 Hey everybody, welcome to this panel discussion about programmatic advertising specifically focused on how programmatic technology is evolving and what its future looks like. We want to keep this session very very engaging with the audience. So all of you here feel free to put in your questions in Zoom and I'll try to pick them up while we're having the discussion if they're relevant to the topic at hand or I'll definitely come to them towards the end and we can probably have an opportunity for all of you to engage with the panelists as well. I'm Ankit Oberoi, co-founder and CEO at Ad Pushup where we help publishers optimize their programmatic ad revenue and I've been personally following the programmatic industry since the last 12 years. And let me start off with saying that they couldn't have been a better time for this discussion since it's only been the last two years that we have seen programmatic really accelerating in India and in fact not just in India globally but of course the last six months more so where because of the Black Swan event and the pandemic we're seeing everything digital, you know, escalating even more. Our testament of this is our DSP like the trade desk has almost shot up 400% from its lows this year in terms of its stock price and full disclosure I did make a little bit of money there as well but I promise you I'm not a stock market junkie. And what's also interesting is that in the last 12 months alone there's so much which has happened in the programmatic industry both on the demand side as well as the supply side where on the demand side we've seen OTT platforms just hitting it out of the park. You know the complete change in marketing mix all the way to changes on the supply side where Google has moved 100% to first price auctions, transparency via S chain and sellers.json has become mandatory in the industry. And today about majority about 70% of the market is already using open source auction solutions like pre-bid right and the biggest catalyst as we all know has been the pandemic. So today we have a wonderful panel to discuss how programmatic is evolving to market years and to technology platforms. So let's begin with a round of introductions and to make this a little more fun. We will also be throwing at them, you know, ice maker question which is as follows that they have to tell us about what they would do if they haven't had an unlimited programmatic budget to spend in this quarter. And hopefully this will make the introductions a little more fun. So let's start with that starting with you Abhishek. Hi everyone. My name is Abhishek Gupta. I'm the Chief Marketing Officer with Atlantic Life Insurance. And, you know, Ankit, the kind of question you have asked, you know, we have been probably salivating with this kind of question, not only in programmatic, but I also thought that probably if I had unlimited marketing budget, what would I have done? Well, since this is a discussion programmatic, I'll stick to programmatic. If we had unlimited budget in programmatic, this is actually the right person, right time. Because the consumers have finally started to recognize the importance of having a need for insurance and keep themselves protected against eventualities. And this year has shown what are the various kind of eventualities that can happen. Be it pandemic, be it recession, be it any other kind of things. We have cyclones, we have hurricanes coming, we have floods coming in. So whatever was possible, probably this year has thrown at us and we still have close to two months left. So we don't know what all will be coming. So if I had unlimited budget, so I will split it between two parts. One part is I will reach out to all those people who are, I think, interested, which I cannot right now because of budget limitations. But second more important is I would start getting ready for what is about to come when 2022 comes. And I'm sure we're going to discuss it later when the Chrome starts banning all the cookies, third party cookies. So I think we'll start investing in getting ready for that period of time right now. Okay. Thanks for that. Samitha, do you want to go next? Hi, I'm Samitha. I head marketing at Baskin Robbins. So very interesting question, Ankit. So I think my answer is going to be a little more, I think if there was a way and if you're saying unlimited budgets and I'm imagining an unlimited budget for everyone present here. If there was, I think one big change that has happened, I think, taking off from where Abhishek was also talking about earlier where he was saying that people have now learned there's a new consumer behavior of length on length shift that we all kind of witnessed. But the offline consumer, main psyche is about you want to touch something, you want to feel something, you want to get a real sense of what the product feels like. So since I'm in the space of ice cream, so there was some way that programmatic could evolve beyond where it is at the moment, and it could actually help me sample to consumers like nothing like it, like actually when you're scrolling through your feed and if we could actually give you a taste of any of the flavors that we have, like why not. So it may not be the most appropriate answer in the correct realm of things, but yeah I think that's the next phase because if everything is shifting online, I think we'll have to find a way to get a sensory is a lot more involved with this entire space. Interesting. So you would probably use that to develop a printer of sorts right through which you can print out that flavor for ice cream for people to try. Nice. Interesting. Sunny. Hi, everyone. I'm sunny and the co founder and managing director of a city pool, a city pool is one of the largest global partners for some of the largest media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, LinkedIn, Snapchat, as then we operate as their authorized and exclusive at sales partners in 45 plus markets. I look after primarily the Asia Pacific region including India and about your question I mean this is like, you know, telling me if I had a lot of money someday what would I do. Firstly I would not show off. I know there are a lot of people there to take it away, but being a wise man because it is a client's money as you said, I would not spend but I would rather invest and invest it for investing into the right technologies. I would invest my family into AI ML, which is something that most of the brands advertisers are still hesitating and investing into, but it is going to eventually yield a lot of long term returns to them so that's going to be my focus with a lot of money. That's that's a wise answer you'd invest that money right. Yeah. Thanks, welcome to the panel sunny. Hi. Good evening, everybody. I'm Karan Gupta, CEO of Alchemy Group. So we're a group of different businesses and beyond media word localized in one loop, specifically in context to this conversation and the topic today programmatic and beyond media which is our legacy business that is an all encompassing ad tech solution for large publishers, publications, OED platforms, telcos, CTV, no matter what type of screen or format you have. You know we enable all these different publications and media houses to monetize their inventory and their content and their sites very efficiently. So we run the group with you know we know how we know what digital media is all about programmatic efficiency and even content. So we try to bring all those in under one roof and offer those kind of tech solutions to publishers as well as advertisers. With the budget, I would second sunny, you know, part spend part invest, because we would, you know, we are the guys who bear the cost in terms of building tech and platform and trying to make sure efficiencies are delivered across the value chain. And yes, obviously save a portion of it for our publisher friends because they are the ones who, you know, work really closely with us in terms of making sure that the ecosystem completes the loop. And that's where all the audiences exist. So I would say in three parts definitely spend a bit to make sure that, you know, we help the different different categories grow and then obviously invest in technology platform and, you know, help our publisher friends grow a lot more with growing audiences in more efficient ways, especially with the tougher times that are coming along over the next couple of years. Excellent. Thanks Karan. Great to have you on the panel. So since we're all realizing now, and I think in parts this was indicated in the introductions as well that you know how programmatic has really accelerated in the last six months. But if you think about it, it's actually a byproduct, right? Because as advertisers and marketers, all we're trying to do is be where the consumers are. So naturally, you know, how digital has grown, we are going where the consumer are because they're spending more time online and on digital sources. So perhaps I think it would be appropriate for all of us to start the spell discussion by talking about the last six months, right? The whole, from what I'm hearing, you know, the playbooks have been rewritten, businesses have completely changed. So the last six months pre and post COVID, what have been some of the largest changes that, you know, perhaps Samyukta, you have witnessed in the consumer behavior, you know, across your industry or, you know, in your realm of marketers, which, you know, you've sort of associated with. If you could talk about that, that'd be interesting to understand what has been the key consumer behavior change pre and post COVID. Yeah. So, I think like I'm going to start take off a little from where what I initially mentioned that was more a dreamy La La Land answer, but coming to the reality part of it. I think most consumers were like the, I think there was there's been a large shift in terms of consumer behavior like today you have a three year old attending, you know, nursery and preschool online, which was unheard of because everyone all parents were always told no screen time. Now suddenly parents are, you know, letting them belong in front of the laptop and schools are also actively encouraging it. I think that entire education industry, you know, has seen a massive shift in the way people have been, you know, behaving. You have much older people now very familiar with a lot of digital tools and platforms. You have 70 year olds who are on Instagram today who would have probably learned email marketing and probably Facebook till some time ago. A lot of them are now on Instagram learning to, you know, shoot nice pictures put nice captions etc. That's been a huge shift. So I think your audience in general online has kind of, you know, really wide because you suddenly everybody has learned to, instead of calling the local grocer people learn to do their shopping on Amazon and because everyone was very used to going to the market, you know, picking up an apple, picking up a banana and you know, like that was the way we were used to shopping. Now suddenly everything people had to unlearn and relearn. And I think as human beings go we are extremely, we are meant to adapt. And I think that's what people have done. So I think every single industry I don't think it's also people learn to clean their houses on their own again in a country like ours. You know, we are very, very privileged because we've always had help people learn to cook people learn to clean so that entire market opened up suddenly. And I think programmatic again played a huge role and you know, even if you are looking for hacks in terms of how to quickly get your housework done so that you could get back to your video call. I think suddenly you had brands like Dyson etc. who kind of like followed you around and ensured that you know you picked up, you know, stuff from them. So I think the entire market has just shifted people learn to bake entire baking industry opened up I think there's just so much that has happened. So I think it's a good thing, because there has been some silver lining in in all of this of course it's been very tough. But the entire consumer mindset the entire consumer shift happening online, I think has opened up a lot for all of us. Marketing budgets also, people learn to be a lot more entrepreneurial with the limited budgets that they had initially from no budgets to slowly getting budgets back to figuring out even how to I think Abhishek was talking about even we had to do a lot in order to even get people to understand what is a dashboard how do you toggle on and off like retailers getting grossers on online was very difficult because they're not used to, you know, many of them don't even have any kind of association with payment gateway partners like you have to actually rebuild the entire ecosystem. And it's been I think a fantastic journey for all of us because every day has brought in some new learning. Great, super useful and your spot on right, I think all of these changes have been very, very useful, you know, for a lot of people in terms of reimagining their you know thinking grounds up and I like how you link constraints to entrepreneurship or entrepreneurial thinking. But I don't know if I really like those all the 70 year old leaders who are bringing me on Instagram and Facebook now. But, but with that thing Abhishek, I mean, I'd like to ask you the same question but in the slightly different context, which is that you know, there'll be a two fold change at least in your case because you know not only has the consumer behavior change, but also more so your whole industry and your product right how it has been thought of has seen a massive change right people are more concerned about their safety their health now, you know. So how has that affected, you know, your consumer behavior in your industry. Yeah, so what I see why there are seven we actually categorize seven different ways in which the customer has changed. You know, and I will probably specifically I'll just quickly narrow it to seven and then focus on what means for our industry. The first is the family has become more important because they are our support system. Second is as Samhita was saying DIY has becoming the norm so self reliance is becoming the normal. What is we have seen tough times people have lost their jobs salary cuts so tendency to save will go up by everyone. So that we see is, you know, we will actually treasure things money can't buy because this virus does not differentiate between people with money or people without. The next thing people will become much more socially responsible. There will be an increased sense of vulnerability and health will become one of the priorities. So these are the seven things in which we think that people are going to change. You know, when there is an increase sense of vulnerability, you realize that however strong you yourself or the even full mankind is. There are something that are beyond our control and that is what insurance is for. So there is an increased acceptance of people on the whole concept of insurance and that was actually very much needed in a country like us which is one of the most under penetrated market, as far as life insurance is concerned. So the awareness of the need and necessity of life insurance has gone up. What has helped us although it will be very selfish way of looking is that we're talking about pandemic and we're saying how it has helped us but just to look at from a silver lining from that perspective. Insurance selling has always been hard and you have to knock many doors before one final door opens for you. What we are observing right now is number one is you probably have to knock lesser number of doors right now. The number of doors opening to you has been going up. Second is tendency of people to call up and says I need a plan I need an insurance that is going up. All this all has really helped us as an industry when I'm talking about us I'm talking about life insurance industry as a whole not just about organization. What has helped the industry to actually show decent growths and the growths have started coming back with a bang in the month of August and September, with large players showing hefty growths. We also have shown very good growth in fact we are one of the two companies in the country which have grown all of the six months of the pandemic of this financial year. So, there is a silver lining from an insurance buying that is happening. Are we still there do we still think that this will help India to come up the curve and become in our penetration levels come up the curve. No it will still. I think a lot of work needs to be done by the insurance by the industry by all the allied industry for us to come together and spread this month. Nice and you're right I think that there have been a few silver linings to this unfortunate event and they have sort of accelerated at least you know things in a lot of industries, which were probably you know do for updates in 10 years or decades right that have happened overnight or probably over weeks right. And if you think about it you know how programmatic has changed now people have also sort of started realizing that you know the adoption of programmatic was actually just a stepping stone. And the reason why I say this is you know to be able to explain this a little better let me actually take a step back and explain what you know a typical the fundamental marketing which remains the same which is you know you're targeting the right user at the right time with the right message. And how that translates into programmatic is basically you know what most people call this as targeting creative conversion right you're using your right user and the right time in forms of targeting and you're your right message in terms of the creative right. So that fundamental thing remains the same and the conversion being the landing page or e-commerce website or offline conversion whatever that is that CRO or experience right. But what programmatic has really done is which we're also seeing now is you know given us so much data and feedback which did not exist in the offline world right. And things like you know for example if you upload a creative today by evening you know how it is responding what are the response rates you know what are the conversion rates click rates and so many other data parameters. But the moment that has opened up we're also witnessing that marketers and publishers are started leveraging this new data in the form of technology solutions whether that is like a bit shading where marketers are using a lot of that to sort of jack down prices of how you know what they're you know sort of bidding for in their inventory. Publishers are on the same side using floor price optimizations to increase that price you know like having a data wars of sorts. Then you have creative dynamic creative optimization to make the creatives more targeted and you know more personalized improving engagement rates. And one of my personal favorites is of course you know GPT three which is the open AI artificial intelligence system which is which which by the way there's a company called visual website optimizer which did this experiments very recently. And they compared ad copies written by humans and machine learning the GPT three system. So I won't spoil the story for all the participants but you should check out you know one. So where you know automated automated ad copies are written by machine learning systems all the way to publishers doing a lot of testing figuring out with ad placement does all of this has become possible and you know marketers and publishers both are now realizing all of this is possible. So my next question is actually to the tech platforms here to sunny and current which is that now this has become possible you know what are some of these leading edge optimization technologies you know that have become important today how is your team or your customers using some of these and how are they benefiting from that. Sunny do you want to take that first. Sure. No thanks thanks I mean it's a very interesting question but just to step back a little bit and sort of you know cover cover the ground on what's been happening for six months and the kind of changes that we've seen from the advertisers and agencies perspective. You know for us as as service providers how we have seen the priorities as well as the operating models change as per the consumption patterns of their consumers. So I mean it's been a crazy year to say so, quite exceptional from multiple standpoints and we've seen, you know, you know, multiple multiple forms of content being consumed and multiple destinations being created which we never heard of earlier. As earlier some of the also identified you know 70 year olds going to Instagram and you know a lot of new audiences coming in and new modes of targeting them came up. You know I mean clearly what this leads to is complexity in a way you know as a brand when I look at it, it is complexity and brands have always struggled with fragmented consumption patterns fragmented supply. You know even the service providers were different I mean the social research that is, you know display mobile video traditionally I mean, you know if you see the ecosystem. The service providers are not so are operating in a very linear fashion themselves and specializing which was in fact creating further more complexity with multiple sources of supply multiple technologies to deal with. And I think this is something that that was in the making and then in the past few months acted as a good catalyst for branch to look at it with a fresh perspective, try to automate everything as much as possible. In the past we've also seen, you know, when when programmatic just started it off, you know we saw a lot of brands and agencies just outsource it to a DSP. And then we saw them developing those capabilities in house. Last year we saw a lot of, you know agencies adopting some of the consultancy services from specialists. So here in past six months what we've seen again as a trend from advertisers and agencies, they've been adopting a very, very hybrid approach. There is some consultancy there's some in house there's something being outsourced. So it's been a mix of everything from the operation modalities perspective and defining and then there has been a significant investment was been coming to rescue. One of the brands is adoption of technology with, you know, machine learning and AI which is sort of simplifying everything for them companies like big ML, which sort of, you know, provide your algorithms to to optimize your campaigns across, you know, multiple supply sources. You can just plug and play into your, you know, whatever DSP you're using, you know, get get some significant data inputs from the DMPs or data exchanges, and sort of, you know, put everything through an AI driven methodology that that simplifies everything for for a non tech person as well. And, you know, typically, technology is an enabler. You don't expect marketers to be technology I mean you can be technology enthusiast, but not not, you know, tech people. And you know the the interfacing that technology has been doing in terms of simplifying everything and creating a dashboard where you can actually map quantitative data to qualitative one. You can map, you know, the clicks to to the grand lift. Right. So, you know, these are the things that have been significantly, you know, moving about quite intensely, even if you see some of the large partners that we represent, you know, for me, I think is anything that is automated in real time. And if you look at it, even the likes of Facebook, they've been investing heavily into creative dynamic optimization. You know, what you mentioned about that firm, providing facility or capability to create multiple ads I mean there are a lot of FMP players on Facebook who are providing similar technologies. Facebook in itself is a big ecosystem, which allows you an automated advertising, which is again, you know, a form of programmatic in a way because it is completely automated. And, you know, similarly on non Facebook, Google inventories also a non Twitter or non social media inventories as well. There are a lot of third party technologies plugging and playing and providing lending efficiencies with both on the creative side as well as on the targeting opportunities where you know you could target in real time in a very, very personalized manner using first party third party data as both. So I think it's been quite quite quite a coming of programmatic in past six months. The entire ecosystem actually the entire micro situation led to led like a catalyst and now we're seeing the programmatic becoming more and more I mean it's been lingering around for 10 years. Let's face it like from 2010 onwards, we have been advocating programmatic we started in Europe and then we brought it to India as well. But it is actually now that we are seeing a more wholesome adoption from from programmatic perspective. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, you're right. And you know the last two, three years at least from we're also watching, you know, Sunny is that it's really accelerated. What are your thoughts on that current in the sense like since you also work a lot on the advertiser side and also the publisher side. Are you also seeing, you know, since Sunny mentioned, for example, how there are actually ecosystems developing inside products like Facebook, they're allowing, you know, so much of creative optimizations and you know, we saw something similar on AdWords as well, you know, things will automatically create copies, you know, using AI and all what sort of technologies are you seeing seeing, you know, when you're working with advertisers and publishers which, which are really interesting today. I jump into that question like just a minute before I touch upon like what we were talking about where some people we shake and even sunny dust upon even you mentioned briefly, you know, the effects of how the pandemic changed so many things right from consumer behavior, category behavior, and then going down to technology optimization right so ML and AI is only that good enough when the data modeling is given the right kind of data from the point where the consumers actually consuming content. With the shape shifting, you know, effects that took place will last six, eight months, consumer behavior changed content consumption changed and then also if you see categories also shifted so much in terms of the way advertising was consumed content was consumed and then all of that put together, put a lot of pressure on the tech platforms in the public worlds to understand how we need to optimize this right so what are the kind of efficient marketing tactics or what is kind of advertising. What, what is the data modeling that was working all this while for some categories and now what is suddenly happening over the last six months and now which needs to settle down like like Abhishek mentioned about health and to another extent where travel took a big hit. So all the optimization techniques that were used for that completely took a beating in terms of you know how they were working well where the pressure the auction pressure in programmatic for some categories went through the roof, because everyone started bidding for those keywords, those audiences, those, you know, that kind of, you know, those kind of publishers right. But I think one of the most classical optimization techniques is a good old contextual targeting and the content lead optimization over and above the fact that because we are so spoiled with the fact that data is available to us, whether it's TPT or you know, you know, but now with first party, your people who are actually investing in the first party, I think, who have been rather and I think a lot of content has been going out around in the trade and different organizations events in the webinars about publishers being pushed to build out their first party right so a lot of the publishers who actually have a lot of the costs already been born like that on the on the tech platforms, but also people who can who can sort of start now working on that with the next one year to build that out that entire strategy in terms of building out the overall data segmentation and then using that to optimize with the with the match of contextual I think all these pieces together will be the right puzzle for someone to sort of work with if someone can provide that together as a partner. And I think one of the key things that we are looking at is using legacy contextual, building that out to its finest. You know, literally the last dot right from meta page user behavioral info everything that we can get on page, as well as like sort of using inferred enriching people's data on the platform and then sort of using that to improve efficiencies for a publisher as well as an advertiser when they are targeting, you know, packages and segments through programmatic channels via whether it's to a DSP or to an exchange or our own SSP itself. Right, and then you know that's actually very relevant as well since you spoke about you know first party data building where publishers are starting to now really prioritize building you know first party solutions in terms of leveraging that but I think contextual advertising as you mentioned right I mean I was actually trying to understand this better personally myself and what when you know when you look at the data at least today right contextual only takes into account 20% of the overall spend which you'll see across at least you know we know for across you know all the inventory that we represent and the publisher that we work with contextual is only at about 20, 23, 24 websites unless you're in a very niche specific website. Today the stage of contextual is is you know very low which makes it even more interesting right and my next question actually is just around that as well perhaps to you know get a bit on this from the bucket tears. We all know that you know third party cookies are you know going away, we just spoke of all this data which is so important for all of us. And you know a good chunk of that data which would typically come from these third party cookies is is you know soon going to phase out right. In fact has already been phased out on you know safari and Firefox right so. So that and you know people are talking about ID solutions which are slightly and proven you know there's of course contextual which is being talked about a lot. But all of this thing happening right maybe starting with you Abhishek right has this really started becoming and I know you mentioned this in your wish list as well right third party cookies. Is this something which which you know which has become really actively important you know important which marketers are not looking for are now looking for a solution or being talked about in the quarterly planning experience and stuff like that. So uncle hand on heart. I would say it's not part of the conversation as of now. So, you know while we know there is an impending deadline coming in 2022 when these will be not allowed to three reasons. So, by nature of Indians now. Hey, but still, you know, what I would say over here is well it is not part of the conversation it is time we start recognizing this, because as I think current was also saying sunny was also saying that gradually this entire movement became fairly evolved in US and now started coming to India, and we Indians and we Indian market is now gradually waking up and warming up to this and seeing how effective it is. And the moment we will probably start accepting this and we'll realize probably the way to do this is entirely going to get changed. So, good time for all of us right now that since we are warming up to this concept why not start preparing for what is to come in future. So there I would like to say that, you know, while third properties cookies still can be utilized, I think we need to work to decrease our dependency through contextual keywords on very premium and brand safe content. That is what we need to start doing. And, you know, you talked about this company called great desk, you know, which is has actually shown mammoth returns on stock exchanges. You know, they have, I think they have developed a unified solutions and they are testing it I'm sure they're going to better it as it comes. There's also an organization called liver ramp I think the solution called liver ramp which has been developed. So what exactly I think they're trying to do is instead of pinpointing laser pointing to a particular customer they'll mean the code of customers. So then it will probably pass through the privacy guidelines that the organizations like Google are putting in. So what time we start learning about these things I'm not saying adopted right now but it's time we start learning about things and I think people like you Sunny occur and you play a huge role over here in educating us about this, because we know about it is what we currently read and what you tell us. Since you work in that market also I think I would actually place the responsibility I will not say you should like the responsibility that you should actually teach us market is because you understand that quite well far better but it's important that we start talking about it. Absolutely right and you know that of course that's that's one of the ways to discuss this and you know, you'd be surprised that you know, while right now contextual and you know ID solutions, for example are being positioned what's really concerning and personally I've been thinking about this is because while we talk about all these ID solutions, nobody is listening to the browsers right if you go and talk to these browsers about live ramp or all these ID solutions. What they are saying is that you know these are basically these ID solutions are basically workarounds or covert ways of circumnavigating the loss of that particular right. So there's also this thing which you don't know, you know, since it's unproven now you know how that will actually play because while of course Google is there you know where it has a very large and they're building their own set of you know privacy sandboxes and stuff like that but it's your right as an industry we need to be you know understanding this more and perhaps you know from you Samitha what do you think in terms of how will what's your opinion on how will targeting really change you know when when all of this data is not available what do you foresee let's say if you were to do some sort of crystal gazing here and from tomorrow you don't have third party cookies available. What do you think marketers or their go to targeting solutions would really become. I think I'll address this in parts. I think if I had to take off from where Abhishek was talking about tech companies, like all of you present here, you know, and you guys are the experts in this field. The more you empower marketers and advertisers and you know, allow them to understand because it is kind of a great domain for most marketers right now, I mean, you know, so I think that will really help. I think the second bit with all of why all of this even came into being was because of this entire fear psychosis right like all of this privacy and ethicality and you know, all of, like, I am okay if somebody, you know, follows me around gets me a great deal, then it's a great transaction for me as a consumer. I'm happy. You know, but suppose the same thing is that I realize that I'm being manipulated and you know my mind state is being altered. You know when you are following me around you're making me probably and I think this has happened a lot during the lockdown as well to many people where many people have ended up buying things that they don't need. You know, simply to make themselves feel better or in various ways in which this entire entire thing works. And I think that's where consumers also started facing an issue because it's it's almost a chicken and egg story and we can't ignore the entire ecosystem that exists here, because it's not just about the publishing platforms and advertisers and marketers it goes beyond that into the mean, mean focus point which is the consumer and how the consumer feels about this entire thing I think that sentiment is very important. And I think what's missing is us empowering the consumer like most of us say no to cookies because we know that it's a bad word, you know, like literally that's the only consumer understanding and it's this is almost like half pick knowledge which is very dangerous. I think then as marketers and advertisers and publishers I think it becomes our, you know, moral responsibility almost to let people know, you know, with this involvement that is happening in terms of, you know, how it's going to become safer than you said Google will put like tier sandboxes in place and help us all understand it's always been so. But I think that importance to let consumers know that hey while we're targeting you, and we're doing it to make your buying cycle, a lot simpler, because we want to understand that when you're picking up a phone that the camera matters to you more than the you know the look and feel of the phone perhaps. And hence we are targeting the right kind of phone to you versus targeting something else. That's a good thing. But I think that understanding how do we really simplify that and let people build that fate with customers I think that's going to kind of really change the game and that's going to be a continuous learning experience for all of us. That's true and I think you're what we're also adding you know leading up to is actually privacy right as an industry we've really probably done a very bad job in the last 510 years maybe you know as you know taking care of the site where is my data going on where is my data going, who is storing it, how is it being used and you know of course as you said sometimes even about communication and using that fear psychosis or really manipulating the user right or consumer into taking an action which you want them to take right and especially really figure out that there's a conflict of interest when you know a brand tells me this that it's for their benefit. So that's actually a great question for for the platforms there. So, so, you know, to understand how did we get here right. Maybe sunny since since you work with a lot of marketers in Europe where GDPR has been in effect since the last two years, two plus years. What is your sense what are you know marketers doing there to ensure you know this balance between user privacy and the advertising ROI right, which kind of has a trade off you know when you look at this. Yeah, I think data privacy has actually forced a lot of companies to take a closer look at you know the data infrastructure much more than they would otherwise and you know it's a big mess out there right. So, you know what's also happened in Europe and some of the other markets is that bands are making sure web forms are equipped with opt out checkboxes, you know they require user consent before adding adding to the mailing list or sending out newsletters companies are also obliged and we had a GDPR compliant company ourselves, and you know companies are obliged to sort of ensure consumers have easy access to privacy statements and you know can submit request to access their data or modify and delete the personal information so you know because consumer is also becoming more and more aware, I mean their awareness is on the rise now. And they are becoming more and more sensitive towards their own personal data that they know it's out there and how it could be sort of misutilized by certain, you know, certain players. So, but at the same time they're also seeking brands that can successfully reassure that you know these, these data exchanges their personal data being exchanged to a brand or to a platform are actually beneficial to the consumer are collected in a way that is securely stored, and then at the same time securely managed, and probably utilized in their interest I mean we're talking about predictive targeting in futures it's only going to be basis, you know data gathering and you know building models on top of it. So, you know the more and more sensitive brands get towards the data of consumer, it's only going to lead to more and more relevance, and it's a directly proportionate association with relevance in ROI. So the more relevant it becomes in terms of form of advertising right user right time, opt in, checked out whatever it may be, and, you know, you know, sort of you show them an ad and you get a better response I mean it's been traditionally proven through all modalities so I think while data privacy has sort of created some disruption already in the way some of the brands are operating and some of the platforms are operating in some markets. We are yet to see that in India, but however it's quite it's not going to be as challenging as as we foresee and it's probably only going to lend more relevance and reduce the spill overs and probably add frauds as well. Interesting. And on that, you know, part which you said you know perhaps Europe of course has become much more conscious and sensitive about it. I would like to maybe also get a context on this from you current because you know we have a, you know, deep in like the data protection act even in India which is coming out soon, and is already you know in the final phases of discussion, you know, in the industry inputs have already been provided for that as well. So what is your sense on that and also about, you know, perhaps this balance where, you know, as a platform you have to also sort of give an ROI to the advertiser and also, you know, generate a certain amount of eCPM for publishers right. So how does that, along with both of these responsibilities that a platform has also ensuring that you know the consumers interests are protected. Right. So I think one thing that's really, you know, changed is the way content is being consumed over the last few years, especially with the widespread of the OTT platforms and number of them on the rise with many more following in time to come. The way content is being consumed, it's actually changing very rapidly. So the way content gets consumed obviously data gets generated by that as well. Keeping in mind the fragmentation that comes with, you know, it's something that, you know, again is the onus keeps shifting is again like the reason why it's a lot more difficult in a market like India because of fragmentation of it. What's happening is that, you know, the amount of data that gets generated because of fragmentation, the onus shifts between the actual content creators versus the technology platforms. And then between them, there is, it's not like it's a consortium, but to make sense of this data to actually marketeers or DSPs or exchanges or anybody else to actually use it well enough efficiently enough to carry out the right kind of targeting or the right kind of, you know, marketing spend that can be used against it. I think that is what everybody is trying to overcome. The way data is being modeled, the way everybody's building their ML and AI systems to actually understand more predictive algorithms in terms of what would happen versus actually seeing, you know, direct cookie matches and then direct the old school programmatic ways. But I think to drive, like to bridge the gap between the right DCPM versus what, you know, the right uses of data. I think it's shifted a lot from the last four, five years from where it was very simple, where there was, you know, cookie enrichment, there was targeting of cookie, there is a clear, there were transparency challenges, and then there was the right kind of CPM for it. But today, there are more complexities of, you know, privacy ad blockers, you know, even opt in opt out, like Sunny was mentioning, and there are so many other, you know, the variables that come in that today when you actually want to derive the fact that is this is this impression efficient? Is it effective? Is it whether it's for the market or the advertiser who's actually spending on a DSP or for a publisher who you want to sort of, you know, yield optimally for. I think that skew is always shifting because of the variables that go into it. I believe that over the next year, once we get to an era where the third party cookies are getting phased out and completely shut to a point where it is going to become a much simpler ecosystem. Technology will have to evolve, but it will become I think a lot more easier to sort of drive efficiency, and not only for the publisher, but also the advertiser, keeping in mind that it's become already a transparent ecosystem, a lot, a long way from what it used to be, thanks to the effort by the IAB and a lot of other bodies with the sellers adjacent ads.exe and the entire value chain that has been set up, which is a huge step to actually bring about the drive any CPM and efficiency for a publisher and the, you know, the the advertiser who's spending on different DSPs. Nice. And interesting that you spoke about, you know, these initiatives are transparency, you know, which are very much linked with the trust as well as the privacy frameworks. And you know, we know that IAB recently launched this framework called TCF, which just came into effect, I think a couple of weeks ago, or at least was hard enforced a few weeks ago. But you're right. And you know, what we're also seeing is actually the advertiser ROI has not taken a big hit because people who didn't want to, we see, you know, who didn't really want to see ads, right? It's only those that have gone away and they're not giving consent. So surprisingly, again, very early, you know, and small data sets, but, but you know, the ROI impact on that, at least from, if I could probably add from our understanding and experiments that has not taken a very huge hit because these people didn't really want to be contacted by marketers at all in some ways, right? And it has definitely had some impact on the transparency. I think we had since we have about 12 minutes, I would have loved to talk about a little bit more about transparency, but perhaps what we can do is we have two questions. Maybe we can take that. And for all the audience, if there's any more questions which you guys want to put in, please feel free to do it. Also, tag who you'd want me to direct that question to. Maybe the first one we'll take is from Aditya. And his questions is about third party cookies. And I think the question is, can marketers look at review platforms such as Cora, which are mainly content driven platforms. Okay, so I think what Aditya is probably leaning towards is also, you know, more contextual targeting and also these large platforms where they have so much first party data that they may not be impacted as much of by the third party cookies going away, right? Sunny, would you want to maybe take that because, you know, you work with a lot of these large platforms and perhaps all of most of the data that they use, right, like a Facebook or Twitter or something, you know, it's all first party for them, right? So do you see them actually benefiting when this happens and perhaps can marketers use more of these platforms like Cora or even Facebook or Twitter, you know, leveraging their first party information? No, absolutely. I think, especially the large ones which have significantly, you know, large user bases that they're controlling and I've already invested into technology to sort of classify their audiences or sort of, you know, have more understanding about their users to be able to effectively advertise the platform. So I think these publishers are set to gain from this in a way. By the same time, we also see that a lot of these publishers are relying upon third party data exchanges for extending their reach beyond their own platforms and having an advertiser to advertise beyond themselves simultaneously as they do on these platforms by third party data exchanges and integrations, which is something where, you know, a lot of effort will have to be done and I think it will open up some of the privately kept secrets by these large platforms to be able to share or integrate with other first party data opportunities and create a much more rich audience and much more qualified audience for brands and advertisers to reach out to. Great. Excellent. And I think we have, what are thoughts on that current, by the way, before I get to the next question, which is actually to both of you as well. So last part, do you mind? Sure. So the question is, you know, once, once third party cookies go away right to market years, do you see them using these platforms a lot more which have their own first party data like a Facebook, Twitter or you know, instead of display and targeting publishers which will have a lot of time to build, you know, they require a lot of efforts to build their first party data banks, but something which, you know, already exists with all these platforms. It boils down to the same thing, right. I mean, like, I think a lot of them would still rely on how well they can sort of segment and package that data. But the good old school contextual will not go away again. I mean, depending on how they can sort of combine those, you know, those the same sort of strategies, a large publisher like, you know, Facebook or or someone has great reach when they where they're building out this already by de facto in silo getting built out, you know, they will still need to sort of enrich that data with a lot more, you know, important data points that that user would need to fulfill because, you know, a huge portion of this also doesn't just get, you know, targeted based on the site also takes into consideration purely an audience without actually having to see where the audience is, you know, in terms of the site or the app or whatever it is. I think the first party, the way people are building out, I think the one year that we have the two years that we had rather is a good amount of time for someone to sort of build out these data banks, you know, in consortium with you know, we say a business like ours where we work with some of the largest publishers in APAC, you know, we have a lot of audience, a lot of reach to actually build this out with the publishers of the solutions in tandem, and then work together and building it out so I don't see too much of a challenge that, you know, it would be a preferential head start but I think everybody has the time and sort of, you know, to actually go about building their own first party or all the data sets that they need to actually catch up with the rest. Excellent. Great. Great. I think we have some more questions but I think it's more about TV advertising and, you know, the privacy bandwagon, there's actually another one which is about revenue generation. And I think that's for you, Sunny and Karan, which is which revenue generation strategies would publishers now pursue in addition to advertising revenue. So are there, you know, more sort of opportunities apart from programmatic or advertising revenue also which you're seeing publishers adopt. So I can take, I can start with that. So I think moving a lot of the budgets are moving programmatic. It's become a lot more self sufficient in terms of an ecosystem where people are, you know, instead of going direct brand, direct advertising, direct creative. It's all the technology platforms and publishers, be it small blogs, even on a WordPress or a blog CMS or a Quinta CMS kind of platform versus, you know, a large publication or an OTD platform, everybody has an option of going programmatic. It's not like there are barriers to create revenue generating revenue. There are again, a lot of strategies in terms of display video native different formats. There are no, there are definitely, you know, costs in terms of technology platforms that you can work with or partner with but at the end of the day, I think programmatic itself has a lot of opportunities and offerings within it. As far as formats are concerned, as far as, you know, the different kind of technology companies and partners you can work with within that, you know, ecosystems like, you know, that you can be a part of so that you can actually start monetizing inventory very quickly, really efficiently and, you know, globally as well. Interesting. Thanks. And just to have a probably sense on this from the marketers in the room as well. So to you, you know, Abhishek and Samyukta, have you also sort of seen any, do you see any early sort of signs of where you know you are seeing a lot of this first party data coming directly from publishers, or you know media houses where you're starting to engage in figuring out something I can use, whether that's, you know, through a programmatic campaign PGPD, whatever that is, but even maybe through some sort of conversations where you know they have some strong first party data banks which you can leverage. Is this something you know which we're seeing early signs off. So, you know, I will probably just try to mix with the last question as well that what are the alternate revenue strategies. Other than advertising revenue is and I'm a huge proponent of that is partnerships. Advertising is sort of partnership but when I'm saying it's a whole strategic partnership between advertiser and let's take an example of publisher. At that point of time, this can become very large and it is still just a large but it can still become very large. And there have been instances where publishers large publishers can come to you directly and we have cases like that when they come to you directly and offer reach to their customers minus any bit of contextual or this thing it is just a set of publishers. So probably if I say it is like going back where you had a website and you know what kind of customers are coming there and you do what you do with the TV channel spray and pray. What will happen is publishers are going to get smart. They will try to get more information about their own customers and then utilize that cost information to go to advertisers and said there is a way where we can do something. It's a hard job. It's a not so efficient job as of now, but I believe there's a lot of efficiency will be built in through a lot of tools that will be developed and that is a definite possibility in which future can move problems. Interesting so building some of these sort of all these audiences right building buckets maybe of those and offering those two to advertisers right closing thoughts from you some if I think since we're almost all on time what would you like to share maybe some thoughts on this. So, thank you first off thanks I think it was a great great conversation to begin with. And I think just one thing that I wanted to leave everybody, you know just as a thought was that, you know while they're all here to kind of, you know, debate on whether it's going to be very bad how will it change things for us etc but I think to universal insights as human kind. We've always resisted change. We've never liked anything new. You know whether even when the first car came and then there was a lot of resistance saying that oh it's polluting the environment, but it helped us move forward. So I think somewhere we will eventually learn to look at the positive side of all the, all the change that's happening because programmatic is your the state's not going anywhere. You know how it will evolve also is only going to get better and shop up. It's not it's only going to help us. I think that ethical model responsibility will live with us in terms of how we'll be using I think this is just kind of open the doors to, you know that gateway. And it brings me to the second universal insight is that we have always as mankind wanted things to just make our life simpler. So, you know, anything that is going to help, you know, things speeding up anything that's going to help convenience is going to be something that's that's everybody's looking for whether it's a consumer whether it's a market here whether it's an advertiser when you are looking at a Wi-Fi connection speed matters. So I think even with programmatic the everything is going to evolve around the faster who can help me understand the consumer faster who can help me take buying decisions faster. You know who can get me inside faster. So I don't think it's going anywhere. It's just about I think all of us trying to evolve a lot faster and I think we should be there. Great. Thank you so much. I wish for the audience, you know, we could have taken more questions. I appreciate all of you putting on those there but we're just running short of time and I would like to thank everybody in the panel. I think we've learned quite a bit today there was very interesting insights about you know how perhaps you know the industry would look around what are the biggest challenge which I clearly see third party something which which will probably you know as we also you know spend some more time around this get more comfortable with programmatic you know we'll probably find solutions to this but there's still a long way. We do have solutions like contextual targeting as well as some ID solution being looked into but it's definitely not a solve problem as of today so you know perhaps an opportunity for all of us. Thanks all the panelists for coming in joining in today and sharing your insights and thank you to the audience for spending your Friday evening with us listening to us instead of going out and having a beer. Thank you. Thank you. Have a nice weekend.