Marketers need to build effective, full-funnel advertising propositions: Taranjeet Singh

While it’s become almost trite to say that India’s digital landscape is growing by leaps and bounds, the daily uptick in consumer numbers is what is keeping brands, agencies, analysts and sundry excited about the topic.

And one of the key driving forces of this growth is the increasing ease of access to video.

In India, the potential of video advertising is tremendous, with a predicted 512 million viewers by 2025, even as other reports pitch for even larger numbers.

Keeping pace with the evolving market has been vital to advertising brands across the spectrum. Remarking on the same, Taranjeet Singh, Managing Director, South APAC at Criteo, points out that it has evolved from being a single solution company to a multi-product commerce media platform.

According to a recent report by Redsteer Strategy Consultants, Indians spend an enormous amount of time on their smartphones, with an average of 7.3 hours per day spent on online messaging, social media, YouTube streaming, OTT content, and short-form video.

With more time spent online combined with the increased bandwidth and low latency provided by 5G, this combination of factors further enables businesses to create real-time communication and provide personalized customer support by delivering rich media experiences.

And Singh says that as more and more Indians turn to digital channels for their shopping needs and entertainment, it is crucial for brands and retailers to have a strong presence in various channels, including video and retail websites.

This means it is essential for marketers to build effective, full-funnel advertising propositions that enable them to engage with existing and potential customers at every shoppable moment and become part of the consumer's journey to build a presence, and achieve meaningful commerce goals.

Singh asserts that Criteo is committed to helping brands take advantage of this trend towards direct video advertising through their video advertising solution, which offers access to over 600 premium video publishers and unique audience metrics that can drive measurable outcomes for brands.

“Our combined video advertising and performance solutions cover multiple touch points and leverage audience-first ad solutions, including in-stream and out-stream video, mobile app, web traffic, consideration, and retargeting,” he says, adding that by partnering with Criteo, brands can increase their awareness, drive traffic, and optimize their sales and marketing goals.

“Additionally, our recent acquisition of Brandcrush, an Australia-based company whose platform enables the buying and selling of omnichannel retail media, including offline media channels, allows Criteo to provide a holistic omnichannel monetization solution for retailers,” he says.

Given the growing pivot towards Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Singh says his company’s core technology has always been the Criteo AI Engine.

“Criteo’s advanced AI algorithms analyse data in real-time from the Criteo Shopper Graph, with insights from 750 million daily active users, and 4 billion product SKUs and 3,500 product categories,” he says, concluding, as this engine learns from real shopper behaviours, it continuously adapts to brands campaign objectives and powers predictive bidding, product recommendations, dynamic creative optimization (DCO+), and look alike finders.