Need to reinvent TV advtg to fight digital on equal footing: Rajendra Khare

Over the last few years, TV’s share in the advertising pie has fallen. As advertisers failed to see data-backed ROI on TV campaigns, the overall budgets began to drop. Instead, advertisers found more transparency and accountability in digital advertising. According to the FICCI-KPMG report, digital advertising revenue recorded a growth of over 28 per cent from 2015 to 2016, compared to just 11 per cent for TV. All because digital advertising showed advertisers better as to how well each of their spent rupee was performing. 

Identifying this long-standing and massively complex problem, a team at SureWaves has devised a Programmatic platform called Skynet that takes control of the mechanical processes leaving the cerebral processes to humans. Unlike the traditional model, Skynet assures 100 per cent Audience Delivery of a campaign by effectively making use of BARC data through path-breaking algorithms. This way, advertisers not only know where each rupee is being spent in real time, but also lets them draw the maximum juice out of a campaign through real-time optimisation. This technological revolution promises to turn the odds in TV’s favour and restore its place in the overall advertising pie. 

How does Skynet work? 

Broadcasters put their inventory on the Skynet platform and feed in details on how they want to price it. The system is intelligent enough to understand how this inventory is to be sold and so broadcasters can put up their inventory in the manner they want. On the other hand, media agencies and the advertisers can simply define their objective, their target audience, in which market and context they want to showcase the advertisements and can ask for gross rating points. The platform enables audience buying for the advertisers in terms of how much GRP they want to buy. The platform mix matches and then builds a very comprehensive plan across end number of channels, analyses which are the right channels and right points to pick to meet the audience goals or the buyers and presents the plan in minutes to the buyer. 

Speaking on how the platform will help advertisers and brands, Rajendra Khare, Chairman & Managing Director, Surewaves, said that advertisers and brands are always looking for information and whether they are getting the performance they seek, whether they will be able to reach the desired targeted audience or not and Skynet helps in finding if the campaign is performing or not in real time. The platform also helps in getting secondary information about the campaign result, brand awareness, sales and social media. The brand and advertiser are not only able to run a campaign effectively but analyse the effect of campaign. 

When asked about the future of programmatic in television, Khare said that though print is one of the oldest mediums, television is still the largest consumed media in India. He added, “It is to reinvent television advertising in order to fight on equal footing with the emergence of new media. If mediums like television become difficult and complex to buy, measure and monitor, the advertiser’s money will move to digital medium and this is where Skynet helps in retaining the advertiser interest in television with programmatic buying in television.” 

Speaking about the platform’s performance in the Southern markets where it is already live, Khare claimed that the broadcast and advertising partners are extremely happy because of the platform’s painless execution and a large number of agencies have come on board like Havas Media, Starcom Mediavest Group and Madison, among others, while talks are on with other large agencies. “This is going to be the future not just in India, but worldwide and there are reports that programmatic television will grow at a phenomenal rate and the industry is hungry for an innovation like this (Skynet),” Khare affirmed. 

While stating that the South market is just the beginning, he informed that the company is planning to expand the platform pan India before December 2017. While admitting that not all broadcasters will adapt to this, he added that the number of broadcasters who do come aboard will be reasonable. Khare further said that the company has rolled out the platform for Tamil Nadu, which is a very distinct market because of its effective measurement. With the platform being only two months old, the company plans to further expand it in the entire Southern belt over the next two months and then all over India, before taking it global.