What we're doing in India is very different from other mkts: Prabhvir Sahmey, Samsung Ads

Six years after it was established in the US, Samsung Ads, the advertising division of Samsung Electronics, has set foot in the Indian market. Samsung Ads delivers advertising solutions to brands, marketers, and agencies through Advanced TV solutions. It has offices in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, India, and South Korea.

Samsung Ads has two ad insertion options - Smart Hub and Samsung TV Plus. The Smart Hub is where all the pre-loaded and downloaded streaming apps on TV are located. Samsung TV Plus offers consumers a free streaming service and advertisers the reach of traditional linear TV with the ability to segment and measure digital. Samsung TV Plus, which is a free Smart TV video service, became available in India from 30th March 2021. Currently, it offers 40 channels, including six Indian channels.

Samsung Demand Side Platform (DSP) allows programmatic traders to manage reach and frequency of their video campaigns across linear TV, CTV, and mobile/desktop, all in one platform. Currently, Samsung DSP is in test phase in India and will be releasing in Alpha with select partners in November 2021.

Prabhvir Sahmey, who was Head Google Marketing Platform, India, joined Samsung Ads as Senior Director-India and South East Asia in August 2020. He spoke to exchange4media about Samsung Ads' strategy for the India market.

Excerpts:

What kind of advertising solutions is Samsung Ads offering to advertisers in India?

Currently, in India, we offer ads on our millions of Samsung Smart TVs in the region, where we work with advertisers to position content and brands within the organic TV viewing experience, based on proprietary insights. This also includes in-stream video ads served during short commercial breaks on our free, ad-supported video on demand service, Samsung TV Plus.

We’re hoping to increase the number of addressable Samsung Smart TVs in the region. We will also expand our offering in the market to include the likes of Automatic Content Recognition (ACR), which is our own proprietary technology managed in-house. ACR data - which is completely de-identified - helps us understand the type of content being consumed on our devices, which in turn helps us deliver “smart” recommendations to users to find more content that’s most relevant to them. It’s also valuable to publishers for helping understand how household users engage with their content.

How different is your India strategy compared to other markets?

What we are doing in India is very different to other markets. It is the first market where we are launching a DSP-first strategy. This approach is based on the demand we are seeing from partners and advertisers in the region for this type of capability. India is often perceived as being behind the curve when it comes to new technology uptake. But when we do adopt these new technologies, we fully embrace them - often finding newer, more innovative ways to use and improve them. This can be said of programmatic advertising in India.

What are your plans to grow the Samsung Ads business in India?

Expanding the Samsung Ads team here in India is a key priority for the business as we are growing rapidly. By next year, we hope to double our footprint here with several new key hires, who will help bring our CTV capabilities to this market. This is just the beginning of our story in India. We have lots more exciting announcements to follow across our Ads service and TV Plus.

What are the expansion plans for the Samsung TV Plus service in India?

Samsung TV Plus is our free ad supported streaming service, enabling brands to reach highly engaged streaming audiences and drive big impact for their CTV buys. With the introduction of Samsung TV Plus in India in March this year, Indian Samsung Smart TV and smartphone users now have instant access to exciting content across genres such as news, lifestyle, sports, music, movies and bingeable shows. We currently have around 40 channels, including six local Indian channels. We have more exciting potential partnerships in the pipeline, and we are looking to onboard even more local channels, with the ambition of having 60+ channels available by the end of this year.

How big is the CTV market in India, and where do you see it three years down the line?

Of the 210 million TVs in India, 20 million are Connected TVs. And while this is still a fairly small subset of total TVs, sales are growing at around 20-30% year-on-year. I see the market continuing to grow as more consumers and advertisers view CTV as the premium option in the OTT ecosystem. This is because of the quality of content, the size of the device and the subsequent viewer engagement that comes from that.

CTV, as a new format in India, brings together the accuracy of digital and the premium big screen experience of TV advertising. The promising growth of this emerging market paired with the increasing maturity of the digital advertising market in India makes for a very interesting climate for Samsung Ads to thrive in.