Adgully Exclusive | Technology shaping the advertising commercial market through ZME

Technology has evolved to great heights over the years. What had been unimaginable a few years ago is now possible, thanks to the increased and enhanced developments within technology. Advertisers and marketers make use of these developments to ensure their message is effectively understood and heard by their target audience. In an exclusive conversation with Adgully, Pradeep Prabhu, CEO, KRATOS / ZAPPME Media and Entertainment (ZME), elaborates on the technology that enhances this system.

"KRATOS is an end-to-end cloud based solution aimed at the advertising commercial market to deliver spots from the advertising community to the broadcasters or media vehicles. This is a solution that has been powered by Mosaic from Tata communications," Prabhu explained.

Currently, advertising spots are delivered from the advertisers to the broadcasters using a beta or digi beta tape. KRATOS will change this by doing the transfers digitally using the cloud effectively and efficiently.

KRATOS is the core business of ZME. The offerings at ZME include digitization, ingestion and tagging/metatagging services free of cost to all their clients. "KRATOS aims to be a peer-to-peer infrastructure over the next few years and we will ensure to take all the necessary steps in making it so," stressed Prabhu.

The TV industry has seen a sea change over the last ten years. The commercial broadcasting industry is just over a decade old. All the stakeholders were focused on revenue monetization opportunities. He further commented on the trends in this space, "Its only now that they are focusing on cost competitiveness and are having margin pressures due to recession and the slowdown the economy has faced. This is a trend that one cannot ignore. Sharing of infrastructure is going to be the key."

Prabhu stated that they did not have any aggressive marketing plans. "This is a b2b product and we believe that this product is far superior to the rest in market and will speak for itself. We have a free trial period that we are offering our clients and hopefully during this time we believe that the clients will know how different it is from the rest," he added.

Just having entered into this space, ZME do not have any market share at the moment. However they have signed over eight major broadcasters and are closing a major advertiser who would give them a significant market share.

Speaking on the objectives of this year, Prabhu said, "2011 has been pretty exciting for us. As we speak, the team is signing broadcasters and advertisers to use the product. The core for ZME is KRATOS and in 2011 we would be investing in the core business."

KRATOS has been under development for the last one year. After scanning the global market thoroughly, they have chosen Tata Communications' Mosaic. "We have focused on making the lives of the advertisers and broadcasters simple. We have eliminated most of the workflows that the users will not be finding useful. However, if the client asks for the same, we can modify the account settings to bring him additional workflows. A lot of hard work has gone into understanding the needs and we have tried addressing them," Prabhu further explained.

The core for ZME's business is going to be KRATOS. The focus will be on this product for the next 18 months with other new initiatives in the pipeline.

"Today we are the only digital advertising commercial delivery player backed by a network that has a worldwide presence," Prabhu said. According to him, the challenge is to keep the entire process as simple as possible and the costs under check.

ZME is a long term player with the focus on the big picture. Prabhu believes that this is a huge market. Technological advances in this medium will revolutionize this space and there will be more scope for opportunities. | By Janees Antoo [janees(at)adgully.com]