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In 2022, connected TV (CTV) will account for more than one-fifth of total programmatic video ad spending for the first time, as well as one-tenth of total programmatic digital display. YouTube inflates our programmatic CTV numbers. We forecast that three-fourths of US CTV display ad spending will transact programmatically in 2022. Part of the reason our programmatic CTV forecast is so high is because we include YouTube in our CTV definition, and nearly all of YouTube's <keyword id="11894120" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="advertising" source="Orion">advertising</keyword> is sold through automation. YouTube's gross CTV ad revenues will account for 43.6% of our programmatic CTV ad forecast in 2022, down from 54.6% in 2020. YouTube's share of total programmatic CTV ad spending is declining because more streamers are making a stronger effort to sell their inventory programmatically. Even with a declining share, however, YouTube exerts immense influence over programmatic CTV.

CTV programmatic ad spending (2019-2023)

<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="6355629" type="DEFINITION" weightage="60" keywordseo="google">Google</keyword> said Thursday it's pushing back its plan to kill off third-party tracking <keyword id="118638" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Cookies">cookies</keyword> in Chrome.</li><li>It now expects to phase out cookies and replace them with tech from its <keyword id="8015369" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Privacy-Sandbox">Privacy Sandbox</keyword> by 2023.</li><li>The delay comes after Google pledged to give oversight of the cookie changes to the UK's antitrust watchdog.</li></ul>Google said Thursday it intends to delay by more than a year its <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-chrome-controls-advertisers-change-targeting-strategies-2019-5?utm_campaign=sf-bi-main&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=facebook.com&amp;fbclid=IwAR2BhgNs9mvecuJE9g3TXUwfdTJ1OeF3P9T8lncxY-39Z032jbaZKiOSbUM&amp;r=US&amp;IR=TUM&amp;r=US&amp;IR=T">plan to kill off third-party cookies within its Chrome</a> browser, a move likely to be well-received by the online ad industry, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/advertisers-are-panicking-over-googles-plan-to-ditch-cookies-2020-2">which has been scrambling to shift to alternative technologies</a>.Writing in <a href="https://blog.google/products/chrome/updated-timeline-privacy-sandbox-milestones/">a blog post</a>, Google <keyword id="6355135" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Privacy">Privacy</keyword> Engineering Director Vinay Goel set out a new timeline for Chrome's cookie phase out and deployment of alternative technologies as part of its "Privacy Sandbox" initiative, which it now expects to complete by late 2023."While there's considerable progress with this initiative, it's become clear that more time is needed across the ecosystem to get this right," the blog post said.Google has now set out an extended timeline for the changes. Stage one is expected to start in late 2022, during which time publishers, advertisers, and adtech vendors can migrate their services to work with new cookieless technologies. The next stage is the cookie phase out, expected to start in mid 2023 and finish later that year.Google first announced its intentions to kill off the tracking cookies, which advertisers use to track users around the web and target them with ads, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-chrome-controls-advertisers-change-targeting-strategies-2019-5?utm_campaign=sf-bi-main&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=facebook.com&amp;fbclid=IwAR2BhgNs9mvecuJE9g3TXUwfdTJ1OeF3P9T8lncxY-39Z032jbaZKiOSbUM&amp;r=US&amp;IR=TUM&amp;r=US&amp;IR=T">in January last year</a>. The company said the plan, which originally had a "two-year" deadline, was to replace third-party cookies with more privacy conscious technologies.Since then, Google and other online ad industry players have been <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-chrome-engineering-director-justin-schuh-privacy-sandbox-2021-2">experimenting with new APIs</a>, or application programming interfaces, designed to prevent the tracking of individual users while still allowing advertisers to target clusters of people by their interests and measure the effectiveness of their campaigns.Google said Thursday that the Chrome team and other companies have suggested more than 30 proposals for new privacy-focused ad technologies in areas including ad measurement, targeting, and fraud detection. Of those proposals, four are in the "origin trial" stage, Google said, allowing other developers to experiment with the new features.Chrome's cookie plans and Privacy Sandbox experiments have sparked <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-chrome-engineering-director-justin-schuh-privacy-sandbox-2021-2">frenzied debates in the online ad industry</a> and among the privacy community, with some experts speculating the moves could <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/googles-no-tracking-promise-not-about-privacy-2021-3">serve to cement Google's advertising dominance</a>. Chrome is by far the most-popular global web browser, cornering two-thirds of the market, while Google also continues to maintain its lead in the online ad space. EMarketer estimates Google will take a <a href="https://www.emarketer.com/content/duopoly-still-rules-global-digital-ad-market-alibaba-amazon-on-prowl">28.6% share of worldwide digital ad spending this year</a>.Google's moves have also caught the eyes of global regulators. Earlier this month, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-offers-uk-oversight-chrome-third-party-cookie-plans-2021-6">Google said it would give the UK's Competition and Markets Authority oversight of its plans</a> to roll out technologies from the Privacy Sandbox, including offering the watchdog a 60-day "standstill period" before it introduces any changes.Google also pledged to limit how it will use and combine individual user data for digital ad purposes and said it will not discriminate against rivals in favor of its own ad products when implementing cookie alternatives. The commitments were offered in response to an <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-to-investigate-google-s-privacy-sandbox-browser-changes">investigation</a> the CMA launched into the Privacy Sandbox in January.Earlier this week, the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-eu-antitrust-investigation-ad-business-2021-6">European Union opened an antitrust probe into Google's advertising practices</a>, including the company's plans to phase out cookies in Chrome.Simon Andrews, founder of mobile marketing consultancy Addictive, said while a large portion of online ad businesses mistrusts Google, the industry needs to reach a consensus around building new privacy-focused solutions that are usable for all the players across the sector."Like it or not, we need Google to come up with something that the industry can get behind because if they don't, nobody else will, and there will be a Balkanization of everything," he said.

Google is delaying its plan to kill third-party cookies in Chrome until 2023

With video emerging as the most preferred form of content over the last few years, a new report on Tuesday revealed that there are 356 million mobile video viewers in <keyword id="3658" type="LOCATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="India">India</keyword>. The InMobi's <keyword id="11492442" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="State-of-Programmatic-Mobile-Video-Advertising">State of Programmatic Mobile Video Advertising</keyword> in India report throws insights on the change in advertiser spends and the performance of video as a format from data analysed on its advertising platform between January 2020 and January 2021. "The increasing mobile video consumption, which was seemingly an emerging trend during the lockdown, is now redefining the advertising strategies of some of the leading brands," <keyword id="3633879" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Vasuta-Agarwal">Vasuta Agarwal</keyword>, Managing Director, <keyword id="119132" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Asia-Pacific">Asia Pacific</keyword>, said in a statement. "With the time spent in watching videos at an all-time high and the growing engagement, we see a strong potential for programmatic advertising across sectors," <keyword id="781" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Agarwal">Agarwal</keyword> added. The report said that smartphones continue to rapidly penetrate India's demography, and this has fuelled a 194 per cent growth in Mobile Video Advertisements. As 62 per cent of mobile users in India watch videos on their devices, brands understand the increasing impact of mobile video advertising. In-app video ad engagement peaked over the last year with a 23 per cent growth YoY in Click-Through Rate (CTR). When compared with other formats, in-app videos witnessed a 112 per cent higher CTR. According to the report, vertical videos ads saw a 25 per cent YoY growth in CTR in the review period as compared to 18 per cent YoY growth in case of landscape video ads. Similarly, when compared with other formats, the CTR for vertical video ads was 4x higher and that for landscape video ads was 47 per cent higher. SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/citymall-a-startup-that-helps-budding-entrepreneurs-start-their-ventures-on-whatsapp-has-raised-over-22-million/articleshow/83741383.cms">CityMall, a startup that helps budding entrepreneurs start their ventures on WhatsApp, has raised over $22 million</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/cryptocurrency/news/investments-in-crypto-hit-17-billion-in-the-first-six-months-of-2021/articleshow/83740327.cms">Investments in crypto hit a new record of $17 billion, but Indian funds are yet to jump on the bandwagon</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/ecommerce/news/flipkart-and-amazon-may-not-be-able-to-do-flash-sales/articleshow/83737670.cms">Amazon, Flipkart and other e-commerce platforms may not be able to do flash sales any more, if Indian government has its way</a>

Mobile video consumption witnesses a steep rise in India with 365 million viewers, says report

<ul><li>The <keyword id="7642375" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="data-sciences-division">Data Sciences Division</keyword> of dentsu India, has unveiled its latest Insights report, ‘The Next Normal: The Rise of the Contactless Economy' under its specialist consumer insights wing dentsu Marketing Cloud (DMC) Insights. </li><li>The report covers deep findings of the impact of a contactless world on consumer behavior and sentiment of the <keyword id="159493" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Gen-Z">Gen Z</keyword> &amp; Millennial audiences from <keyword id="153782" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Urban-India">Urban India</keyword>.</li></ul>The Covid-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on people's lives. There have been many changes in human behaviors, how we communicate, work, and consume. The Data Sciences Division of dentsu India, has unveiled its latest Insights report, ‘The Next Normal: The Rise of the Contactless Economy' under its specialist consumer insights wing dentsu Marketing Cloud (DMC) Insights. The report covers deep findings of the impact of a contactless world on consumer behavior and sentiment of the Gen Z &amp; Millennial audiences from Urban India. With businesses and individuals scrambling over the past year to adjust to extraordinary circumstances, increased vaccination presents somewhat of a light at the end of the tunnel. In many ways, the year 2021 will be a year of transition as we battle our way through the devastation caused by the pandemic and look toward a future. A zero-touch and more consumer conscious world has promoted the rise of a 'contactless economy' shaped by a virtually connected ecosystem. Key highlights of the report: <ul><li class="m_-3406908789372116735MsoListParagraph">Willingness to try lesser-known brands: 70% expressed a willingness to purchase products from a lesser-known brand.</li><li class="m_-3406908789372116735MsoListParagraph">The Growing Virtual Wallet: Close to 60% of transactions of our surveyed audience claim to be fulfilled via virtual wallets. 23% via credit and debit cards and the remaining through cash. Google Pay enjoys a lion’s share with PayTM being second.</li><li class="m_-3406908789372116735MsoListParagraph">Online Certifications: 59% claim to have done an online certification. A trend likely to continue post lockdown.</li><li class="m_-3406908789372116735MsoListParagraph"><keyword id="48379" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Ayurveda">Ayurveda</keyword>: 49% of the surveyed pool have a reliance on Ayurveda to meet their immunity needs. </li></ul>Commenting on the launch, <keyword id="1376695" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Gautam-Mehra">Gautam Mehra</keyword>, Chief Data Officer (<keyword id="119132" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Asia-Pacific">Asia Pacific</keyword>) &amp; CEO dentsu <keyword id="2520956" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="programmatic">Programmatic</keyword> said, “While the world grapples with the impact of the covid-19 pandemic, there is widespread uncertainty. However, in an ‘at home’ economy, the only assurance is that a next normal is being created, promoted by a hyper-connected world. Pegged to globally reach a $3trillion size by 2025, the ‘at home’ consumption economy has been fueled by the need for consumers to look at digital channels to maintain normalcy in their lives – be it to connect with friends and family virtually, purchase necessities, subscribe to content or discover and learn new skills. Millennials and Gen Z consumers, being digital natives, have been better equipped in adapting to a virtual world with demonstrating a greater adoption of cashless payments and an openness to discover and try new brands.” “The Next Normal has given rise to a hyper-connected virtual world fueled by better internet connectivity promoting an increase in online consumption and fulfillment of the needs within a contactless world. Being tech-natives, Gen Z and millennials will form a cornerstone of new age marketing and brand engagement given their growing spending power and digital literacy. A virtual world has given rise to human experience platforms. With the virus hitting home, there has been a hyper awareness of health and safety amongst Millennials and Gen Z audiences. This report builds on the commitment of DMC Insights to deliver industry leading insights on this demographic covering their impact on various aspects of consumption and growth,” added <keyword id="7856732" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Abhinay-Bhasin">Abhinay Bhasin</keyword>, Vice President (Asia Pacific) and Head of DMC Insights, <keyword id="10032656" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="dentsu-international">dentsu International</keyword>. The report has been unveiled under the unit’s specialist research wing – DMC Insights. The dentsu Marketing Cloud (DMC) Insights offers an expertise-led model to assist dentsu Data Sciences research &amp; insights, consulting and practice teams in delivering differentiated values to our clients.

70% Gen Z & Millennial audiences from urban India are today willing to purchase products from a lesser-known brand: Dentsu Data Sciences

<ul><li>Disney+ Hotstar has collaborated with MediaMath, a Demand-Side Platform (DSP).</li><li>This association enables advertisers and agencies to measure reach and frequency on Disney+ Hotstar’s <keyword id="2520956" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="programmatic">programmatic</keyword> inventory in a trusted, and brand-safe environment.</li><li>With this offering, brands can purchase premium inventory on Disney+ Hotstar through Programmatic Guaranteed (PG) and Private Marketplace (PMP) deals to reach India’s affluent, urban audiences via a multitude of ad formats that suit their marketing objectives.</li></ul>Disney+ Hotstar has collaborated with MediaMath, a Demand-Side Platform (DSP) that delivers the most responsive, accountable, and performant advertising technology for brands to buy <keyword id="10377443" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="addressable-media">addressable media</keyword>. This association enables advertisers and agencies to measure reach and frequency on Disney+ Hotstar’s programmatic inventory in a trusted, and brand-safe environment. With this offering, brands can purchase premium inventory on Disney+ Hotstar through Programmatic Guaranteed (PG) and Private Marketplace (PMP) deals to reach India’s affluent, urban audiences via a multitude of ad formats that suit their marketing objectives. The platform’s massive reach and sharp targeting options extend an incredible opportunity for brands, especially regional players, to tap the right audience whether on live sports or entertainment. Nitin Bawankule, President, Ad Sales, <keyword id="8934848" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Star-Disney-India">Star &amp; Disney India</keyword> said, “We are committed to enabling marketers and agency partners to reach new and existing audiences at scale and build incremental reach. By activating audience-based buying in a private programmatic environment, brands can target precise, highly engaged audience cohorts, exercise more control with transparency, and attain higher visibility of their campaigns. MediaMath offers a cutting-edge technology platform and this association will help us offer efficient programmatic advertising solutions to clients.” “OTT is a critical and fast-growing channel for driving addressability, and our association with Disney+ Hotstar helps us offer a forward-looking, sophisticated programmatic setup," said <keyword id="10377444" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="pranjal-desai">Pranjal Desai</keyword>, Country Manager India, MediaMath. “Disney+ Hotstar has already established itself as the largest [AR4] player in the OTT space, and this collaboration has been the natural next step in making media buying on OTT a more streamlined, efficient and accountable process.” Speaking about the Disney+ Hotstar Marketing Platform and the possibilities, Umesh Krishna, Director - Marketing, Swiggy said, "Swiggy and Disney+ Hotstar have had a long association, especially when it comes to cricket. In fact, food and video-on-demand are categories that go hand-in-hand, and they both cater to similar psychographics. Having tried out programmatic campaigns on the Disney+ Hotstar Marketing Platform recently, we are extremely pleased about the scale and targeting options that it offers us. I am confident that it can serve our various marketing goals effectively." <keyword id="267001" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Amardeep-Singh">Amardeep Singh</keyword>, Co-Founder &amp; CEO, <keyword id="179255" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Interactive-Avenues">Interactive Avenues</keyword> said, "We are looking forward to programmatically accessing India’s most premium and brand-safe video inventory on Disney+ Hotstar via MediaMath – the leading independent DSP in the country. This is an offering that the market has been waiting for quite some time now. Interactive Avenues works extensively with both MediaMath and Disney+ Hotstar and we are very excited for this offering which will help us to further augment our promise to our clients to give them the best ROI on their investments." Additionally, buyers can access other key features such as viewability measurement, frequency-capping, and real-time analytics. With Disney+ Hotstar, brands can reach India’s affluent, urban audiences via a multitude of ad formats that suit their marketing objectives. The platform’s massive reach and sharp targeting options extend an incredible opportunity for brands, especially regional players, to reach the right audience whether on live sports or entertainment.

Disney+ Hotstar collaborates with MediaMath to offer audience-based marketing in a private programmatic environment

<ul><li>Earlier this year, <keyword id="42747" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Tata-Motors">Tata Motors</keyword> launched its Electric Vehicle, ‘Nexon EV’, pioneering the EV segment in India. As a result, dentsu <keyword id="2520956" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="programmatic">Programmatic</keyword>’s unique solution delivered an astounding 3X higher CTR than regular display campaigns. </li><li>It also achieved an 81% higher qualified lead ratio and a dramatic improvement in leads. </li><li>The ability to enrich OTT audiences beyond their native platforms has resulted in a dramatic success for the brand and proposition to the industry.</li></ul>The rising trend of cord cutters and streaming surpassing cables, in many economies, has brought with it a new challenge for the advertising sector – that of reaching the audience behind the great OTT paywall. With the changing audience behavior and a dramatic increment in Over-The-Top (OTT) subscriptions, the segment has emerged as one of the most engaging forms of digital content consumption during the lockdown. OTT is no longer a niche but a mass market. In an effort to plan for activating OTT audiences from premium platforms such as Netflix, <keyword id="9364358" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="dentsu-play">dentsu Play</keyword> partnered with WATConsult, a globally awarded hybrid digital agency from the house of dentsu international, on Tata Motors and has pioneered a unique solution to target premium, behind the pay wall OTT audiences on platforms outside of the OTT through industry first integrations using first-party and second-party data partnerships. Earlier this year, in January 2020, Tata Motors launched its Electric Vehicle, ‘Nexon EV’, pioneering the EV segment in India. As a result, dentsu Programmatic’s unique solution delivered an astounding 3X higher CTR than regular display campaigns. It also achieved an 81% higher qualified lead ratio and a dramatic improvement in leads. The ability to enrich OTT audiences beyond their native platforms has resulted in a dramatic success for the brand and proposition to the industry. Commenting on the success, <keyword id="1367642" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Ramesh-Dorairajan">Ramesh Dorairajan</keyword>, Head – Sales, Marketing and Customer Care, Electric Vehicle Business Unit, Tata Motors said, “The Great Reset has highlighted several audience trends that will help us enhance our overall brand reach. The increase in OTT content consumption has transformed the way people consume content. This unique data-driven approach from dentsu Programmatic has opened up additional avenues for us to interact, particularly with the audience behind the paywall, while creating a phenomenal impact on our campaign performance as we pioneer an industry-first approach.” “With our industry first partnerships and integrations enabling insights from platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Zee5 and large players in the sector, coupled with our proprietary technology, dentsu Programmatic is proud to have unearthed a unique way to drive business success for clients wishing to target OTT audiences. Using Machine Learning at its core, coupled with intelligence from platforms such as Facebook and Google, we aspire to deliver many such industry leading solutions to common client challenges,” added <keyword id="1376695" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Gautam-Mehra">Gautam Mehra</keyword>, CEO, dentsu Programmatic and Chief Data Officer (South Asia), dentsu international. Sharing her views on the same, <keyword id="2705388" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Heeru-Dingra">Heeru Dingra</keyword>, CEO, WATConsult commented, “As OTT platforms grow and evolve at an exponential rate, they seem to emerge as one of the key focus areas for brands as well as marketers. Therefore, dentsu Programmatic’s tool to effectively tap those audiences has efficiently helped us in actioning a campaign for our brand <keyword id="7931165" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="tata-nexon-ev">Tata Nexon EV</keyword>. From targeting the right set of audiences to creating awareness about the brand and attaining the right amount of consideration, it delivered some remarkable results for the brand.”

dentsu Play and WATConsult's latest innovation for Tata Nexon helps the brand target premium, behind-the-paywall audience on OTT platforms

<ul><li><keyword id="226149" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Publicis-Groupe">Publicis Groupe</keyword> strengthens media operations; infuses full spectrum of Digital, Data, DBT &amp; Tech</li><li><keyword id="334781" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Tanmay-Mohanty">Tanmay Mohanty</keyword> appointed as CEO Media Services, <keyword id="1137482" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Publicis-Groupe-India">Publicis Groupe India</keyword>.</li></ul>Publicis Groupe India today announced key changes in the media services domain. It is bringing together Data Science, Programmatic and Media Tech along with Zenith and Starcom, under a common leadership to further strengthen focus on scaled media, real identity and data capabilities. This realignment will help expediting its media product around Epsilon PeopleCloud, Epsilon powered data services, programmatic amongst others. Sapient Razorfish, will also be part of this offering and will focus on consulting solutions around full spectrum of real identity, digital, data and media tech. Tanmay Mohanty will now assume the newly created role of CEO Media Services, Publicis Groupe India. A force for digital and data transformation throughout his career, Mohanty’s most recent four years as CEO of Zenith, have been spent in expanding the Mumbai and Bangalore footprint of Zenith, operationalising Epsilon PeopleCloud platform, helping clients pivot to a data-driven future and contributing to key new business wins like Hero MotoCorp and GSK. There are a few other key promotions announced in this structure. Jai Lala now takes on the role of Chief Executive Officer, Zenith and will continue to work with Tanmay. In his two plus years as COO for Zenith, he has been instrumental in driving excellent client relations and operational efficiencies across the board. He has also been instrumental in settling the Zenith Delhi operations. Sejal Shah gets elevated to the role of Managing Director and Head Publicis Media Exchange across mainline and digital. In this capacity, she will work closely with all the Groupe agencies. She will also continue to oversee Publicis-in-Motion, the Groupe’s experiential, shopper and OOH marketing Practice. Rathi Gangappa, Chief Executive Officer Starcom, Aditya Khanna, MD Sapient Razorfish, Deepak Pant, Managing Partner and Head of Data Science, Anil Pandit Senior VP and Head of Programmatic will all work with Tanmay in this role. Anupriya Acharya, CEO, Publicis Groupe South Asia says, “As the market transitions into a cookieless future, privacy-first approaches and omnichannel consumer journeys, some of which have been accelerated by the pandemic, there is greater spotlight on strategies required to make clients win against a changing, dynamic landscape. So earlier in the year, we bolstered our creative agencies capabilities on the digital marketing solutions. Now we wanted to realign our media capabilities in a manner that propels the synergies between data, tech, digital to deliver scaled media solutions developed from a deeper understanding of audiences and how best to influence them.” Speaking on Tanmay’s appointment, Acharya added, “Tanmay has an exceptional range of experience in digital, data, media and technology. Coupled with his leadership on nurturing agency teams with strong client centricity, makes him a natural fit for the role.” Tanmay Mohanty said, “ I am both delighted and excited with the opportunity. Media is increasingly a critical and strategic part of the entire mix and the focus is on real-time messaging, compelling solutions delivered at scale, efficiently and with speed. The new alignment builds on our core competencies on digital, data and tech and also helps leverage all the diverse expert skills in a more unified manner. I look forward to working with our very talented teams to further build on our momentum on media excellence.”

Publicis Groupe consolidates Data Science, Programmatic and Media Tech with Zenith and Starcom, under a common leadership

<ul><li><keyword id="7627158" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Fork-Media-Group">Fork Media Group</keyword> (FMG) announced the launch of ContextAds, an SSP that can be a big help for publishers and marketers.</li><li>In existence for the past 7 years, the organization has grown from being a sub million-dollar business in 2013 to slightly short of 15 Million USD in 2019. </li><li><keyword id="3108142" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Samar-Verma">Samar Verma</keyword>, Founder and Group Chief Executive Officer, Fork Media Group tells us about the new offering and how it has been helping brands and publishers up their <keyword id="987108" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="content-marketing">content marketing</keyword> game.</li></ul> Recently, media-tech company, Fork Media Group (FMG) announced the launch of ContextAds, an SSP that can be a big help for publishers and marketers. While it will help publishers create incremental value on their inventory, marketers will get complete control over context and brand safety. The brainchild of Samar Verma, a digital media expert, FMG had started about 7 years back as a plain native platform that delivered scale, efficiency and transparency has now evolved into a content community comprising publishing platforms like <keyword id="4027484" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Curly-Tales">Curly Tales</keyword>, <keyword id="3126207" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Hauterfly">Hauterfly</keyword>, <keyword id="9710616" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="ask-men">Ask Men</keyword>, IGN and <keyword id="3124170" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Mashable-India">Mashable India</keyword>. In the last 7 years, the organization has grown from being a sub million-dollar business in 2013 to slightly short of 15 Million USD in 2019. That the organization is doing well proves that more and more brands are giving increasing importance to content and what it can do to benefit them. We spoke to Verma about FMG’s new offering as well as all that the organization has been up to. He spoke to us about how the year has been so far for FMG, its key areas of focus for the rest of the year and some larger trends in the content marketing space. Excerpts: Q) Tell me a bit about ContextAds and how it can benefit brands and publishers? Given the limitations on behavioral targeting, we truly believe that the new gold standard of targeting will be Context. Also, from a brand's stand point, inventory owners have kept context and brand safety opaque and over a period of time marketeers have demanded complete transparency on the same. You have therefore seen the emergence of third party ‘Brand Safety’ measurement bodies which have been helping brands understand the environment that their ad is being placed in. Both Context and Brand safety are in a way predominantly driven through keyword targeting and we saw this as an interesting problem statement to solve while we took the product and the technology up the value chain. Over the last 4-5 years.we have been pioneering context and brand safety through AI/ML models that do not only rely on key words but also understand the image, article body, headline and the overall sentiment of the content. We are then able to pass these values to our advertisers to give them a complete context match and a brand safe environment. We have now launched the SSP for Context and a DMP wherein we also extend context understanding to audiences. We categorize audiences and content basis context while delivering the highest quality of brand safety in the market. Our SSP today, sees over a billion consumers monthly and we are clearly the biggest and the most reliable players in this space. The platform has been launched as a multi territory product across GCC, SEA &amp; India where we ran this product as a managed service (Feet on street) product historically. Q) You speak about how there's a gap currently between content and context. How will your offering help brands increase their relevance in a consumer's life? To begin with, we have always had a strong view about how conventional display models have been extremely broken. I will elaborate this with an example. How many times do you find the advertising to be absolutely non-linked to the content you are reading? The answer is clearly ‘in most cases, you do’, right? Especially, in case of news platforms that also happen to be the largest inventory owners, the mismatch is pretty much the norm. You would find ads of beautiful homes next to content that is in all probability talking of political strife, natural calamities, unemployment and so on and so forth. Clearly, when advertising is married to context, there is an indirect interest match as well given that you are matching the attributes of the product / service being marketed to the attributes of content being consumed. The likelihood of a better engagement is extremely high and we have seen that translate into reality. Our engagement metric is 3/4 times better than display advertising models and that for us is a clear demonstration that delivering advertising in the right context is the way to go. Q) How have things been for FMG? Can you share what kind of growth you've witnessed in the past few years? FMG is a media tech entity that operates two multi-territory ad platforms and a content/ influencer marketing business that predominantly focuses on India. We have witnessed exciting growth over the last 7 years since our inception. In the last 7 years, we have gone from being a sub million-dollar business in 2013 to slightly short of 15 Million USD in 2019. With time, we have also changed the operating metrics that we use to assess the business. Today, we have a strong view about the business delivering significant profitability and we are in the process of restructuring cost and some lines of the business to deliver that to our stakeholders. One also has to take cognizance of the dynamic nature of our industry and hence it is critical that one keeps investing in developing the current roster of products for them to move up the value chain. Q) Did the pandemic and the lockdown have a big impact on the content marketing space, or on the contrary, made marketers realize the importance of good content? What kind of business impact did it have on FMG? I would actually take this a bit further and say that the pandemic has made every business worth its salt realize that their business models need to be digital-first. We have seen the fastest pivots in these times. For instance, auto brands have expedited their plans for virtual showrooms that are powered by AI to give a potential customer an experiential consumer experience of a real physical showroom. While the adversity is obvious, some brands and marketeers have been smart to leverage this opportunity to put digital at the centre of it all and I can tell you that these are the brands that would tide over these times and come out much stronger on the other side. One has witnessed a clear pivot in content as well. The pandemic clearly poses challenges to content production in the way we were doing it conventionally and hence it surely has impacted content marketing but quite a few brands moved away from high production content pieces to digital and creator-first models. What has helped clearly is that content marketing is a given, so the pivot or the circumvention was more on the execution. The creator-first or the influencer model as one may call it, is clearly the fall back plan for most brands given the restrictions on content production. From an FMG stand point, we took a significant hit when the pandemic began but the recovery for the business has been pretty rapid. May onwards, we started seeing interest bounce back for brands and our geographical and product diversity had tremendously helped us tide over these unprecedented times. For instance, when our Travel and food platform Curly Tales which also happens to be the No: 1 in India, took a hit, we were able to compensate that with the substantial spending that was happening from the tech sector on Mashable. Similarly, our influencer business and the ad platform business in GCC/SEA have held up pretty well. The pandemic has allowed businesses like ours to do a lot of introspection on our product, technology stack, cost discipline and margin extraction. Q) This has generally been a difficult year. So, going ahead, what will your key focus be? Do you have any revenue targets that you can share, and how confident are you of achieving it? We have re-calibrated our P&amp;L's completely and while we did take cost measures pretty early in the day. We have also parallelly created baseline scenarios for our different lines of business. These base lines have been created with a view to sustainability. I think some of our peer businesses mistook the longevity of the pandemic and their re-calibration was short-term. We on the contrary were much more conservative as we saw this as a potential long-term business impact. We have also taken this time to pivot our models across the two lines of business. Both our ad platforms are now DIY or programmatic. With content, we have developed an automated video creation tool that allows our editorial and video teams to put out the requisite amount of content on our channels. The pandemic has further created a need for each line of business to be more technology-oriented and we are extensively working towards productizing all our lines of business with technology being the core driver. Q) What are some important trends you've witnessed in the content marketing space? As a market, do you think India has matured, when it comes to content marketing? If not, where do we lack? We have been advocates of content marketing for many years now as we truly believe that businesses need to engage their existing and potential customer bases through meaningful conversations. It is only recently where businesses have taken cognizance of this need and have started investing significantly in content. We clearly see this as the fastest growing bucket since content is the only route to eventually building an organic sales funnel and hence becomes a very intrinsic element of one's business model. It is primarily for this reason that one finds every offline or online commerce led business investing heavily in content. The Indian landscape is interesting but fragmented just like every other segment in digital. There is way too much of everything in the content ecosystem and we see that as an interesting problem statement to solve. I think content ideation, production, distribution and analytics needs a cohesive and a comprehensive approach which in our view is kind of missing in the ecosystem. Our endeavor is to fill that gap. Q) Measurability is still a challenge in content marketing. How are you showing a campaign's effectiveness to brands? What are the yardsticks by which you judge the success of a campaign? I have spoken of the fragmentation of content marketing above and that by itself poses a massive challenge in cohesively comprehending the impact of content marketing. There is a real need for us as an industry to devise a single metric that allows marketers to assess the effectiveness of the same. Today, unfortunately, every segment of content marketing is assessed independently with different parameters. For instance, if one was to break down content marketing, you would possibly have three macro renditions of the "content ad" which is a written article, Video predominantly distributed on social and then creator led content distributed largely on the creator’s feeds. All three have different parameters and I can tell you that as a marketeer it would be a nightmare putting all three together and trying to arrive at one single metric. As someone who is fairly entrenched into the ecosystem and a significant player in the space, we currently play to the gallery and deliver what is expected of us. However, we have been big advocates of a single metric and that’s another challenge that we have taken up internally though industry wide acceptance could be a challenge. Q) What are some of the larger challenges the content marketing ecosystem is facing currently and what is the way forward? I would peg fragmentation as the biggest challenge and I find the current ecosystem to be pretty similar to how display was back in 2010 when programmatic was just about taking off in India. Though, content has a clear advantage that it needs human intervention for us to tell interesting stories which clearly wasn't the case with Display where creatives / media buying and distribution all got automated. Besides, I strongly believe that for content marketing to scale to its optimal value, we need to solve the problem of scale in content creation and analytics. When I say scale, I mean that how many custom videos can a brand produce given that a&gt; its expensive b&gt; its time consuming and hence there are limitations to how many distribution funnels can one tap into. Both of these are interesting problems to solve and I am confident that the answer lies only in productization and technology.

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