ad2campaign brings authenticity to campaign metrics: Sanglikar

An Affle Group venture, ad2c specializes in providing most advanced mobile marketing and innovative solutions for the Indian market, which enable the brands to reach and engage with consumers via their mobile phones. It was formed in March 2012, by Affle Group as full service mobile solutions platform for Asian brand marketers and agencies to bring mobile to the core of its communication strategy with the vision of growing the mobile advertising market by 10x. The domain of ad2c is not just limited to solutions and it encompasses the whole gamut of the mobile marketing by ensuring that it reaches the right audience and provide an unprecedented engaging experience to the consumers. Ad2c efficiently manages and coordinates all the four aspects of Mobile Marketing, viz. Creative Ideation, Development, Mobile Media Buying and Campaign Execution.

ad2c nurtures the belief that mobile is the most important personal means of communicating with a user and hence a key medium of engaging and interacting with them. Also, the industry has witnessed a steady growth in the total expenditure on mobile advertisements and it is expected that this trend will snow ball to even bigger avenues in the near future. ad2c possesses the skill, expertise and ideas to utilize the full potential of the mobile platform and provide unique, optimum and practically feasible innovations and solutions that will boost the overall marketing impact of its clients and partners.

Adgully in conversation with Madan Sanglikar, Co-founder and Managing Director, ad2c, a joint venture between Affle Group and D2C Inc, learnt more about the successful implementation of ad2campaign and the scope of the mobile advertising industry today.

ad2c, recently launched a “made for mobile”, single view, campaign management platform - ad2campaign, to enable better campaign planning & execution on the mobile advertising ecosystem. This platform intelligently tracks, monitors & helps optimize campaigns to serve the evolving mobile advertising and marketing industry in India. Needless to say that the platform is mobile ready and all the dashboards are optimised for smartphones & tablets. This platform intelligently tracks, monitors & helps optimize campaigns to serve the evolving mobile advertising and marketing industry in India. Needless to say that the platform is mobile ready and all the dashboards are optimised for smartphones & tablets.

It is one of the first mobile centric brand side platforms allowing for a single view to monitor entire mobile campaigns. The platform provides tracking and attribution primarily for four types of campaigns: (i)  Branding Campaigns that are CPC or CPM led (ii)    App Install Campaigns that are CPI (cost per install) based (iii)    Lead Campaigns and lastly (iv)    VAS Activation Campaigns

Each of these campaign types is customized to serve the requirements of a particular industry segment. For example, the App Install Campaign allows app developers, or .coms that are driving focus on mobile, to promote their apps by buying on a Cost-per-Install model across the entire mobile display ecosystem. It integrates over 11 ad networks and publishers including leading networks like Ripple, vServ, InMobi and Millennial Media. Similarly, the VAS Activation Campaign tracker is meant for Operators and Mobile VAS companies to manage not just cost, but also measure revenues on the same interface, thereby allowing for easy optimization and more effective use of their media spends.

Commenting on the mobile advertising industry and its scope in today’s scenario he said that the mobile advertising industry is yet to realize its full potential due to many factors such as lack of mobile-ready brand assets, understanding of the medium, complexity of the formats, etc. Mobile, is not a linear medium and the complex ecosystems of apps have made the evolution of standard rating / measurement metric very difficult. Considering the lack of any standard measurement metrics, performance becomes a key metric and with ad2campaign, now brands will know what’s working for them. As paid media is getting more & more programmatic, ad2campaign will enable it by allowing real time optimization. “We will be able to plan and place campaigns across multiple publishers, ad networks, apps and ad exchanges, for any TG with much greater efficiencies. ad2campaign brings authenticity to campaign metrics, hence building confidence on the medium & enabling performance led deals. It also brings transparency to the way mobile media is managed, thus allowing the market to grow with the right fundamentals in place,” he stated.

Shedding light on the new campaign “made for mobile”, and how ad2campaign was a crucial part of Yahoo’s successful mobile ad campaign Sanglikar said, “The objective of the campaign was to get maximum users to download the Yahoo Cricket (YC) app on their smartphones. ad2campaign, the mobile advertising platform from ad2c, is best suited for such campaigns with its ability to attribute results to the right source and optimize the campaign using the campaign data & analytics. So essentially, it tracks post-click actions like downloads and attributes every action to the right source, organic or paid.”

Before ad2campaign came into the picture, the brand could only optimize at the click/ eCPC level and hope that clicks would lead to downloads. In such scenario, one is unable to differentiate between organic and paid clicks, let alone identifying the high performing source of clicks.

Adding further he said, “By integrating the ad2campaign sdk we could measure the ROI of the campaign at the download level, and not just at the click level. With the help of the analytics dashboard it was convenient to control & optimize the campaign by parameters like Publisher, OS, Device, Geography, thereby increasing the volume of the downloads and reducing the effective CPD. As a result, ad2campaign helped in increasing the download volume of the YC app for Android by about 6 times, while reducing the eCPD by 58%.”

ad2campaign plugs important and critical gaps in the mobile ad ecosystem where measurability and accuracy are still challenges by keeping to its mobile first philosophy that relies on native technologies than heavy use of java scripts. It attributes all data points and results of these campaigns back to the source, which makes optimization easier for brands, and enables publishers/ networks to monetize better. The platform does all of the above on a real time basis giving clicks, installs, leads or activations as they happen. In keeping with the mobile first approach the analytics platform is accessible over tablets and mobile devices so you can monitor your campaigns on the go.

This solution enables ad2c to further bolster the value proposition of its service solutions with a critical technology layer that is a must in an industry moving fast towards programmatic buying. It presents a significant opportunity for brands to reach out to consumers in a creative, engaging, interactive, and measurable way, at all times ensuring that spends on mobile media are delivering in the best possible manner. The platform already services ad2c’s existing 30+ brands such as Samsung, Yahoo, Cadbury, adidas, Max Bupa, and Aircel to drive, measure, quantify, analyse and improve efficiency of their respective campaigns on the mobile medium. Each of these brands has seen a significant benefit either in terms of scale or efficiency for e.g. Yahoo saw a growth of over 7 times in daily downloads while promoting its cricket app while Aircel improved its ROI for its content download campaigns by over 300% simply by having a real time view of what was working and what wasn’t.
Sharing his thoughts on the evolving mobile advertising industry he avers, “The Mobile advertising has been making a slow and steady progress. The publisher/ network part of the business has been building new products & services at a much faster pace while brands are playing the catch up game. As an emerging market, we have a unique challenge of catering to smartphone and tablet category while not ignoring the text and voice segment. Both the set of users are equally critical for the brands but their needs and devices are different. There’s no doubt whatsoever, that the mobile device will lead in connecting brands to their TG directly or will play an important role in making the traditional mediums more interactive.”

The brands who have been experimenting will surely get the best out of this medium in the long run. With the emergence of programmatic media procurement, the need for platforms that can cater to brands' requirements, was never this strong.

Where does he see the industry heading in the next few years? Sanglikar shared his opinion on the same. He said, “The growth from here will be much faster, with all the domains of the business- Media, Creatives, Assets & technology evolving rapidly. In a few years, every brand will have its self served or managed DSP that will focus on targeting (& retargeting) to its relevant audience groups, supported by ad serving platforms that will dole out rich media & video ads customized for these groups. Every brand will build mobile-ready assets with firm grip on the usage and asset analytics. Media procurement will continue to be driven by real time bidding processes with emphasis on audience relevancy and action, and not just on visibility. All this will be powered by technology platforms, that will provide single screen dashboards with relevant analytics, with focus on optimizing the entire process.” Concluding on a positive note Sanglikar  is certain that  at the current pace, this will happen much faster than the earlier growth expectations.

Some of their projects in the pipeline are aligned with the strengths of their platform. They are as follows: Delivering high impact Rich Media/ Video/ Voice creatives across networks for branding led accounts, especially those looking at achieving higher social metrics. They intend identifying the right kind of audience groups at the best possible cost metrics. Also in the pipeline are ROI led projects with emphasis on downloads, sales, VAS subscriptions etc. and apps and assets creation across text/ Voice/ web with deeper analytics.

With these and many more benefits, ad2c will continue to bolster the platform with newer features keeping to a mobile first approach and endeavour to deliver a best in class solution for the mobile marketing ecosystem.