Mumbai: At the Media Investment Summit (MIS) 2023 organised by Indiantelevision.com on 15 February, one of the panel discussions was on the topic – ‘The Digital Powerhouse’. The discussion was moderated by Amnet India vice president - programmatic growth & partnerships Tushar Gupta, and it included panellists such as Samsung Ads India senior director Prabhvir Sahmey, Mahindra Rise head - integrated media & advertising Sonam Pradhan, ICICI Securities head of marketing Deepak Saluja, Kaya Ltd vice president and head of marketing Samyukta Ganesh Iyer, and PubMatic director - customer success Harguneet Singh.
Digital is seeing a surge and the pandemic flagged off the digital revolution in India. The most talked about is connected TV wherein brands, even legacy brands have also taken the digital route to reach out to their target audience. The number of smart TVs has also grown significantly and added to in-built apps which are also a part of the smart TV manufacturers in India. The panel shed light on how brands and advertisers are looking at tapping the connected TV universe and how technology adapting to this is becoming an enabler.
Digital has grown at a transformative pace in the last several years. The pandemic has been a blessing in disguise for the industry - CTV has seen an uptick in viewership data. Our Western counterparts – the US and UK – have already seen 60 per cent of their linear TV spends shift to connected TV. The OTT players are highly bullish on CTV due to high audience engagement, and also from the monetisation point of view.
Gupta questioned, “Do we have enough people on connected TV and if we have reached a critical mass to be taken seriously in India?” Sahmey, who started his career in digital advertising in 1999, expressed that connected TV is now what digital advertising was around 2006, in terms of the number game. But the difference in terms of penetration was that the internet was one-to-one back in the day; connected TV, however, is a multi-viewing device. He explains that though reports suggest different numbers, Samsung Ads considers that there are 25 million TVs and with an average of 2.5 people viewing per TV, it adds up to about 60 million viewers. So, we have reached critical mass in terms of reaching the number of people, we just need to have enough dollars chasing it for now.
When questioned about how easy or difficult it is to get the offline and online advertising teams together to deliver an appropriate integrated media plan, Pradhan mentions that at Mahindra they have restructured their team and their agency mirrored them. “We created this role called integrated marketing, where there were no different teams for digital or offline. We had an integration of mediums which helped us focus better on the consumer."
Being fragmented and present across 22 cities, Iyer discussed Kaya’s regional media plans as she mentioned that the brand isn’t present in deeper parts of these cities due to which TV wouldn’t work for their brand. She talked about how Kaya harnesses a lot of regional print and radio, with a conjunction of digital to reach out to their audience.
Saluja mentioned that in terms of adoption, a large chunk of their business used to rely heavily on brick and mortar, as compared to now wherein there are completely digital acquisition funnels created by them. “We have brought the marketing teams at the centre – with the brand being one key centre and digital acquisitions being another key leg which is part of the team.”
“The customer no longer comes to you, you have to go to the customer. And solutions need to be designed keeping the customer in mind.”
Singh pointed out that there is a need for standardisation. “Secondly, technology needs to be at the core, thirdly - relationship building has to be applied. And lastly, we need to work together in the ecosystem.”
On being questioned whether it’s about linear planning that is kept at the forefront, or it’s going to be more content-led or audience-led, Saluja understands that the digital eco-system links it back to the audience that they’re going after. TV advertising is about reach, and when it comes to connected TV or video streaming, reach still dominates. Where TV is more about frequency, wherein you could choose the channels that you wish to advertise on, on the other hand, digital and connected TV give you leverage to look at a combination of audience and content.
Pradhan is of the view, “Focus on your content and audience, and then layer up your media accordingly. Linear advertising shouldn’t be ignored simply because of lack of measurement, as compared to the digital medium which is perceived to be more effective in terms of measurement.”
Should it be AVoD or SVoD? While talking about strategy, Sahmey mentioned that there is no one size that fits all. “We have different stakeholders who make decisions and when different stakeholders take decisions there are different metrics involved as well.”
He continues, “Theme of content plays a significant role – FIFA, IPL garners a lot of viewership where brands want to be present. The advertiser wants to get closer to the potential audience. There is more fluidity now in terms of the execution of advertising for brands.”
Evaluating success and failure of connected TV campaigns, Saluja says that in India it is still an emerging opportunity. Scaling up of smart TV usage, multiple brands offering smart TV services as a hygiene factor now. In terms of metrics for evaluating the efficacy, it still rides upon the incremental reach that it is able to achieve over linear TV. Thirdly, it is also about surrogates around the traffic or visits to your websites or planned conversations that you pick up in terms of social listening. We also experiment in a hyper-local way.
“A mass product is advertised through linear advertising. But if our communication needs to be targeted only at certain metros, certain households where you have a lot of cohorts coming in, that’s where CTV plays a brilliant part,” explained Pradhan.
What about brand safety? Singh emphasised, “Brand safety is essential and brands want to target their users, however, it needs to be in a brand-safe environment. Competitive exclusion is also something which is catching up nowadays. In terms of fraud, fraudsters do exist. The CTV space is not very standardised yet, it’s very fragmented. It might be challenging, but it’s not impossible. There are a lot of third parties that can help with bot fraud and different kinds of fraud.”
What are the factors that will push the growth of CTV in a market like India? “The purchasing power and consumption are rising. The difference between India and Bharat is diminishing. With smart TV penetration on the rise, connected TV is only here to grow. Voice is going to be a dominant factor,” elucidated Saluja.
Pradhan added, “Studying your audience is essential and knowing that the kind of audience is coming in, CTV is definitely going to be on the rise.”
“Talks about ‘Hype Cycle’ – it is about the hype and whether it will work for my brand or not. Well, CTV has crossed that stage, and we only see more and more acceptability for it. CTV is here to stay,” Sahmey concluded.
