Saurabh Khattar on IAS India plans, brand safety, AdTech industry challenges, and more

Integral Ad Science (IAS) is a global leader in digital media quality. IAS makes every impression count, ensuring that ads are viewable by real people, in safe and suitable environments, activating contextual targeting, and driving supply path optimization. Its mission is to be the global benchmark for trust and transparency in digital media quality for the world's leading brands, publishers, and platforms. The company does this through data-driven technologies with actionable real-time signals and insight. Founded in 2009, IAS works with thousands of top advertisers and premium publishers worldwide.

In conversation with Adgully, Saurabh Khattar, Country Manager of Integral Ad Science,  talks about the industry-leading innovations at IAS that continue to enhance the digital advertising space, the real-world challenges and opportunities for Indian advertisers, media quality aspects in ad fraud, brand safety, suitability, viewability, attention, supply path optimization, and more. Excerpts:

About IAS’ India Operations

What’s IAS doing in India. What are the expansion plans?

IAS is a media quality company; we make sure that wherever any advertiser is spending money, it's in a safe and suitable environment. There are three basic parameters of media quality: brand safety and suitability, ad fraud, and viewability and attention matrix; we generally call it BAV. 

We provide media quality to our advertisers so that they can optimize their campaigns toward the better-quality of investments. We have integrations with a lot of social networking sites like Meta, Youtube, LinkedIn, and Spotify. We are also connected with renowned advertisers who are advertising in India like Samsung, Nestle, GSK, Coca-cola, etc. We are also trying to explore and expand in new areas such as CTV, Audio Players, Pandora Globally, and Gaming Players.

What were your biggest growth drivers in 2022?

The growth is coming from various areas. For media quality, a lot of education is required for the Indian market. A lot of advertisers are new to verification; they need to understand the importance of verification. And there are a lot of companies who have started to utilise the tools and insights in order to enhance their campaigns and better cost efficiencies. 

First and the foremost thing that plays a major role in growth is verification. All these advertisers apply the layer of verification on their social campaigns. We see a lot of advertisers who are spending on social but the campaigns aren’t very effective. We have seen a lot of spending happening in the programmatic also.

What are some of the biggest social media platforms IAS works with in India?

There are many social media channels that we work with in India, but to name a few: Meta, Youtube, Spotify, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. We also work in Microsoft Advertising Networks, and Yahoo Advertising Networks. We have recently partnered with Twitter for brand safety.

What are some challenges the Indian AdTech industry faces in 2023?

Everyone wants to make sure that the money they spend is spent in a more cost-effective and efficient manner. There are budget cut challenges happening; there are a lot of clients who are increasing their budgets also. The situation that is there in the market has a trickle-down effect on India also. To summarise, all the agencies want to ensure that their budget is spent correctly and that they are adopting a lot of data and insights to get a better ROI. The focus of advertisers has been shifted to spending smartly in advertising.

There are also a few challenges in terms of ad fraud. The ad fraud percentage globally has increased over the years. There are different types of ad fraud that keep on happening. In 2023,  as per the reports, 68-billion-dollar worth money will be wasted.

Brands that have mitigation strategies always talk about brand safety whereas brands that don’t are always afraid of their brand being seen around in such unsafe environment and they might ask about it. According to our research, 46% of users will not use your brand if it isn’t relevant according to the trend and if it’s around unsafe content.

About IAS

What are the industry trends and challenges in digital advertising in India?

One of the biggest trends is because of financial hindrances, industries, and agencies are becoming smarter in terms of how they have to spend their money. Moving from measuring basic metrics such as likes, shares, and saves, etc. towards a qualitative matrix that is time, attention and visibility, etc.

A lot of new media channels for advertising are emerging like gaming,  audio podcasts, etc. Brands are also counting their advertising budgets on these channels.

How will you define the current state of digital media quality in India?

As per our media quality report, ad fraud percentage has increased globally. Viewability has also increased from 54% because of awareness regarding the same; all these brands are optimising their campaigns according to the viewability and they are using their data, tools, and strategies for viewability. There is 500% of negative news and brand-unsafe news,  but awareness is also there.

How do you see the rollout of 5G impacting digital advertising? How will this influence the revenue and demand of AdTech platforms like IAS?

The number of users using mobile phones and the internet is  increasing in India. 5G will accelerate that growth, because of 5G, a lot of new technologies have also come and all these techs require faster internet. These new technologies are definitely going to attract new users and brands are going to spend the money where they see the audience.

We see that we have more integrations with new platforms. If the number of users has been increasing in India, brands are willing to spend more on their media budgets.

Why is IAS important for brands and agencies?

All these brands have a set budget for the year, and they have multiple media channels and plans over there. They have to spend smartly and they want to understand how and why they are spending there and it becomes very difficult for a marketer to understand where and when to spend. Then there is the importance of a neutral and transparent player who can ensure wherever they spend their money is in a safe environment.

When they spend, the quality of data and insights is so important that they can optimize their future campaigns accordingly.

About Programmatic Advertising

How effective is contextual advertising and why is it increasingly important?

Contextual has been there since print times. It has improved in this cookieless world. People are finding new ways to target the audience and contextual tech has grown in terms of technology. IAS has its own tech where we understand the sentiments and emotions of that page.

It analyses the grammar and sentiment of a particular page and contextualizes it accordingly. We use contextual capabilities to see if any of the news or trends fit in for a particular brand or not.

Programmatic advertising has always faced challenges around trust and transparency. What steps is IAS taking to tackle these challenges?

We have two sides of technologies: Pre-bid and Post-bid.

Pre-bid is before bidding on the programmatic environment; we’ll apply our IAS technology and they can choose the filters accordingly.

Post-bid is while spending money on programmatic; you’ll get all the data and insights as to where your money is spent, and you can take the data to make decisions.

About Ad Fraud, Brand Safety, and Brand Suitability

What are some of the brand safety challenges faced by brands and agencies in India? How does IAS help here?

There are many brand safety concerns. There are also some customized concerns like basic hygiene concerns such as staying away from articles that promote violence, alcohol use, etc.

There is also a suitability goal. If I am an alcohol brand, I’ll be talking about alcohol very subtly. I’ll be making sure that basic hygiene factors are followed and the content filtered accordingly.

With the phase-out of third-party data, contextual targeting will take prominence. Make sure advertisers are in the right place and in a positive environment. With this tech, we can create custom segments for each and every brand.

About IAS Innovations/ Emerging Mediums

How is IAS innovating digital media quality solutions for emerging mediums like social media (TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.), audio (Spotify, Pandora), and gaming (Anzu, Gadsme)?

We always keep on innovating or envy the team. We keep on having new integration everywhere. With the increasing time spent by the user on audio, we have done the latest partnership with Spotify and Pandora as well regarding brand safety. Post- covid, people have started investing a lot of time in gaming as well. Anzu and Gadsme are one of the biggest players in the gaming industry. We have integrated with them for IBT which is ad fraud and viewability.

How can marketers break their cookie addiction and figure out the alternate third-party cookie before the Chrome 2023 deadline?

The addiction is anyways going to break because of privacy laws Apple has already adopted and Google is adopting (that is phasing out in 2023). Markets and agencies are trying ways to reach the audience. We have tested and tried a lot of new things in terms of contextual advertising and it has been proving a great way for reaching out to the target audience on the basis of their sentiment analytics.

Moving from quantitative to qualitative aspects is very important for brands to understand that the quantity of likes and shares is not the actual number that can give you the quality. All these marketers are now understanding these prospects. As the audience is getting smarter, brands are also being careful.