CNN’s Abhijeet Dhar on brand safety, audience-first approach & proprietary technologies

CNN International has strengthened its business over the last year by growing all revenue streams, strengthening and diversifying its client base and launching innovative new products, says Abhijeet Dhar, Director – Sales, at CNN International Commercial. “While we completely overhauled the way we approached client services to meet the changing expectations of clients, resulting in 100% retention of our top 25 client base, we also penetrated new sectors and attracted new advertisers to CNN,” says Dhar in an interview with Adgully.

According to him, brands that partner with CNN aren’t just making a media buy – they are supporting essential and high-quality journalism. He dwells on the technology at hand for segment, identify, and reach specific audience segments through contextual targeting and semantics tools, first-party data and data partnerships that maintain high levels of privacy, and regulatory compliance. He also talks about CNN’s brand safety and suitability tool SAM (Sentiment Analysis Moderator) which uses neuro-linguistic AI to analyse brand-suitability. Excerpts from the interview: 

How are brands revamping their business strategies in order to make the most of the current situation?

The current situation, with the pandemic in the background, has accelerated the need for brands to focus on an ‘audience-first’ approach for the most effective communication. This means it is very important for the brand to be in the right/safe environment, focus on whom they want to reach out to and how they enable that outreach. What we have seen with our audiences is the increased affinity to brands who stand for something or what they mean to the audiences – and this has had a direct effect on the business strategies. The increased focus for brands on sustainability is a key trend that we have noticed growing amongst our audiences, especially in a mid-COVID world. We are using this focus on audience understanding and expectations as we work with our partners in the mid- and long-term for how they can communicate during and after COVID.

A good example of engaging sustainability content is Call to Earth, launched in 2019 as a global initiative to engage communities the world over in making a difference to protect the future of our planet. CNN also held its first-ever Call to Earth Day on November 10, 2021 to partner with schools, individuals and organisations across the world to raise awareness of environmental issues and to engage with conservation education. The huge response and engagement show the appetite amongst audiences for this positive solution-based content about the planet we live on.

In India, CNN is also actively partnering with brands to deliver inspiring content that creates awareness around sustainability. We have had an amazing 13-year partnership with Kirloskar, which has been the exclusive sponsor of CNN’s Going Green’, where we engage global audiences for a more sustainable future. The 2021 advertising campaign explored green technology solutions for a sustainable future along with additional content across TV, digital and social platforms.

Furthermore, the importance of trust has never been higher than it is in our current climate. As we approach a slow return to a reformed version of ‘normal’, there is a fresh opportunity for brands to re-engage with consumers, reset their views, and build the trust they crave. And right now, strong brand values and purpose matter more than ever.

CNN’s mission is to inform the world and tell the truth. Brands that partner with CNN aren’t just making a media buy – they are supporting essential and high-quality journalism. We don’t just tell stories about climate crisis and sustainability – all branded content from CNNIC is now carbon-neutral, and we lead the way in working with the Advertising Association and the Ad Net Zero initiative.

How has the pandemic affected CNN? How have the advertising spends been, especially over the last one year?

We have strengthened our business over the last year by growing all revenue streams, strengthening and diversifying our client base and launching innovative new products.

While we completely overhauled the way we approached client services to meet the changing expectations of clients, resulting in 100% retention of our top 25 client base, we also penetrated new sectors and attracted new advertisers to CNN which led to growth in sectors such as tech, finance, energy, consumer durables & auto with a build back of travel & tourism.

The CNN brand has also forayed into new areas of learning and development (CNN Academy), clothing (CNN Apparel), Direct-to-Consumer (CNN Live, in the UK), and in-live events that provide significant brand opportunities such as the We Love NYC: Homecoming Concert. CNNIC is in a strong position because of the trusted consultancy we provided our partners when they needed us most, and through the accelerated diversification of our business and client base.

What are the shifts in consumer behaviour and business models during the pandemic?

For many years now CNN has acted both editorially and commercially as a 24/7 cross-platform company rather than as a solely linear TV business. This long-term strategy positioned us well for last year as COVID resulted in us evolving our product offering to reach audiences in new ways and develop different solutions for advertisers. Key trends that we are seeing amongst our audiences include a demand for the return of travel, the environment, sustainability and conservation, and diversity and inclusion.

CNN prioritises the consumer and audiences above everything else. We are steadfast in our understanding that we must continue to invest heavily in product and technology in order to innovate and drive growth. We have built – and continue to build – a product and technology team that works to power user experiences for hundreds of millions of people all over the world to engage with our journalism, storytelling and services. They are committed to breaking down the walls between our content, audiences and advertisers to ensure CNN serves the best interests.

Consumers are going to continue to demand and expect instantaneous, personally relevant, and seamless experiences whenever they want it and wherever they are. In order to thrive, we are seeing media-building user-experiences and relationships with our audiences.

Could you talk about the audience-first strategy that will evolve in 2022-23 and other trends?

CNN International Commercial’s ‘Audience-First’ strategy puts audiences at the heart of every campaign rather than focus on platform or geography. We focus on creating and delivering solutions for clients that have the most impact with defined audiences on a global scale and enhancing our audiences’ advertising experience across all CNN platforms. We are optimising how we partner with brands to have maximum impact with audiences at a time of accelerated change in both consumer behaviour and the way advertisers are connecting with customers.

CNN International Commercial’s Audience-First strategy is built on four unique principles underpinned by tech, insight and creative excellence:

  • We know our audience, their behaviours, motivations and interests
  • Our creative content/ campaigns are based on deep audience insight
  • We create the very best ad experience using innovative new formats
  • Our next-gen targeting ensures the right audiences are reached at the right moment.

What are the innovative consumer strategies and campaigns that have garnered considerable audience attention?

CNNIC continues to deliver new, innovative solutions to help our clients engage and connect with our audiences in different ways. To navigate the complexity of the digital advertising ecosystem, CNN uses a range of brand suitability tools drawing on the latest proprietary and third-party technology. This ensures that advertisers’ messages appear in appropriate context and can maximise greater volume of CNN’s inventory.

We have taken our learnings and insights with brands to inform the next phase of our partnerships with clients from India and the South Asia region to build an evolution module for our audiences with the brands such as Dyson, Accenture, Thoughtworks, Maldives Tourism, Ministry of Commerce Bangladesh – to name a few.

How did you revive the consumer sentiment with data and storytelling?

At CNN, we marry the brand-building power of television with the data-driven and insight-driven creative world of digital. We are in a unique position to offer business insights to our clients, thanks to the huge amount of data and technology underpinning all our platforms, including TV.

In fact, we have invested in some of that technology ourselves, making it proprietary. The technology that we have ranges from data management platforms where we can segment audiences based on interest. We are able to identify and reach specific audience segments through a range of sophisticated contextual targeting and semantics tools, first-party data and data partnerships that maintain high levels of privacy, and regulatory compliance. CNN’s brand safety and suitability tool SAM (Sentiment Analysis Moderator) uses neuro-linguistic AI to analyse the context of sentences across text, audio, video and galleries, classifying it as positive, neutral, mixed or negative to determine when content is brand-suitable. This ensures advertising is adjacent to the most appropriate content.

Publishers are refitting themselves around a sales process that works for how the pandemic changed existing processes. For CNN, we are focused on approaching each campaign in an audience-first way, rather than by platform or geography. This ties in audience behaviour, insight-based creative and sophisticated targeting.

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