D-Code the digital conundrum

With The Advertising Club’s inaugural annual digital review to be held today in Mumbai, select speakers and experts spoke to BestMediaInfo.com on the challenges on digital front and how the forum is expected to help the industry.

The leaders said that lack of measurement and a common metric is one challenge that the industry is majorly dealing with.

Sapna Chadha

About what can be expected at the digital review, Sapna Chadha, Head of Marketing, India and SEA, Google, said, “This initiative has a potential to become the beacon for the digital marketing industry: a format where leaders share and highlight breakthrough that work is bound to inspire and fuel more great work. Going forward, I expect to see this, a hub for new ideas, learning and inspiration.”

Anupriya Acharya

Knowledge sharing was one aspect that all the experts vouched for. However, Anupriya Acharya, CEO, Publicis Media, also feels that the forum will open up a lot of conversations about digital as a platform. She said, “Practitioners and leaders will be discussing the best work – either from their own industry or other industry; from their own business or from other. It gives you a good flavour in terms of the great work happening in the industry. Since digital is such a fast-evolving field, forums like these give you an opportunity to learn and imbibe from other practitioners. More often we find that in such a field, there are no ready answers or solutions for all the challenges. These can be great knowledge-sharing forums.”

Sam Singh

Adding more about the vastness of digital and the increasing need to understand it better, Sam Singh, CEO, South Asia, Group M, said, “Digital has become truly mainstream with over 400 million Indians online. With this scale, this is a must have in the media mix versus ‘nice to have’ a few years ago. Additionally, there are several proof points now of digital impacting business, so this is now a key lever for marketers to play with. However a strong balance of scale, RoI and consistency is a must.”

Asked about the major challenges faced by digital, Acharya seconded how digital is actually becoming mainstream. “It needs to solve for business, it’s not peripheral any more. Hence, I think the full understanding of all the aspects that impact digital marketing is extremely important. We find that while there could be a good understanding of platform and usage, the whole single view of the consumer is challenging because the platforms don’t speak to each other by default.”

She pointed out few sharp challenges in getting the single view of the consumer:

1. What is the right technology to use?
2. What is the right measurement to use? What is the correct metric to use?
3. The existing platforms are continuing to evolve, how can one leverage them better?
4. Newer platforms are also coming up. So, one needs to learn to leverage them too.
5. Another challenge that has emerged is regulations around data, protection and more – both globally and in India –is the one about e-commerce or the data protection act in EU, which will have implications around the world.

She added, “Hence, how to package this with your business and use it successfully are some of the challenges.”

Singh too said measurement and establishment of common currency are key challenges that need to be addressed. He said, “Uniformity in measurement and establishing a common currency arekey to deriving the highest value from the medium. Creative capability in a mobile-first world is another area where we need to work as an industry to create centres of excellence.”

How far can D-Code help in solving these challenges? Would the forum be helpful?

Acharya said yes. “I assume there will be lot of case studies presented there, even if these will be short-format and there might be little time for discussion, there is always an option to follow up. It would definitely spark a lot of ideas. It will generate a lot of conversation and people can follow up on that, if they have challenges in particular area. I find a lot of exchanges happen also after the event, in the following weeks too.”

Info@BestMediaInfo.com