MGID is a global advertising platform which uses privacy-first, AI-based technology to serve high-quality, relevant ads in brand-safe environments. The company offers a variety of ad formats, including native, display and video to deliver a positive user experience. This enables advertisers to drive performance and awareness, and publishers to retain and monetize their audiences. Every month, MGID reaches 900 million unique readers, with 200 billion ad impressions, across 25 thousand trusted publishers.
Pankaj Sharma heads MGID’s operations in India, as the CEO and Director and is responsible for developing business strategies and plans for the market while ensuring their alignment with short-term and long-term objectives of the company. In an interaction with Medianews4u, Sharma spoke about the services offered, unique features, how MGID helps clients in achieving their ad goals, and more.
What exactly does MGID do and can you elaborate on the services offered by MGID?
MGID is a global advertising platform helping brands reach unique local audiences at scale. We intend to create a digital advertising ecosystem to drive the best results for brands and publishers by ensuring both content and advertising are relevant and valuable to consumers.
MGID’s native advertising solutions help publishers grow and monetize their audiences and drive performance and awareness for advertisers via one integrated platform. Native advertising is a concept encompassing both an aspiration as well as a suite of ad products that are:
- cohesive with the page content,
- assimilated into the design, and
- consistent with the platform behavior
MGID was founded in 2008 in New York. Today, we operate from 14 global offices with 750+ employees. Our operations are now spread across more than 200 countries and territories where we support our clients in 70+ languages.
How is MGID different from other companies in the digital advertising ecosystem?
MGID empowers brands and publishers to work together transparently to create an unmatched customer experience that drives campaign results and monetization.
Our industry-leading RPMs are driven by local and global brand advertisers; and our partners assured of quality and brand-safe ad content. Our platform offers 100% fill rate with MGID’s direct and programmatic demand in native, display and video; along with high level of transparency and full control of placements and ad content. Our AI-based algorithms help match both monetization and user retention goals while our adaptable ad formats can be leveraged to connect real audience interests.
Through our privacy-first targeting technology, we are focused on helping brands deliver relevant, high quality digital advertising campaigns that are not only safe but also effective.
MGID has partnered with PubMatic recently to enable brands to reach exclusive new Audiences via a single platform. Can you throw some light on this association?
Through our recent advertising partnership, PubMatic’s clients benefit from direct access to quality, brand-safe native video and display placements across MGID’s exclusive roster of premium global publishers, with an addressable audience of over 900 million unique monthly users.
MGID’s advertising platform integrates directly with publishers’ websites to deliver non-intrusive, highly engaging native ads that blend seamlessly into editorial content and help drive incremental revenue. MGID’s direct integrations with publishers combined with PubMatic’s Media Buyer Console solution help agencies and advertisers gain direct access to highly engaged audiences at scale, enabling them to maximize return on their media investments.
Delivering highly targeted yet non-intrusive ad experiences has always been of huge importance to us, and our partnership with PubMatic enables us to deliver our solutions to even more advertisers around the world.
Earlier this year, MGID acquired majority stakes in Metup Native. What are the objectives behind the acquisition? What are your other global expansion plans?
We are in constant search of the leading ad tech companies that can complement our product offering in local markets.
Metup Native S.r.l. was our first but not our last acquisition. We are currently looking into a couple of companies in Europe and Latam.
As of 2021, the revenue generated by digital advertising across India was valued at around 246 billion Indian rupees. What is your take on this and what should marketers keep in mind with such high spends?
If 2021 was the year of recovery, 2022 is slated to be the year of growth. This year the advertising industry is expected to rebound to pre-pandemic levels and grow at a rate of 12.4%, with the share of digital going up to 32.7%. With increased focus and spending on digital, this year is anticipated to see a greater emphasis on highly personalized, — yet privacy-first — brand-safe advertising.
We have always responded proactively to market changes, keeping the interests of our publisher partners and advertisers has always been a priority for us.
What challenges do you face when pitching the platform to another business? Are these the same across countries? Or something specific to India?
Advertisers are reluctant to diversify their media mixes. However, the situation is changing – more advertisers are looking into alternatives that offer transparency and allow them to launch measurable brand awareness campaigns that also drive sales and quickly adjust them to rapidly changing market conditions.
From the publisher’s point of view the challenge for us lies in delivering better yields which is being addressed using our AI-based yield optimization algorithm that incorporates both direct and programmatic demand and optimizes a placement’s efficiency for the publisher and their audience.
Safeguarding the interests of our publisher partners has always been of paramount importance to us, and with the eventual elimination of third-party cookies our focus will be on opening doors to new audience revenue and trust.
How does MGID help its clients achieve their advertising goals?
In today’s world everything is tied back to ‘performance’ and every company wants to understand the outcomes of their campaigns. Hence marketers follow an integrated approach to ensure that their tactics are in sync with the campaign’s goals and provide value to the target audience.
Digital advertising is RoI driven, i.e., if X amount was spent on a campaign, were the resulting sales enough to justify it? Although the campaign could result in clicks that ultimately lead to a sale, native advertising does more than just drive that click. Its effectiveness is best seen in the upper layers of the marketing funnel where the objectives range from creating brand awareness to building brand perception and influencing purchase decisions.
Conventional digital advertising struggles with overcoming ad fatigue, the constant barrage of in-your-face ads which ultimately results in the ad itself becoming a blind spot for the user. Native advertising breaks this fatigue and blindness by integrating with the consumer’s content experience. Moreover, it enables brands to build a narrative that takes readers and viewers on a journey, through a series of ads that tell a story.
To sum it up, running native advertising campaigns across MGID’s premium publishers network allows advertisers to reach wider audiences across geo’s with highly focused targeting options.
Which brands are you currently working with?
Presently, in India we’re working with brands from various categories like BFSI, auto, education, e-commerce, gaming, real estate, and our clients include brands like Policy Bazaar, Kotak life, Tata Motors, AU Bank, Sharekhan, Motilal Oswal, Rummy Circle, FedEX, DSP Mutual Fund, HDFC Life, SRM University, Great Learnings etc to name a few. Globally, companies like IKEA, BMW, airbnb, VISA, KIA, Domino’s, Nestle, Unilever and Lexus are some of the key brands utilizing MGID’s native advertising solutions.
What are your other expansion plans?
Going forward, our focus will be on growing our tier 1 publisher reach in the India market. We will also concentrate on promoting our rich media and video format solutions. These goals are directly in sync with MGID’s vision to grow our business in the region by way of building better connections with brands and agencies. In the long term, we plan to increase our presence in the Indian native ad industry in terms of market share and revenue. Presently, we have two offices in Mumbai and Gurgaon and we are looking at building an even more robust team locally to serve our partners and clients and nurture our relationships with them.
