Almost half of our business or revenue comes via Connected TV: Siddharth Dabhade, MiQ

“Three years back, we had very low or zero revenue coming from Connected TV and now almost half of our business or revenue is coming from Connected TV for business. That has been a big area of growth for us in India and globally as well,” Siddharth Dabhade, Managing Director of MiQ India, China and SAARC said during a conversation with Exchange4media.

MiQ, which started in 2010 in the UK, provides programmatic solutions to its clients for business growth using large data analysis and other technologies. The company has a good presence globally, but most of its global solutions are created out of Bangalore, India. With large disruptions in technology and Connected TV emerging as a strong revenue generator for brands and advertisers alike, Dabhade spoke to E4M about the new trends in programmatic, future of MiQ and how CTV is gaining traction across the globe.

Speaking about the influence of Connected TV in India, Dabhade says, “TV is now becoming like a digital platform. That's where we are able to help brands understand that I've done an offline TV campaign but there are a lot of consumers who are now not watching offline TV, they're only watching Connected TV. If we don't reach out to them through Connected TV, we are going to completely miss out on them. Typically Connected TV consumer is tech savvy, they are affluent and they are premium consumers also. If you look at numbers in India, there are about 25 to 35 million households who are watching their content on Connected TV and almost 40 to 50% of them have completely cut the cord meaning they don't watch traditional Tv through set-top box. They only watch TV on the internet, the streaming content.”

“In India, we have the largest Connected TV inventory and we also have access to ACR data. So, we can help brands to their planning in an integrated way and help them take advantage of this medium and reach out to the premium consumers,” he added.

Speaking about trends, he talks about the cookie-less future and how data analysis becomes extremely important. “It is very important that from a cookie-less perspective, you invest in your first-party data. And then take advantage of your data lake and enrich your data. Getting a richer understanding of your consumer is also very, very critical. Focus on those channels which are not so much cookie dependent.”

He says brands should focus on data and analytics and do very strong data-driven marketing.

Dabhade also spoke about how important it was to integrate both offline and online modes of marketing. “Basically, have a look at how you can also integrate offline data signals because your brand will be working both online and offline. It's not about online versus offline or these are two different channels and so on. It has to be integrated completely. That’s where offline data has to be taken into account and understood this is how my consumer is showing these offline behaviours and this is how I can increase the understanding of my consumer and target them in the right way. This is how I can also track my offline sales, feed it into the online channels and then refine my online channel even better so that the online to offline behaviour is very prominent.”

Talking about MiQ’s presence in the world and future plans for the company, Dabhade says, “We have been present in 30-plus countries actually. Just to add here, we have been scaling our business in India and China in a very big way. We are already very big in North America - that is the US and Canada. In Europe also, we are very big in the UK and we are growing up in the MENA region as well. In Asia-Pacific, apart from India and China, we are also present in Australia and Singapore.

So, the whole idea is that we want to scale up our Connected TV offering as we go along. We are pretty robust in this area but we want to keep adding more solutions to it and help brands navigate this new world of digital TV. Then we also want to expand into a lot of areas in terms of offline data as well.

The whole goal is that we expand in Latin America but importantly, we become very big in India and China. Especially in India, our business is doing very well. The ambition is to have India as our second largest market after our US market.”