Digital media moving towards AI & new immersive experiences: Experts

The growing significance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for marketers can no longer be ignored. Digital media has already started incorporating AI while devising marketing strategies. 

Adgully spoke to Shubhodip Pal, COO, Yu Mobiles; Sandip Tarkas, Consultant, Future Group & Future Media, India; and Shibu Shivanandan, Founder & Managing Director, PivotRoots, to know more about the kind of disruption that they saw Artificial Intelligence bringing in digital media and whether the current ecosystem in India is capable of supporting it. 

Shubhodip Pal, Sandip Tarkas and Shibu Shivanandan are part of the esteemed Jury panel of industry stalwarts for the inaugural edition of DIGIXX Awards. The Awards, brought by Adgully in association with ad:tech, will be held during the ad:tech conference in Delhi during March 9 and 10, 2017. 

Shubhodip Pal, Chief Operating Officer, Yu Mobiles (Subsidiary of Micromax): 
“We are moving in a world where the mobile phone has evolved to be at the centre of human existence. Technology and screens (large or small) have managed to replace the traditional forms of consuming data. This is where digital media and the scope that surrounds it steps in for us. As we step into the new age of digital media, content creation and consumption, new immersive experiences like social messaging interlinked with artificial will be the new trend. In fact, it will be a way to redefine how marketers connect with consumers. While, it might seem to be a distant dream to many, the fact remains that artificial intelligence and big data analytics are realities that need to be applied in the digital media space. Once done, they would translate in better consumer outreach and acquisition. 

India today stands as the second largest smartphone market in the world, that gives us an idea of the enormity of data and screens we are dealing with, so your answer lies there!” 

Sandip Tarkas, President, Customer Strategy and CEO, Future Group & Future Media, India: 
“Basically, the goal is to make advertising more effective. It is about many more things that artificial intelligence is used to know consumer behaviour better and we will be able to build that on. Secondly, we will be able to understand the perceived behaviour of the consumer and then target accordingly. That will give better targeting for that kind of media. 

As far as the current ecosystem to support it is concerned, India is only questionable from the infrastructure point of view and the kind of spectrum that has been released. But I think that in a year or two, we should have the infrastructure in place.” 

Shibu Shivanandan, Founder & Managing Director, PivotRoots: 
“Digital media buying, which is currently moving towards programmatic buying, will advance to an AI-led algorithmic trading in the coming future. I believe AI will help create immense amount of data that will help marketers in understanding audience segments and personalisation as well as improving the existing buying algorithm by making sense of existing fragmented data. 

I think it won’t be long before India will embrace AI-based buying. Currently, we are dealing with data consolidation and programmatic, but I feel the adoption would be much faster in the coming years.”