Gowthaman Ragothaman, Chief Operating Officer, GroupM shared his insights about the trends that are shaping up the media industry, especially in the digital age.
Elaborating his view on consumer data, Gowthaman said that since many people don’t read the privacy policies of a website before signing up with them, and hence they are giving away their consumption data, transactional data and a lot more insights which go beyond the standard demographic details of the consumer.
“This data that has flown into the market today, is 9 times more than what brands used to have about their consumers 10 years back. Communication plans back then were mostly shaped on the client data and the agency data available. But today, when there is so much data available beyond the agency and the client, most marketers are struggling to find a way to communicate properly. And hence, there are terminologies such as programmatic buying, algorithmic data coming into the fray,” Gowthaman said.
He further added that data today is becoming a billion dollar business itself as a lot of data marts are cropping up. Brands and agencies don’t want to get into this because it is not an easy thing to do and also because it is not a core of their business.
“Companies like Amazon, Netflix are sitting on a huge pile of data. When we buy a book on Amazon, it recommends other products to us. That is the kind of in-depth data they have about the consumer. So for a brand marketer, the way out in this scenario is to do recommendations based programmatic marketing and thus target those data points,” he added.
Moving on to Native Advertising, Gowthaman said that print media in India can survive, if only, they the native format of advertising. “These days, most of us don’t read the papers, but we do interact with the print brand on a digital platform. That is again data and print publishers in India can survive by using that data and aligning it with their native advertising campaigns,” he stated.
According to Gowthaman, mobile is a huge game changer in terms of consumer data that is available in the market today. “Most people, while using Facebook on a mobile, don’t realize that they are also using internet. They feel that mobile is equivalent to internet. China, India and Indonesia are some of the markets where 3G penetration is still low, however, the reality is that, in these markets, growth of smartphones is much faster than the rate at which 3G or 4G is being delivered to the consumers. There is a big possibility of mobile just becoming internet and thus the challenge is to manage that dichotomy well,” he commented.
Elaborating further, Gowthaman was of the opinion that currently, most of us are not being able to engage with the consumers better with mobile apps and that raises a question on what apps can do and don’t. “Hence resident apps, those which can do almost everything, from playing a video to delivering a small piece of information, will be more successful today. Going forward we will see good phone hardware which will have a whole lot of space and thus content can be delivered through an app in a form that the consumers want to.
Finally, the consumer, as per Gowthaman, is someone that is hard to gauge. He leaves the house thinking to buy something and returns back buying something else. Understandably, a lot if things have gone into his decision making in between and for marketers today, understanding that dynamic customer decision journey is the Holy Grail today. And all companies today are investing huge amount of capital in understanding the data that would help marketers impact the consumer’s buying decision.
“A lot of brand activities are happening at the shop level today. Activations, flash mobs at retail outlets are done exactly to influence the consumer’s buying decision at the retail level, across all categories of retail stores. And since eCommerce transactions are already more than 60 per cent on mobile today in India, the opportunity for eCommerce brands to capture the consumer mindspace at the decision level is immense,” he informed.
Summing these up, Gowthaman said that in the next five years, a consumer would be one who had never read a newspaper, would have never bought and CD or would have never read encyclopedia as a book. Most of them would think that video is always streamed and never broadcasted. And marketing to this set of consumers, keeping in mind their specific data points will be the key for any brand.
