 Good afternoon everyone. Great to be here amongst all of you, a lot of known faces, sorry. And I have Anil with me and we're talking today about building trust and transparency in the digital or programmatic ecosystem. So we remember the days, right, when programmatic started and it's now, as Naval mentioned, about 50% of the digital spend, sorry, even more than that, and it's going to grow, right? But the question still remains what it was few years back. Everyone is asking, that's the conversation happening between the agencies and the clients. Agencies are here to help clients navigate through this because you're not really buying media when you're on programmatic, right? You're buying audiences. But this question which emerges from typically a brand safety and fraudulent environment point of view, right? Why clients are interested to understand where my ads are running? Because they feel that their ads might be running on some unwanted content, right? Or their ads are being shown to bots, right? That's the reality of the situation. And that's where we have Anil with us. Anil has seen, he's a legend, right? He has seen digital ecosystem evolved, been instrumental in driving programmatic agenda in India. And he's right now doing that for publicists. So welcome, Anil. Thanks, Anil. Thank you so much for agreeing to be part of this and talking about brand safety and fraud in the programmatic advertising ecosystem, right? So my first question, which is a basic question and might be something that perhaps keeps you awake in the night. What is the biggest challenge that you are facing when it comes to programmatic advertising for publicists or in general in the ecosystem? So Natchi, thanks for having me here. So if you look at programmatic, right, I feel programmatic is one of the best things to have happened to the industry. And as Naval was saying, right, newer channels are coming within this fold, right? Programmatic spends are increasing year on year. But there's a but here. So we all know where there is money, there is fraud, right? Yeah. So no doubt fraud definitely tops the list of concerns that advertisers have today closely followed by brand safety, brand suitability, right? As you rightly said, I think they're very concerned about where my ads are being placed, right? Which content is it safe or not, right? They're also very conscious to know maybe unconsciously hope they're not funding any misinformation, right? And transparency at the end, see, transparency has always been there, as you rightly said. It's been there, it's being discussed and debated. But off late, it has gained more momentum. They want to, and transparency in all its aspects, right? There are various aspects of transparency here. It might relate to the supply chain pricing transparency. It might relate to the overall media quality, all aspects of media quality transparency, right? What are we buying? Do I know what we are buying, right? So these are three, four concerns that definitely are there up in the top of the minds of advertisers, Nachi. Yeah, absolutely. I think, and that's where perhaps it's become a little bit of a barrier for agencies also to move forward aggressively pushing the audience buying slash programmatic agenda, right? Now, with that, you as a group are publicists. How you're tackling these issues from your end? So, okay. Now, being in an agency and being aware of these challenges, right? So we already have the best practices laid down. We already have a set of, say, framework to address this. Now, a few of them, obviously, there are a lot of platform interventions that you can make that are given to you by every DSP, right? We use them. We use exclusion list, inclusion list, right? Keyword blocking, right? Category exclusions. And we keep updating these lists. And to add to that is obviously we partner with a lot of third party players like Adverify Yourself and the other Adverification partners, right? And we make sure that we're using all their capabilities. It's pre-bid, it's post-bid for avoidance, blocking, monitoring, right? And so these are some of the things that are there. But added to that, we make sure that we are, say, working with SSPs or exchanges who have got maximum direct integrations with publishers, for example. We make sure that we're buying ads.txt or ads.txt inventory to avoid fraud, right? We make sure that we are, say, tying up with publishers who have got the sellers.json extension for bringing transparency. And you might have all heard about, say, GARM, right? Global Association for Responsible Media. They have laid down certain basic standards around brand safety, suitability, and their five risk categories. So all these are baked in our own business, in our framework. I will make sure that we adhere to these practices, standards, in order to address this. Yeah. And with this, I think we were discussing backstage, right? As fraud or brand safety concerns are happening, right? The investment on technology perhaps is increasing, right? And there might be a slight discomfort from moving budgets from media to technology, as far as clients are concerned. Do you have these kind of conversations with the clients? Is this prominent? So having said that, Nachi, so I'll say that this definitely becomes a part of the conversation. But at the same time, we should realize that, see, we know every $3 spent on ads or digital ads, you're losing $1 to fraud, right? So even if you have to spend a small proportion of that money, right, to save yourself, right? To bring in transparency and trust through this, I think you should go ahead with it. But yes, the adoption is yet to go up for all these third-party ad verification tools. Definitely. So Nachi, if I may ask you, so while we were discussing, in terms of fraud or the nature of fraud, right, what is the type of fraud that is most prevalent that you have seen as part of this journey of your own? And I think, see, how do you ensure that clients stop or prevent spending on fraudulent inventory, right? So you nailed it at the beginning, right? When you mentioned that fraud follows money or fraud follows budgets, right? So wherever budgets are moving, fraud will follow that, right? Because that's where the mula is for fraudsters and unwanted elements. So as the budgets are moving to programmatic, fraud is moving to programmatic. As budgets are moving to mobile, fraud is moving on mobile. It's CTV, right? We are seeing massive fraud happening on CTV. And it's not necessarily has to be a bot-led fraud. A fraud can be as simple as that your ad has been shown when the TV is off, right? We never call it as a fraud, but it's kind of thin line between fraud and what's right and how you can measure things effectively. So we are seeing it across all the emerging medias, across all traditional medias, sometimes with wall gardens as well, sometimes with an open web. And fraud can be categorized between different aspects, right? There are data center frauds. There are emulator devices. So emulator device means you have one device which gets cloned into thousands of devices, right? So an impression is delivered on one device, but it gets counted into multiplied by 10,000, for example. So that's how sophisticated fraudsters are getting, right? And we are seeing it happening day in, day out. In fact, we at TV perhaps are identifying more than 2 million devices on a daily basis, fraud and devices. So it's at that scale. So while I mentioned one of the practices that we follow, generally all of us follow is keyword blocking, right? Now keyword blocking has been there in the past. We do that. But at the same time, we realize that it also impacts scale, right? At times for certain advertisers, for certain categories, right? So how do we ensure that clients have protection as well as, say, safety protection as well as scale and reach on the other hand, right? So keyword blocking as a methodology perhaps is the most traditional and the oldest one, right? But the world has changed. It's no longer one keyword that defines the nature of the content, right? That keyword can have different meanings. So for example, if it's a salsa, you put tomato before it, it becomes a sauce, you put dance next to it, it becomes a dance form, right? Or a keyword called apple can be a fruit, can be a chemist next to you, or can be a nutrient element, right? So it can be anything. New York City. New York City, right? So you need a technology who can really understand the meaning behind that keyword, right? And then with the help of ML, AI, natural language processing technologies, right? You need to understand the meaning of the content where you want to be present on and the content that you want to block, not the keyword, right? So you need to evolve and move beyond keywords to really understand the kind of content that you want to be present on and want to block. Take an example of COVID, right? In the last couple of years, if an advertiser decided to block COVID as a keyword, they would have lost out on, say, 90% of news, right? But COVID has multiple connotations to it. COVID can be a negative story, but a work-life balance, the greener planet now, the hobbies that everybody has pursued in the last couple of years, there are multiple positive aspects to COVID as well, right? And as an advertiser, there is no harm to be present on that. So rather than blocking COVID as a keyword, you better block the negative aspects of COVID and keep the positive aspects open, right? Then you have, you know, literally enhanced in-app blocking capabilities. So you don't have to block the entire app, but you can just block certain pages which are harmful, which gives you the scale as well as protection for your campaigns and ensure media deliveries are intact. Right, right, yeah. Sorry, I have noted down question for you, right? And it relates to the first thing that you spoke about, which is trust and transparency, which is perhaps is missing or required to be spoken about more. Right. But does we as an industry have this trust issue at core when it comes to programmatic? Do you feel that? See, I would not say that there is a trust issue in programmatic per se, but, see, programmatic has become much better, bolder, smarter over the years, right? It has become much more effective, much more efficient. And I think, see, with all good things, you have challenges as well, right? And programmatic is no exception. What as an industry we can do or we should do is we should be cognizant of these challenges, right? And we should do what is required to address them, right? And it's like you've got a body, right? God has given you a body. I might sound like a Swami, but see, and there are things that you should not do. You should not eat or should eat. But at the end of the day, if there is an illness cropping up in your body, we don't blame God's creation, right? So there is a certain sense, some of these standards, some of the practices that you should take up to address this and not quote that there is a lack of trust in programmatic, right? I think that's not the way to go. Got it. I think it's more to do about ensuring clients be educated upon how they can see what's happening and the technologies that are available at their hand and then how you can perhaps get them to experience the newer technologies and programmatic media. I would also like to add that when we talk about trust and we talk about transparency, right, they are very closely positively correlated in the sense that you cannot have trust if you do not have transparency. The more the transparency, the more the trust and vice versa, right? So again, I'll give you an analogy here. You buy a car with 30 features or 40 features, right? You end up only using 30 features and you blame the car, right? Why are you not using the rest of the 10 features, right? So I think it's, we have got enough tools, enough technologies now, and if we don't equip ourselves or use them to the best of advantage, I think then we ought to blame for it, right? I think there's enough transparency that double verify or other ad verification tools can bring on board. We, a lot, a huge percentage of the industry might be knowing have not even deployed it, have not even tested it, right? But they only come to realize when they see something cropping up somewhere, right? But that can be avoided for sure. Yeah. So I missed talking about it, right? So typically, you know, when we go and talk to clients and we speak about the pre-bid technologies, it's surprising that a lot of clients and agencies are not aware what pre-bid means, right? So when you ask how you prevent fraud and, you know, how you give protection on keyword blocking, et cetera. So literally pre-bid technology means that your ads are delivered after scrutinizing the content and fraudulent impressions, right? So your ads will not be delivered if it's a non-brand-safe environment. Your ads will not be delivered if it's a fraudulent environment. So you're effectively saving your media straight away there, right? Yeah. And that's where I want to perhaps ask the last question to you, right? So we feel as a technology partner that there is a lot of need to educate the clients and agencies alike. But how we collectively, you know, address this issue of, I mean, may not be an issue, but a concern about less traction on programmatic or handling trust and transparency. See, I would again take a leaf out of what Naval said, right? The future is all about data. We saw some of the presentation here, right? Cookless and programmatic is a data enabler, right? The role of programmatic is only going to go up, right? And it's education, Archie. I think we'll have to take this to the clients, the advertisers, and make them realize that you need to set your house in order, right? You might be in a state of bliss, not knowing what is happening, right? But better know it, equip yourself, deploy those tools, and go ahead very strongly and boldly, right, into the future with all these instruments and tools in place. That's the only way out. Thank you. That's I think is a great way to summarize this. I think try the technologies, experiment, experience, and then move ahead is all that programmatic requires. Definitely. And just to add one thing, it's not only programmatic. The fraud is there in the digital industry, not just programmatic, but now, right? But you need to deploy these tools across all the mediums, right? All the channels, all the digital channels, not just programmatic. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Anil, once again, and thank you everyone for listening to us.