Publicis Media India has appointed Anil Pandit as Head of its Programmatic Practice, to further fortify its presence in this area. The company claims to hold one of the highest shares of digital media and expertise in the market with bold ambitions to scale it further, for which it has earmarked heavy investments in ad-tech and specialist talent pools.
Pandit is tasked with accelerating the growth of Publicis Media’s programmatic capability across the agencies. He will oversee the central programmatic team – providing agency teams access to expert data, technology capabilities and solutions – that will deliver superior client value through greater effectiveness and media efficiency. He will also work with the global team to bring in the full Precision capabilities to India.
Pandit comes with over 17 years of experience spanning both the selling and buying side in the Indian media industry.
He has been an early proponent in the programmatic space and has helped international DSP platforms establish their ‘Programmatic Practice’ in India. He has also helped many brands in their journey of adoption of this data and ad-tech enabled practice and is also a speaker/trainer on Programmatic and Data- Driven Advertising as guest faculty in IIMB, IMT and IMI.
In his last stint at Omnicom Media Group, he was instrumental in setting up and driving the OMG Programmatic vertical in India (OMD and PHD). He has had the opportunity to work across sectors like Automobile, FMCG, BFSI, IT/ITES, Travel & Hospitality, Telecom, and ECommerce with brands like HP, Parle, Unilever, Nissan, Renault, VW, Intel, CISCO, Hyatt, J&J, Virgin Airlines, Tourism Australia, Parle, and Flipkart. Before Omnicom, Anil has worked with Microad India (Cyberagent Group, Japan), People Group, India Today and Times of India.
Anupriya Acharya, CEO Publicis Media India, said, “We couldn’t be more thrilled to have Anil’s expertise and leadership in this crucial role as we focus on further consolidating our overall programmatic presence and bringing in PM Precision capability to India. Our Groupe has been a pioneer in programmatic and with Anil’s leadership, we will look to fast- forward the full launch of the Precision capability in the market. Maintaining our competitive advantage on all aspects of digital and ensuring that we continue to deliver best-in-class capabilities and growth for our clients is key to our continued success.”
Pandit said, “Programmatic is witnessing a phenomenal rise both in India and globally. About a third of India’s ad inventory is already programmatically traded. I’m excited to get this mandate of expanding PM’s central capabilities in future platform innovation, audience strategy, data consulting and precision excellence. I would like to bring into my role, sharp client lens coupled with operational ad -tech experience and look forward to collaborating with our agencies and marketplace partners to deliver faster and more scalable impact for our clients.”