 With this, we'll move on to the next session and this is going to be an interesting one to say the least. The past year has been a testament to the resilience of search as a meat product. We all have done that. We've seen a lot of growth in how to do things over your internet searches. Even during the pandemic, search marketing continued to be an area of investment for brands and advertisers. What has evolved over time is the way which brands advertise on search and leverage it in a way to build brand awareness. The digital arsenal for search is well equipped with mediums such as voice, vernacular and video that can help brands to enhance their audience engagement and build authentic personal experiences. In this fireside chat, we have Mr Rohit Nosey, director, Microsoft editor, Movi, who's in conversation with Mr Anand Padmarkar, CEO of Denso India, and they will be discussing innovative brand building with search. I welcome Anand and Rohit both on dais, Alhanyu and Rohit. Hi, thank you. Hi, everyone. First of all, thank you for that introduction and a very warm welcome to all of you who have joined us for this fireside chat. Hope you all are doing well, staying safe, and also getting your vaccinations done. I would also like to invite you Anand, you know, thank you for being here with us. Great to have you. And I'm looking forward to hosting this chat with you, hoping for the best. Hi, good evening, everyone, and Rohit, pleasure to be here, looking forward to this chat now. So just Anand, before we get into the conversation, just setting the context here, the theme of the conversation today is innovative brand building using search, right? And I think the past year has been extraordinary for everyone, right? I think it has been crazy for marketers out there to kind of figure out what to do, what not to do, because it was a new one for everyone, right? And I think these times, search as a medium remained very strong, right? I think even when at the onset of the pandemic, there was a dilemma for everyone in terms of redefining their marketing strategies, right? How to look at budgets even then, but then search continued to be an area of investment for brands and advertisers. And I think what has evolved now over time is in the way in which brands are now using search advertising, right? We have worked with multiple clients now leveraging brands for search for creating brand awareness, right? They're using the medium very, very innovatively to kind of, you know, build on top of what their brand awareness is right now, right? And then now search being equipped with multiple technological advancements, right? And a lot of that happening around voice and vernacular, right? I think brands can leverage search to enhance their audience engagement and also build authentic and personal experiences for their consumers. I think with that context, right, I will kickstart this conversation with you. And my first question to you is that according to the recent Dan report, right? Search is the second most invested digital medium both across PC and mobile. And like I mentioned during the pandemic, right? Search marketing continued to evolve and be an area of investment. So my question is how has the marketing toolkit evolved for brands when it comes to building awareness specifically? During pandemic or over the last few years itself, digital has been growing quite aggressively. Internet penetration has increased, with the data rates coming down, with introduction of geo and all evolution over there. The internet accessibility became very, very sort of easy for the market. Almost 50% of our population, it's 1.3 billion, is the population of India. Almost 650 million users are there on the internet and they all are there out on internet searching or looking for something or the other as they sort of they are accessing, be through YouTube or be on Amazon or everywhere. The pandemic, definitely what it has done is it has changed the habits. The big, big shift is the consumer behavior which changed in the last year. And that's something which is helping the search or it's helping the brands and advertisers also when we are reaching out to the consumers, how to go and target now. And with digital being at the forefront, and as you said, that during pandemic, digital was the only medium. In the dam report also you would have seen that. That digital was the only medium which has grown during pandemic in 2020, over the previous year. So that's something which has helped gain much more prominence for digital. The way digital has been part of the entire market year toolkit because that becomes a key component of the way you are reaching out to the consumers. What's changed quite, quite big time is during pandemic consumers getting onto e-commerce, the social commerce or your day to day buying your viewing habits, everything has undergone a change and it's moved more onto digital consumption. E-commerce platforms have become very prominent, your Amazon, Flipkart and others have started doing a big role. And search has evolved over the years. Earlier it used to be Google being the buzzword for search. From there, it's sort of moved on and obviously with e-commerce getting on to layered onto top of that. I think that's something which is becoming more and more important for the brands and advertisers to take into consideration. Over the last one year that has become a critical component as we look at search to be the part of the overall aspect. And one interesting part is actually tier two, tier three cities are the ones which are driving this. You refer to those three Vs or it was from voice, vernacular and video, getting as part of the overall ecosystem and how digital is evolving. And that's playing a big role in search also, the video or the voice. That's something which is getting part of the entire search system. And then as we are sort of evolving. So that's one thing which is definitely a big shift we are seeing over the last one year. Yeah, I think pandemic has for sure changed habits. I think all of us do very differently the way we used to before. And definitely there is an opportunity for brands out there to have and gain higher mindset of their consumers and users. And obviously there are other trends such as voice and vernacular. And then search happening outside of Google, e-commerce, social commerce. So all of that just accelerating the trends. So I think my next question to you Anand is that I think the pandemic has, while we say that pandemic has accelerated digital adoption, that people spending significant time on their personal devices, which is leading to brands capturing more and more attention and revying for their consumers attention actually through different digital channels. And then that also reflects back when I was mentioning that brands are now using search for 360 marketing funnel goals. So my question here is that any recent, I think we had the first festive season last year. And this one is going to be at least some learnings into the pandemic in terms of how brands leveraged advertising and search advertising as well. So any recent campaigns that you have done where, which stood out for you, where innovative use of search happened or any instances that advertisers or marketeers should keep in mind as they enter into the festive season this time? So I would say I won't call out any specific campaign specifically, but with IPL coming in last year or earlier this year, many advertisers or brands have used that for targeting or reaching out to the consumers because I think that's smart targeting. At Denso, we have Denso Marketing Club, which we do use for getting those insights from the data that we are collecting. And that correlation is for advertisers or for brands. Actually, what's important to be effective in search also is getting their data, right? The first party data and then sort of using that for targeting your consumer in more effective manner and more efficient manner. So we have Denso Marketing Cloud, which is our property tool. Actually, we use that for gaining insights on ensuring that you are reaching out to the right consumer and a right target audience at the right point of time. So you optimize the sales actually because e-commerce or your commerce transactions have moved on to net. Almost 75% of your internet consumption when we are speaking now is happening through mobile. When we keep on saying it's still PC and mobile, but at the same time it's actually converting as the user is most of the time on to your Android device must be your tablet or be to your phone. That's what the consumer has moved on to. And I think targeting the consumer with that data point and then getting across to the clients. So a few things which we have used is actually YouTube has become one of the first proponents because with video, YouTube remains the first one. So at many of our clients' campaigns, we have done work with ESPN or Citafil or even a few Edite clients. I think optimizing those videos that has been quite useful. And that's something which has helped us actually increase the awareness, increase the reach, increase the entire access and footfalls onto the clients' websites. And then getting that prominence for the clients and then driving that forward. So video optimization is what I would say has been sort of quite relevant when we are speaking of current or recent FESTIA period or as we have seen during API period for search to sort of take that next level. And within that, again, vernacular has been quite important because beat on Amazon also or Flipkart or where your people are transacting on. There, what's getting important is your content, which is delivered more through a local language, my vernacular language. When you look at the search or video consumption, almost 54% of video or our content consumption is through Hindi as the largest, followed by English. And then it's your regional languages, which follow Southern languages, the large part in that actually. So while you're targeting, creating your content or reaching out your video optimizations, I think keeping an eye on that vernacular reaching out to the right consumer and getting the right tools to sort of target. That's earlier, even the denounced presentation also, Mr. Baksha, when you were speaking about that using the right tools for reaching out to the right consumer or the right audience, I think that becomes important. So using the data, right tools for that purpose, right content. What we look at, Denso, also, is this actually ultimately advertising is ideas business, right? Getting the right idea across to people. But it ought to be data driven and take in the bill. So getting that right technology in when we are reaching out to the consumers for optimizing your search campaign, I think that that gets quite important. And the brands or advertisers who are able to do that effectively and efficiently, they are the ones who are gaining during these periods of time. Those two, three campaigns which I mentioned, we saw huge sort of success and sort of turn around and that sort of replicates across multiple platforms. So that's something which gets quite important. So I think at a broader level, what I'm picking up is that data and targeting becomes really, really important for the brands to be. And the content is important. It has to be localized more probably a lot more vernacular because the next set of users that are coming online are going to be not comfortable with English is their first preference, right? Then I think mobile is the other big one, which is going to be important. And brands really need to have a mobile first strategy and then of course optimization and the right tools to kind of do all of this together. Yeah, I think great insights, Anand. I think my next question to you is I think we've spoken and you've covered like voice and vernacular, but kind of diving in that a bit more, right, how do brands leverage search with voice and vernacular coming in and the whole personalization becoming really important as they move ahead? So how do brands connect with their audiences to build on these authentic personal experiences, right? Whether it is through, it could be content, right? Which plays in a crucial role, right? But how is voice vernacular and content going to play? How big that is going to play the part in the next set of 100 million users that come online? It's extremely important, but at the core again what remains Rohit is which I was saying earlier, understanding your consumer. So for that, the first party data or having the right data sets with you and analyzing that data set with the right tools. I think that that gets very important and that's where your agency partners, they come into play in actually guiding you in the right manner when you're sort of going to target your consumers. Voice vernacular or video when we are speaking about it's in a way where your consumer is and then you're going to target him or her from that perspective. One example I can give you is we had worked out or done for one of our clients actually, a record for the Giza, the water heater brands actually. So typically when people go and search on internet or it would be on Amazon or Google, you would search for Giza. But when I'm coming from a background where I don't know English so well, people pronounce that in a different manner because when our team did the research, it's pronounced as Giza or you pronounce it as Giza or Giza, Giza. So when you're typing typically from one another person, I would type in more in the way I say the word. And many of that gets lost when we did the research almost 1.3 million searches were lost because you could sort of relate to that word. So we use them in the meta tagging on Amazon and then other sites actually for the brand. And then when we did the research almost 560 misspelled spellings or misspelled words, they sort of generated almost 3.6 million searches. So that's the power when you understand who is your consumer, how he or she is thinking. And then how you should go and tweak your campaign or tweak the way you're sort of targeting them, make some modifications. And these were quite simple insights actually, means it gives you great insight. So the research, the data point which you have with you, and then understanding your consumer completely. I think search, the beauty of search is over there actually that it lies in that as well that when you have the right tool sets, have the right understanding and have the right kind of data points. I think it helps you sort of build on your campaigns or build on your sort of target audiences and get the conversion going through. And within that, as we are moving forward, as I'm moving more towards as a consumer, mobile first or only mobile, people are started using search commands on your city or your Amazon or on your Alexa or on Google. So the search commands are going through voice and understanding what people are saying, how the pronunciation is going to be. The Indian pronunciation is going to be different from what an American pronunciation is and then build your campaigns around that and train or sort of use the meta tracks appropriately so that you reach out over there and making your videos or your content that much more relevant, somebody who is Hindi speaking or Tamil speaking or say Marathi speaking, he or she's going to understand the video or relate to the video or what your brand is communicating with, getting in his own language. It's going to be all the more important and getting more and more people attracted to what you are trying to convey. So I think that that gets important while search remains at the core. But using that in an innovative manner, which many of our brands are doing. And then as I said, one of the examples was a record which I mentioned. So using that in the right manner, I think that this is going to be the way for targeting those next 100 million which you said are going to be there. They're waiting for you to get in the right manner and understand them and reach out to them. And then I think that that's how the brands and advertisers need to sort of look at it. I think completely aligned to a point where advertisers are missing sometimes on a lot of queries that users are searching for because they're not comfortable with the language. So I think that technological advancement to kind of get these people online. And I think that is where vernacular and then probably speech text to speech and all these things are crucial part in search advertisers strategy as the next users come online. That's right. I think we've seen multiple brands ourselves miss out on a lot of monetization activities possible within the campaigns because of the keywords or the search queries not being there as a part of the campaign. Yeah. Yeah, so I think that brings us to the end of this discussion. I think it was really fun to have you with us, Anand. Thank you for taking out time to share insights on the future trends of search advertising. And I think, you know, marketers should definitely look out for some of these as we move into our peak quarters and festive season. And I would also like to thank all the audience that has joined us for this session. Thanks. Thanks, Rick. Take care and stay safe. Thanks. Thank you, gentlemen. But before I let you go, I have some questions here that the audiences are dying to be answered by Anand. So if I can, as a manager for content solutions, provide your brand, what are some of the tools in which I can optimize voice search to reach the right consumer to its full potential? So it's, again, based on which sort of tools you are referring to or understand, it's essentially for understanding the consumer, right? And when you're reaching out. So the tools, if you can actually reach out to me separately, maybe I can discuss that I can sort of share that it's, it's more from that perspective. But it's not, I won't use this more from saying ABC or in that perspective. But I think I'm happy to sort of connect offline and then sort of take that forward. But it's essentially more, as I said earlier, it's more understanding the consumer, how you are sort of using that and taking it forward. So it's not calling out A against B or C actually, for that matter. Right. Another question that I have that we'd be very happy to give you to sense about, what do you think is the scope of voice search marketing for OTT platforms specifically? Sorry, I missed the last one. What was what? What do you think is the scope of voice search marketing for OTT platforms specifically? It is, as we were saying in the last part, right? That I would say, unfortunately, it is tremendous because as people are using or as consumers and as viewers are using other platforms and the capabilities which are getting built in, the voice search gets more and more important because you're using smart remote source for your phone or you're using the OTT platforms connected through your Alexsars or through your Google and everything. So those search commands and using that voice search platforms for that purpose are all the more relevant means people want to use the benefits or the more convenient it gets to your searches. That gets all the more important. And that's the potential is tremendous because then it just takes away the pain of typing it out or pain of sort of understanding English as a language. But when I kill the users or if I'm not comfortable with English as a language, there's no sort of forced entry getting into the platforms as well and sort of doing that search. My language, what I understand with voice search, you're able to sort of communicate with your platform. So potential is tremendous. And I think that's where the next developments are obviously going to be. And a lot of investment is needed over there. And I think, Praveen, to add to this, I think, inherently the way users are searching, the user is the same. So probably it's the same user searching across different platforms, whether it's OTT, C-commerce, or just normal search bars. I think since the nature of the user is the same, effectively search will play a crucial part as more and more content comes online and play an effective part in the OTT search strategy as well. Yeah, muted, Praveen. Praveen, I think we have... Oh, yes, my bad. So that's one of the key factors in understanding how technology helps and also what you need to be careful about while you're doing it. OK, great. So one question that I have here, let me just quickly get to the question here. So with most brands trying to do a hyper-local and personalized messaging, how does a brand ensure that it's not adding to the clutter and standing out? That's a good question, actually. But it's, again, understanding who your audience is, your messaging, what was said earlier, right? Your content or how you're sort of getting across the messaging to the consumer. So when you want to stand out or being different from the clutter, when I said those three points which we look at at Denso as well, it's ideas led, what is the right idea that you're getting across, your tech enabled and data driven. So you're getting the right messaging across to the right audience. You're not just sort of bombarding your audience with your messaging and the right message curated in the right manner. I think those three things which we speak about, that ideas led, tech enabled, data driven, getting to your consumer, that's going to be quite important. And then obviously use of technology in identifying that right consumer, the proper tools for getting that. I did mention about one such tool which we have in some marketing club. So getting the insights and right optimization. So that gets important. So use of data, use of technology, and obviously the right content being created for getting across to your consumers. Rohit, can I invite you to extend that off? Yeah, so I think understanding the customers around is important. I think if the profiling of those customers is important, then messaging can be creative given the variety of the audience that is there to be targeted. And then basis that there are multiple features available now. I mean, obviously voice and vernacular is going to come in at some point in time. But then there are also extensions and a lot of features that search platform offers. In terms of targeting, I mean, you could have a call extension or a different image extension, etc. or the users or the brands to be kind of targeting their users more effectively. So I think identifying the users and understanding of the profile of the users or localizing better is important. And I think once you do that, then entire strategy kind of evolves and defines around that. And then obviously I mentioned the data and insights around it. Mobile strategy, which is as the focus is on mobile, right? And then content, all plugs in together. So yeah. Right, so I think I would like to thank both of you for your valuable time and it was a really interesting conversation and some amazing insights there. So thank you so much once again for being here with us. Thank you. Thank you.