By: Yohan P Chawla
TAM Media has partnered with Israel’s BI Science to launch a Digital AdEx measurement tool and expenditure monitoring services. Christened Digital AdEx, the service will monitor close to 3000 Digital publishers.
With the launch of this service TAM has created a 360-degree view of Advertising data and Analytics for clients and their competition across four mediums – Print, TV, Radio and Digital.
Coverage of advertising will be delivered over all 4 digital platforms – mobiles, tablets, desktops and laptops for all types of Ads: display banner, video and HTML.
I caught up with industry luminary LV Krishnan, CEO, TAM Media Research, for a brief discussion on how the measurement tool will ease up a brand’s competitive market research, and a lot more. Excerpts:
Initial thoughts on partnering with BI science to launch Digital AdEx measurement tool? What made you partner with them?
BI science is a company partially owned by Kantar Media, which also happens to be our parent company. So there was a link through parentage. At the same time, BI science was operating in other markets like UK, Europe, USA, South America, Asia, Australia, and Japan etc so they are present in about 25 countries with a vast global net. We thereforethought of trying it out in India too, where we integrate the data of digital AdEx into the traditional media of TV, Print and Radio and create one holistic database that gives one a picture about what a company’s competition is doing or products are doing.
It becomes easier for a brand manager to analyze this across four different platforms.
That is what made us join hands with BI Science, basically a trusted parent company lineage and experienced across 25 countries.
How is this advertising measurement tool different from the other tools present in the market?
At present there is nobody offering an AdEx database of four different platforms TV Print radio and digital, all together into one single analysis.
Does digital include all OTT platforms? Along with YouTube, Facebook? How would you define digital here?
Digital is almost close to infinity today. The more we keep unearthing, it keeps adding on to the data. We presently monitor close to 3000 portals which in itself is one of the largest in nature across the Indian market, which covers publishers, OTT platforms and YouTube. Basically, it covers anything which is openly available in nature. What it doesn’t cover is social media, which is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,Snapchat and other gated community platforms. We cover in-depth advertising on desktops, laptops, mobiles and tablets. We also cover banners, HTML and video advertising.
Does it also measure connected devices for instance, I watch a YouTube video on my phone and I cast it onto my Smart TV? Or I play a YouTube video directly on my Smart TV?
Yes, very much, so it covers all connected devices.
Which are the kinds of tools available for measurement?
This is primarily more of a monitoring tool to monitor competitive advertising. It’s not a measurement per se although, we provide impression data too. So while we do the impression data, it’s not from a panel We try to cover an entire universe of data by using something known as the crawler on a server. It’s a monitoring tool just like any other competitive advertising tracking we do across TV, radio and print..
For example, Axe deos’ marketing team can immediately see the data on what its nearest competitor like Fogg is doing across media.Like how much of their money is being spent on television. If not TV, then what? On Digital? Which are the digital platforms they are buying into and is it banner or Video advertising? Is it programmatically being brought or is it a direct buy that’s happening. Is it above the fold or below the fold? We will be able to provide all these information in Digital AdEx.
You mentioned that the platform will also provide information to advertisers on whether their ads are being streamed on the right content, so here for an example, if there is an ad targeted at kids and has to be showed on a kids channel, then will the platform be able to check whether it’s being placed at the targeted position?
Exactly. So what we do is we classify the video as per the genre and then placed accordingly. Be it a soap opera or a movie clip, everything is classified accordingly. And that’s how we are able to then gauge from the brand safety perspective and understand whether they are in the right content in the right space.
How does the platform leverage cross media advertising?
l think this is the first such data in the Indian market. The buzz word today is cross media advertising which actually tells the mediums a brand is using to advertise.
The other thing interesting thing about the platform, is that we also provide on a daily basis the competitive creatives. If l am P&G and I want to see what HUL is doing on digital, while Ariel’s brand manager can look at Surf’s ads, he will get to know which ads are aired on television and which are on digital. And whether it’s the same creative across multiple platforms or not.
