ad:tech New Delhi '14: Consumers have adopted multi-screen atmosphere but companies still need to buck up..!!!

When the world has moved beyond single screen; the consumers too are moving that way; but what is important is whether the marketeers have and are able to keep up their consumer's spirits high.

During ad:tech 2014, which is one of the world's largest digital marketing event which recently culminated its 4th edition of Digital Marketing & Advertising Conference & Exhibition in India at The Leela Ambience Hotel and Residences, Gurgaon in the week gone by, a session with some renowned panelists talked about how marketeers are moving and utilising multi screens to reach out to their consumers and what kind of challenges they face to cater to their consumers.

The panelist included: Sanjeev Kapur, CMO & Head of customer franchise management, Citi (India) who played the moderator, Gurmit Singh, VP and MD, Yahoo India, Shubhodip Pal, CMO, Micromax India, Sandeep Aurora, Director, Marketing and Market development, Intel South Asia, Tarun Malik, director and head, media and cloud services, South West Asia, Samsung, Nitish Kriplani, EVP- new media, BD and Digital/syndication, Sony Entertainment Network.

According to Shubhodip Pal marketeers are facing lot of problems and challenges in terms of catering to the changing needs and demands of the consumers. Also he believed that the biggest challenge lies in measurement.

Sandeep Kapur opined that more than measurement data and content are some of the concerns. Kapur said, "There should be a plan which involves all reactors. Data plays a vital role but also the fact is that after a given period of time the relevant data also becomes irrelevant. Now beyond all this the next challenge is measuring the attention span of multi-screen users."

For Tarun Malik what matters is the flexibility of consumers. He believes in optimising the time of his consumers.

When it comes to advertising on prime time on television, Kapur put a question to the panelists stating: Whether prime time is dead or not? Nitish disagreed but Shubhodip agreed the fact. Nitish said, "Majority of the population doesn’t have access to data, they work 12 hours a day and they do not have anything to do after 6 pm.” However, Pal of Micromax countered, “A lot of people have access to data; prime time might be dead, but may not be fully dead.”

"Today the biggest aim of marketeers is generating ROI. It is important to hunt for innovation and opportunities as all screens complement each other," said Pal.

Gurmeet Singh believes that Indian marketeers are still taking baby steps in multi-screen consumption. He said, "though the consumers today have moved far ahead in terms of adopting multi-screens but 90 percent of the companies haven't moved towards multi- screen adoption. At this stage it is really important to shift the mind-set with the consumers."

Sandeep Aurora while concluding his comments on the session topic said, "Mobile might be taking over some forms of communication, but the larger screen is and will always play a vital role. Though the consumer behaviour and habits are changing, the shift will not be seen so early."