platform allows mixing of databases for powerful decision trees. Meta-tagged data infused into sales data helped effective distribution strategy. Data monetization helped relook at creative composition and set effective frequency goals for TV campaigns. Applied to 12 yrs+ data, it’s enabling higher ROI on in-stadia brand presence. It is helping real-time targeted mobile advertising & prospecting for ad sales teams by predicting campaigns upfront. The future is of collaboration to monetize data dramatically.
Sandipan Mondal, Founder & CEO Zapr Media Labs spoke on ‘Next-gen tech for real-time measurement’. Current measurement systems are grappling with today’s complex media environment. Thinking through the gaps can help solve this. Next gen tech resolves some of these gaps –Integrated Single Source panels combining existing & new tech; Viewership tracking through Integrating video & audio ACR tech into smart TVs/STBs; Eyeball Tracking to understand whether people are actually watching content & AI powered in-stream virtual branding for product placement. With many of these already employed at Zapr, proof of concept exists for the next-gen tech shared for real-time measurement.
Raghavendra Kumar Ravinutala, Co-Founder & CEO Yellow Messenger spoke on ‘How conversational AI is transforming businesses’.Conversational AI, i.e. automated natural language conversational interfaces transforms customer experience. Brand interactions are individualized for infinite users on tonality, language& region. Conversation AI is benefiting advertising. CTA traffic taken to static landing pages is often wasted. Conversational interfaces on display banners, Facebook ads, search & landing pages solves this. Success stories show significant topline and bottom-line lift. The ability of brands to leverage Conversational AI to drive growth is immense.
Taranjeet Singh, Chief Revenue Officer & Business Head ZEE5 India spoke on ‘Leveraging content & technology to create value for advertisers’. ZEE5 is deeply invested in data, content & technology. Only OTT in India with content across 12 languages & voice search in 11 languages, they bring unmatched value to advertisers – 40 Israeli Tech partners, 100% coverage across entire Smart TV ecosystem, presence across all telecom networks, on-the-go partners & payment gateways – powering their ad-suite with CDP, multiple KPI driving ad units, influencer marketing, gamification & video ecommerce across all top shows.
Sankalp Mehrotra, Senior Director, Monetisation, Flipkart spoke on ‘Commerce Advertising: the next frontier’. Commerce advertising is powerful because it connects to purchase intent consumers. Non-linear customer journeys, search to cart to checkout/dropout, provide potent segmentation opportunities. Whether at top of funnel or bottom, multiple solutions with multiple attribution metrics & reportage deliver better ROI – across all cohorts of 200 million Flipkart user base – critical mass to build brands at scale.
The day closed with a panel discussion moderated by Sanchayeeta Verma, Senior Vice President, Wavemaker on ‘Scaling up at pace in the new era of measurement’. Suparna Mitra, Chief Sales & Marketing Officer, Watches Division, Titan Company Limited brought in critical business perspective, along with Gowthaman Ragothaman and Raghavendra Kumar Ravinutala on the panel. Technology has impacted key business pillars making data-tech critical. Challenge is of fragmented micro-solutions & estimating business impact. Walled gardens have given rise to innumerable Channel KPIs when need is to define value in ecosystem from Consumer KPI standpoint. Interoperability will create joint-up solutions. To scale at pace, identify where intervention is needed, hypothesis to test and data-tech that fits best. Technology used well, makes life better for consumers and businesses. We need to use technology to measure lot better. Once we find some pattern that’s working, replicate it in as many things we do. This along with measurement will be the most significant in scaling.
Sanchayeeta Verma, who was also the Chairperson Knowledge Conclave 2019 said, “In our era of connected platforms, big data signals are being generated and data-driven tech are enabling businesses to harness them. The game is to master & scale at pace. The conclave helped understand how to do this and join the dots between the tech world and the world our brands play in”
Said Advertising Club Bangalore Executive Director, Arvind Kumar “Knowledge Conclave will be part of our annual program. Watch out for the 2020 edition“