Zee Melt 2017: Focus on data, metrics and viral content on Day One

The first day at Kyoorius Zee Melt saw speakers from over the globe and India speak about various topics. At a Future Citizens by Google session, Neel Murty Product Lead, Apps and Display, Google India addressed the audience on ‘You are what you measure.’

Marketers have been sceptical about the authenticity of views considering the recent ad fraud that has taken place. Murty explained about how a marketer can set a goal, then measure the effectiveness and in the end look into the pitfalls. “It is important to access your pitfalls. That’s how one learns and improves on that,” he said.

Murty emphasises the fact that machine learning enables better products – be it a Google Docs, an Android system, Google Drive and Google Photos. “Focus on what matters to your business,” he said.

Murty believes that metrics comes in pairs. If the devil looks at aspects like revenues, time on site, page views and cost per installs; the angel looks at the same aspects as economic values, task completion, visitor friendly and customer lifetime value.

In another interesting session, Pratham Hegde, Head, Marketing Science, Facebook India, spoke about how new metrics are emerging for new channels. “Every media, be it television, digital, outdoor or radio have different measurement systems. Siloed measurement of these channels is emerging. Desktop measurement is based on cookies and it is difficult for advertisers to track their reach, hence misleading them,” he said.

Another concern Hedge pointed out was the fact that what is the audience outcome, brand outcome and sales outcome. Some questions that are a part of the audience outcome are – am I reaching real people? Did my ad reach people across devices? Did my ad reach the right people, and so on?

“It is not easy to have one measurement throughout all mediums. But having different metrics for different media is not helping advertisers real time,” he said. Concluding, he said that Facebook is trying to have cross publisher partnerships with organisations like Moat, Nielson and many more so as to bring in real-time metrics for their clients. They have measurement solutions designed to understand real business impact.

Nick Lanzafame, Director, Strategic Insights and Data Standards, BuzzFeed spoke about how digital is going physical. He gave some interesting insights on how Buzzfeed has been working, how their content gets viral and is mostly consumed by a younger audience.

Sharing some data points, he said three-to-one young millennials prefer consuming news on social media versus television. 20 per cent say that they follow at least 20 publishers. Of those 20 per cent, 70 per cent have discovered a new publisher on social media. 60 per cent of Buzzfeed’s audience say that they get content on multiple topics from a single brand and 57 per cent follow their favourite brands on multiple platforms.

Apart from their website and app, one can find Buzzfeed on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Vine and YouTube. Their content is built to be shared and celebrated across platforms. In India, there are over 44 million Facebook users.

Lanzafame says that storytelling is important and Buzzfeed India has a bold approach towards storytelling. He concluded by telling the audience what to do next. He tells us to redefine, recognise and reimagine.

Redefine – identity and humanity are key players in driving content in a world where extraordinary is the new normal. Recognise – shareable content is the needle that threads through the distribution in a way that is powerful and impactful. Reimagine – Viral is a change in the physical world, not just digital social; digital going analogue.

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