AmagiMIX chalks out aggressive growth plans over next 3 years

AmagiMIX, the targeted media planning and ad buying platform for television ad spots launched by Amagi Media Labs in October this year, is gaining traction. The portal aims to cater to the needs of small and medium businesses who wish to move beyond print, radio or digital media to advertise their brands to larger audience sets via television. 

AmagiMIX combines the trust, transparency and targeting benefits of Amagi’s India Ad Network into an easy-to-navigate user interface, allowing users to select their target audiences, allocate their budget, choose an appropriate campaign duration and receive an optimised media plan suggestion completely online. The tool allows users to easily edit the pre-suggested plan and to customise individual channel-ad-spot numbers to suit their budgetary and targeting requirements. 

In conversation with Adgully, Baskar Subramanaian, Co-Founder, Amagi Media Labs, speaks at length about the genesis behind launching AmagiMIX, how the model works for advertisers, the business model and more. Excerpts: 

What is the genesis behind launching AmagiMIX?
The idea behind AmagiMix is that SME clients on Amagi’s geo-targeting platform wanted other media options as well, so that they can have access to multiple broadcasters under one roof. In geo-targeting, we buy inventory, split it, and sell it to different advertisers. But the SMEs want access to multiple broadcasters as well. SMEs wanted us to be their one-stop shop, which became the genesis of this platform. We will expand this platform to multiple media options and not just TV. Television is just the first step, because we thought a lot of people wanted TV. 

How many TV channels have you tied up with?
At this point of time, we have over 70 channels in the bouquet. Channels from Zee, Viacom18 Group, Sun Group, SABTV Group, Dhamaal Dabangg – we will continue to expand the bouquet. We work with many regional channels as well. The idea is to expand the bouquet to hundreds of channels. We don’t have any restrictions to work with anybody, provided it’s a win-win platform. So you got a TV channel, you can get access to SME advertisers who are very hard to reach and you don’t have the sales effort to reach them. Thus, what AmagiMIX provides you is reaching out to those people and SME advertisers coming online and buying TV spots. We have brought in channels across genres such as GECs, music, movies, etc. We believe that a good plan is to have in mix-up of all the channels. Although news has always been a very easy target for the SMEs, largely because they are much less expensive to buy. What we believe is with the mix of geo-targeting capabilities that we have, we are here to provide both the options with GECs + Movies + Music + News for advertisers today. 

How does the AmagiMIX model work for advertisers?
If you look at larger businesses which need media planning and buying option, I think they need a much wider set of portfolio of things and they need people to help them, consult them and then they may spend tens of crores of ruppes. That needs a very different set of experiences. AmagiMIX is for SMEs, who are say, spending less than a crore in a year on their marketing budgets, and who do not get access to good quality media buying planning agencies today. That’s what we are trying to do. I think SMEs are the ones who are starved for a good quality experience and that’s what we are trying to fill. 

What is the average time lag between buying an ad spot and the ad appearing on a channel?
Typically, it is about 48 hours. There is a human interface at the back-end. There are people who take care of your advertising, check its quality and then give it to the TV channel, but your experience can be completely in the online model and obviously you want to talk to people, you have call centres. We also have Amagi channel partners across about 35 cities right now where you get to interact with people. So there are both ways – if you need people, you can call and talk to them, you can call up the call centre, or if you are completely okay with online, you can completely take it online. 

Please elaborate on the operations.
It starts with very simple steps. If you are a business, first thing we ask you is what is your category of business, what is the target audience, everything is automated. So if you go to AmagiMIX, it’s an open platform, we do not ask you to choose any channel, we ask you to choose a category, your target group, the audiences you are looking at, your budget and the campaign duration and the regions you want to target. And that’s system, using data at the back-end, recommending the plans, you may be targeting only male population groups so it chooses the plan depending on the targets. 

Is there a minimum spot buying rate that has been fixed?
It ranges across the regions that you choose. It is normally Rs 200 per 10 seconds. Typically, people come as low as Rs 25,000, which is the minimum that people spend, and can go up to tens of lakhs of rupees. 

At any stage, am I allowed to change the media plan?
Yes, you are. What this system does is recommend the best media plan that it thinks. It tells you this is the number of impressions you can get. But you may not like that channel. You think I want another channel. And if you don’t like a campaign, you can technically cancel it and recreate it, that time you have a choice, it doesn’t force you and say this is the campaign and you have to do it. That allows you to choose the channel as well. 

What is revenue and business model of AmagiMIX?
In AmagiMIX’s perspective, we are just like a nationwide agency for small businesses. So it is a commission model. Either these are direct advertisers or we have plans. For example, in early discussions we look at whether agencies can be enabled. It will have a commission for them largely, we might get a much smaller commission. 

There are three class businesses that Amagi works on. One is the geo-targeted advertising business, which is basically buying inventory nationally, splitting it across and selling it. Here, it is like an ad network working with advertising on the one side and the TV channels on the other side. Second part of our business is the technology licensing business, which we do nationally. It is the same infrastructure, but we provide it as a technology service for multiple TV channels evolving. It is more of a licencing model. Third is the AmagiMIX model, which is enabled by online buying model. So it would be more commission based. I would not be able to disclose revenues at this point of time because we are going through another round of funding internationally. 

Have you been able to get a foothold in larger organisations like GroupM, IPG? Are they also using your technology for their clients?
There are two aspects to it. One is geo-targeting. Basically, we take national channels using technology split as different region and sell different regions to different advertisers at the same ad spot. That is the well-proven technology for the last four years and there every agency in the country works with Amagi. Pretty much all of the large entices work with us. Starting from Unilever, Glaxo, Pepsi, Parle, Nestle on the geo-targeted part. MIX is a very specific platform created only for SMEs. Although we had SMEs doing geo-targeting, the whole genesis of this platform was when we had SMEs coming into geo-targeting, it is for the first time that we are coming up with a media option like this. But I need more options, Can I get them? Then we said okay, why don’t we give you regional TV channels? So we become a one-stop shop for these SMEs to provide a complete platform. 

Who are the international partners or broadcasters on board?
We are working across 40 countries right now. We work with channels like Bloomberg, Scribes, B4U Network and there are many channels across the globe that we have worked with till date and we will continue to expand it. We work with GECS for your AMCs and movie channels. 

Amagi has acquired TV spots across channels. Does it also come with a caveat as to the advertisers that they want on their channel or particular shows?
You can buy ad spots or sponsorships if you have the money to spend. The interface does not provide you that level of granularity today because most of our advertisers don’t need that. Most people ask us very simple questions as to how should I advertise on TV, what should be my campaign size, so we are catering to about 95 per cent of all advertisers. If you have money, how do you want to target and use it? Even if you have, let’s say, Rs 100 or Rs 1,000, you want to see how it will give you the best benefits. I have had conversations with all the funded companies as well as companies which are traditional SME businesses across the globe, everybody is clear on how to get the most optimal plan. For the money aspect, I should get the right viewership cost. It is a programmatic TV buying kind of an experience. 

What about the digital push?
We already have online video options. In fact, you will see MIX expanding into online video. It will have multitude TV channels. So, what we do is we think television channels are coming online. So we are giving that as an opportunity. We only focus on premium inventory. As TV starts moving online, we will provide that inventory as well. We are already in talks and partnerships are about to happen. 

Could we say that with AmagiMIX, you are looking at democratising media planning and buying in India?
The fundamental challenge that SMEs face is that they don’t have all the available media options, and they don’t have good quality agencies that provide them with the best plans and strategies. Large agencies don’t work for them because of the small budgets that they have. So, coming up with a platform like AmagiMIX is definitely a step forward in democratising media planning and buying in India. 

What steps is Amagi taking to ensure success of this venture, where a few similar attempts earlier had failed to take off?
I think the timing is right fundamentally. I think this is the right time where people have started becoming comfortable buying online. There is a vibrancy of SMEs that has started happening in Tier 2 towns and new generation of entrepreneurs have come in. I think in that sense, the timing is right. Amagi has all the acknowledged space, competencies and the relationship with TV channels and media options to bring in. I think that’s the biggest benefit and we are here for the long haul. We have already been a seven-year-old company and we continue to create new business models and we have always been pioneers in that space. We are not a short term company. We work for longer terms. We are quite excited about this platform, we think this is the future and in the next three years we are going to invest heavily both in terms of expanding options, creating new options, marketing it heavily and then try to expand this whole marketplace. Our goal at AmagiMIX is very straight-forward. SME is my customer, what do you need, how do I get the best plans for you? So we are not biased to any specific media option. We want to bring as many media options eventually. We started with television because that’s the most compelling option to start with. 

Industry views 

Debraj Tripathy, Managing Director, MediaCom:
AmagiMIX will help SMEs who do not have access or do not want to have larger agencies planning/ buying for them, for reasons of cost and scale of investments. To that extent it will help broaden the base for TV. 

However, I don’t think it will lead to democratisation. The advantage of AmagiMIX is its simplicity and not the rigour that goes into planning. The rigour and thinking that goes into true planning for brands will probably not be possible without a human interface. 

I don’t think there is any reason to be alarmed. This is not a new model. There have been products similar to this in the past. As would be expected, some have worked and some have not. The rigour, the brand understanding, etc., that goes into planning cannot be replicated by these tools and nor does one expect them to. 

Anita Nayyar, CEO, Havas Media Group India & South Asia:
Any change or launch does have an impact. However, the degree of impact varies. Many a times the impact is negligible, however, it does make a difference and so will AmagiMIX. The innovative and disruptive solution is more likely to bring about a difference for SMEs and local retailers. Media planning and buying historically has innovated and changed, it’s not been static. The advent of digital has and will see a lot more digital services and platforms, that’s expected but not all will disrupt. 

Amagi will certainly help local retailers and small and upcoming business. Interestingly, it will help a lot of advertisers cross the price barrier faced by them for television advertising. 

Media agencies don’t just target, they follow a scientific and brand approach based on a campaign or brand objective encompassing the 360-degree media required to be used to achieve success. Overall, they are transparent and most have access to great technology. The agency is a rich store-house of knowledge with processing skills and ability to adapt to new technologies always working for client-campaign benefit. There is much more involved than buying a TV spot in particular market/markets for overall campaign success.