Discovery commerce will be a big player in programmatic: Dimpy Yadav, Xaxis

At the exchange4media Real Time Programmatic Summit, Dimpy Yadav, GM, Xaxis India, the programmatic arm of GroupM delivered a fascinating deep dive into what’s happening in the programmatic advertising landscape in 2023 and what's over the horizon in 2024.

“We know that daily consumption of watching TV or OLV is increasing, definitely day by day. And post-pandemic we could see that connected TV had very booming growth which was 50% and has further increased now which is more so when we talk about such kind of household subscriptions to OTT such kind of connected TV adoption happened, a lot of consumption behaviour has changed. So, within all of that, we could also see very interestingly that investment in programmatic has increased. We can see the digital inc is increasing clearly as a result of change of consumer behaviour because our consumers are moving more towards online consumption in terms of their habits post-pandemic because they got used to it. It's time efficient and all of that.”

“So on the average of 33 to 35% adoption is expected to increase to 42% and furthermore, followed by other markets the way we see them. Clearly as we also just spoke about it in the panel before that AI plays a bigger role, but AI is just not about optimizing the campaign that's beyond. We have augmented reality. We have generative AI, we have variable variables which are more around capturing data sets in a real-time environment. But at the same time, we also see a lot of capabilities being generated within digital around the creative aspect of it, which at the back of it also sits alongside data. And when we talk about AI clearly with proper controls is not just helping an activating campaign, but starting from planning a campaign to delivering a campaign,” said Yadav.

Yadav next discussed digital audio, which started in 2019 for that matter, but really paced up post pandemic and audio took a space in itself properly. “So when we talk about digital audio, we know it's not just about hearing music, etc. But we have a big segment of podcasts that has come into picture. And when we talk about podcasts, it is also being used in our industry. We can see a lot of shows happening on podcasts, we can see a lot of learnings being shared on podcasts. So even for advertisers, when they talk about digital audio, relevancy increases, it's not just a list of a music genre that they can see, but also podcasts where a lot of content consumption is happening. So for you to identify your audiences in terms of what relevance do they have with the content that really matches very well,” she said.

“In App and in gaming advertising is again what we could see clearly as a result of the pandemic can't really focus more on the fact that as we all were logged in the home and we did not really have new content getting sent tweeted and shoots were not happening. We were locked in the house. So gaming is something that really took over but also advertisers have taken over the space in terms of advertising. Well. What's interesting in gaming is to see that it's not just about in app advertising or PC games, but we also have Metaverse coming into picture. A lot of immersive experience with the help of AI is getting generated within the gaming landscape. So when you talk about advertising or programmatic, clearly, to merge all of this together, you need to have platforms and technologies and tools that really help you to cater the need where you can see that there's an audio coming into picture. There's a gaming landscape than the video had been there already, which is evolving day by day. We have smaller channels as well, which are now growing,” she said.

Speaking about the rise of discovery commerce, Yadav noted, “We had taken this bet last year in October, that discovery commerce will be the one which will really shape the landscape, initial to three months, we could still see a lot of hiccups. When we talk about commerce, everybody just talks about keywords right that commerce is equal to Amazon's and Flipkart of the world, which stands true of course, but at the same time, when you go to Flipkart or Amazon, there are keywords that we type, and then we get to buy the product. But as an audience, there's so much that I'm doing they have a lot of data insight about me. Not every time I'm buying a product, I'm just surfing and just you know, looking at discounting, I'm also going out other brands not only Amazon but Flipkart, then many other brands for grocery buying etc.”

“So commerce is a landscape that is not just a few leading brands, but it spans everywhere, even for example, when you go for your regular medical tests or checkups, you booked that on application, right? But eventually that's your buying pattern as well into the medical field. Similarly, when you're buying something for your daily household needs, your vegetables that you're buying into groceries, hence you have electronics, so every segment belongs to a common segment. So it's not just retail anymore. I grew up making those long sheets of all keywords. Then we had social media, and then we had a back then just click base add right media as a whole which today we call programmatic Media Video Advertising. All of that came in much later, we were just replicating ourselves onto tradition, which was maybe footsteps of TV or footsteps of print moving to digital, which is where we are today in commerce.”

“So when we talk about commerce, it is still at a very nascent stage. But commerce will not just be a line item in a media plan. That's a huge channel in itself. Where we are looking at it as an incremental channel, driving any kind of matrix incremental to retail. So when we see post-pandemic, most of the advertisers have invested more of their monies on their online assets. So commerce is not just about top leading commerce brands, but even an app like PhonePe or a Big Basket and many more such applications all fall into the same portfolio. Because what you also get from this channel is detailed insight. It's a buying pattern. It's not just a behavior, or it's not just a browsing pattern for them or pieces contextually but further deep dives,” explained Yadav.

“As we know that the basics of marketing will not change. So what I see today is I really see money being flowed from one partner to another. But that's not the right strategy. You don't have to put your money or pick and choose which commerce platform you choose. But we do see that which ecommerce platform requires what kind of strategy the way we do in Video Advertising today. You don't put money from YouTube to OTT you do bifurcate with different goals, different objectives. Similarly within commerce as well you need to bifurcate with different goals and different objectives. And one thing which we all are missing when it comes to commerce clearly is that it has to move from last one. And it has to match up to all funnels which start from awareness to the bottom funnel.”

“The focus area for next year is definitely going to be navigating a cookieless world and whenever there's a disruption in the market or the industry, we see new avenues coming in. That's how we learn. That's how we evolve. And I'm seeing a lot of discussions happening on contextual so a lot of partners which are providing contextual targeting ads and better ways of operating, say five years ago in a way kind of faded off, but I'm seeing them surfacing again and they will boom because contextual targeting will not just be about keyword targeting but further more in depth to talk about context of the ad or an example the way I heard articles saying the same stuff that I'm doing a contextual ad but I don't want to as an advertiser, see myself on that page because the relevance is less,” she said.