 Hello and welcome. I think we've gone live and so we today have a very interesting session lined up for you and with very senior people from the industry joining us. So this is the panel today that we're going to discuss is addressing media quality and brand safety in India. This has been presented by exchange for media and association with double verified. So with proliferation of digital media channels and platforms media quality has become a top concern for advertisers in India. This has been particularly true during the COVID-19 pandemic as consumers are increasingly depending on digital source for information rather than just focusing on campaign metrics such as beach or conversions brands and advertisers are placing further importance on where their content is appearing to do so. Advertisers are adopting brand safety suitability tools to stay away from objectionable websites and apps or from content that promotes misinformation or paid speech. With me today are very senior people from the industry. I would start in I think this is an article order. Please welcome Mr. Arvind R.P. Director of strategy marketing digital and communications McDonald's. Then we have Ms. Divya Karani CEO Densu Media South Asia. Then we have Nitchi K. Deol head of sales India double verified. Ms. Ruchira Jaitley head of marketing product portfolio and GTM India. Mr. Vishal Jakob chief digital officer wave maker. Very warm welcome to all of you and thank you so much for taking out time for our discussion today. I hope I pronounced your names correctly and if I didn't apologize. I mean forgive me. So we can start with our first question. I would like to start with either Divya or Vishal or maybe Divya first. As I mentioned in the intro that we have so many digital media channels and platforms and media quality has become a top concern for advertisers in India. You know quality means that ads are reviewed by real person in a brand safe environment within the intended geography of all the components of media quality with brand safety fraud, liability and NGO. Which is the most important to you and the biggest concern for the industry? So and rightly so these qualitative parameters in very many ways need to become table stakes for the health and growth and trust of the entire digital ecosystem. And if all of us who are quite close to the digital ecosystem were to step back and look at the entire media ecosystem, you will find parallels being drawn and replete in our history within the media system. The good news is there is a growing positivity and responsibility of the entire system. Marketeers are now deploying both brand safe and brand suitable verifications to ensure that the brands support responsible media. And this to my mind is you know like I said hygiene. So it is vital that we keep ad fraud, viewability concerns at bay. But these are just, it's just the beginning. It's table stake for the vitality of this industry. So I would not go with choosing one over the other. All are and hygiene. That's it. But what are the bigger concerns that you hear from your clients? I mean if they have, if there's any particular thing which you get to hear more often? It's across. So you see it's not what the point, the limited point is it's not either or. Brand safety, brand suitability have come to the fore perhaps a little more in the recent past than the earlier fraud and viewability and NGO and all were always there. But because of very many reasons away, our media equals what we have faced in the last one year or 18 months. The other two have come to the fore. Do we need to address both of them and are we doing so? Capital yes. Does that mean our attention goes away from the others? No. So you know it and I would imagine just when you address these there will perhaps be a couple more as we walk along. But for the health of this ecosystem I mean the asset test will be when it's no longer a topic of conversation and it is taken as rigor that is there across all that that that is my point. But yeah so I wish we had the liberty of picking one or two and I agree with it's not possible to do so because I kind of interconnected with you. So just to give you some context like if you look at India as a country right and basically if you look at the kind of investments that's actually going on ad fraud as well as on you know the brand safety of suitability. A good amount of that is happening at the impression level. It means it's happening at the exposure level right. Almost 90% of that more than 90% in fact of that is happening at the exposure level. But when you look at ad fraud actually it happens through the entire consumer journey right. So impression just one of them right. So there's fraud that happens at an impression level. There's fraud that happens at a click level. There's a fraud that happens at a visit level. There's a fraud that happens at each level. Maybe there won't be any fraud at a sales level but you know all the way down till sales you'll find you know fraud happening across the entire consumer journey. So I don't think we can necessarily pick one or two areas and if you really want to give justice to the entire campaign as such I don't think it's possible to pick one or two and say this is more important than the other. And just so you know essentially if you look at again I was just reading this report on the bad fraud report which gets published every year right and it's very alarming to note that of every 100 people coming onto a website only 50% of them are actually human traffic remaining 50% are bots and that there are good bots and bad bots and if you look at the bad bots essentially they're close to 30% of the traffic on a website on any URL whether it's vishasjakel.com or xyz.com basically 50% of that is on bots and 30% is on bad bots and that 30% has been growing 6% last you could take the cumulative average growth and last three four years it's been growing at 6% to 7%. So that's very alarming right so long story short essentially I think if you want to give justice to an entire campaign I don't think we can necessarily separate and say this is more important than the other. I think it's very critical to look at every single element and see what's it doing in your business and if you really want to give justice to that then you don't look at it from a holistic view. Thank you. I'm really sorry I missed mentioning introducing Mr. Sriram Padminaval PP Marketing Lisan Motors India Private Limited I'm extremely sorry Mr. Sriram you're most welcome to the panel and it was my bad. So I would now want to start from you the next question is for Mr. Sriram you know as you know brand marketers do you agree on the above you know what for these two agency senior agency people have just told us and as we continue to navigate the effects of the pandemic and evolving a new cycle in 2021 how has that affected your media buying and practices? Well that's a very big question. Should I break it into two? I mean first part that do you agree with what Divya and Vishal just told us? Yeah no I can take I think absolutely I think brand safety and suitability are extremely critical. From where I operate our job is to sell automotive and my job as a marketer is to get inquiries into my dealership so that they can inquire and convert. Now in the past almost 70 percent of my funds were getting spent around TV and print and you know those kind of what we call as about the line media you know traditionally I think now digital has become about the line. Almost 36 percent of our media spent is on digital and it's very critical for us to make sure that not only the content but the quality is measured in terms of where this content is viewed and how it's getting viewed along with what kind of media is it getting viewed so that when they come into my brand website they're getting a good level of engagement you know we measure bounce backs you know CTRs impressions we measure right down to from a UTM level to understand what level of conversions we have. I won't be able to make those conversions work my cost per sale work unless I am making sure that all my ads are have the hygiene level of you know brand safety and suitability and now it's much easier you know like Vishal and Divya are saying it is still not as as evolved as in other markets but definitely you know we're getting there you know with players like Nachiket and you know Double Verify definitely you know things are getting easier. Ruchira would you want to add to that? Yeah I agree with Divya you know when she said that I started laughing because that's exactly when I saw that question I said how is this an either or kind of a question there is for me there are all kinds of risks today that I think the fact is that the media environment that used to operate in 10 years ago was a sanitized one relatively speaking right it was scrubbed for a lot of these concerns because you placed your ad in an environment you knew when it was coming how long it was running and was pretty much done so sanitized right the worst case scenario could have been and I remember this happened to us one World Cup where India exited early so you kind of wondered whether anyone's going to watch out at it so you know the the viewability of the tournament pretty much impacted now look at where we are and let's look at what happened last year with Covid that was your question as well right Nazia yeah what happened with Covid is and we were an industry that by the way was maybe on had a had an easier ride because everyone's looking for devices and connecting and you know a lot of the themes that we would otherwise want to talk about were very relevant but in an environment where you know you cannot or you do not get the right sentiment or the right visual and video analysis the brand risk actually would considerably go up particularly with video particularly with fake news that was proliferating and the higher video consumption that was happening pretty much across channels right so video as a format lends itself to a fair amount of risk and then you have a high consumption environment and in that environment it is relevant to speak to people on digital particularly on mobile which in India is the lead media we don't even talk about desktop right so now look at what you've compounded because mobile is that much tougher as a medium on which to talk on I think as a business really for us while the relevance was without doubt but our ability to therefore find the right context in which we would want to even put out any media was very very important sentiment of course really important I mean let's let's take a worst case scenario you don't put connecting people and you land up placing yourself next to someone's memory of someone who's maybe you know not around anymore that's the worst thing you could do right to someone so and I'm using that as a case I mean I don't think that ever happened to us and I hope to God that it didn't but it was fraught with risks in that environment how does an agency partner hold your hand through it and of course we work with WaveMaker and Vishal's right here so we're all you know we're all on the same side we of course we work on reputational risks and hate crimes on alcohol on adult content etc etc etc but I mean it goes way beyond that it's gone beyond those basic hygiene keywords blacklisting words etc it's gone way beyond that to say where is your ad being seen and how contextually relevant is it or not for me that's a larger piece that's got you know I'm not saying that fraud's not important etc but for me all of that's hygiene table stakes in an environment we're spending so much money in this environment so this conversation this discussion I hope to learn a lot from people like you know Arvind Sriram from Deva from Vishal and of course I think this is something that we all need to know far more about I don't think anyone's got that perfect solution yet but maybe someone does on this discussion if I can have you in now I mean I would first want to start with the question that I'd asked for and then I can ask another question to you so yes I totally agree with the other panelists this is a very very complex issue and if anything is getting more complex with time in the context of McDonald's yes there is a whole aspect of brand campaigns right where you measure viewability where you measure brand safety and especially given that we are a family focused brand brand safety online is a very very critical you know issue as for us we are concerned and then because of our with our food delivery business and food delivery business you know like other e-commerce you know categories have really grown in the last few years and for which we kind of invest quite significantly in customer acquisition online and that's where the whole question of ROI comes right and we have discovered that you know adopting many many advanced you know practices as far as limiting ad fraud goes your ROI significantly goes up from your investments in terms of orders so there's two aspects to it brand safety and as far as ROI focused you know efforts and also you know I don't want to make this issue more complex than it already is but you also have the issue of humans acting as bots right online today right take twitter an example and while today it's largely in the political sphere and little bit in the brand sphere you can see this being you know spreading throughout the whole digital ecosystem where you know where an army of so-called influencers are sitting and making stuff viral so from a brand perspective what is authentic engagement right that's always the question that's always the worry and and of course you know doing it the right way and like Shira mentioned that the investments on digital are only increasing right and and so for example today 40 percent of our spends are on digital which means it's a responsibility of market year to kind of prove that you're doing it in the right way brand safe way as well as providing the best ROI but if you could answer the particular question that how has this affected media by practices so let me put it this way it is it is definitely not a barrier or concern when it comes to investing on digital we feel that's the future like the others in the panel have already spoken but we have to do it with lot more caution and a lot more measurability which means investing in investments in tools techniques a lot of manual effort to make sure we just tracking the digital campaigns carefully a to get better ROI and better brand safety so I would say it is not influencing the quantum of investments but definitely influencing the way we are looking at digital even more closely than we did before just to make sure we are doing things right. Thanks so before I move to my next question I want to remind audiences that we will be opening flow for Q&A in another let's say like 20-25 minutes like last 15 minutes would be for audience Q&A so please keep sending your questions so next I want to bring Nachiket into the debate and you know this was also part of the previous question you know how does advertising against inflammatory content with misinformation and hate speech affects a brand's reputation? So if you look at it inflammatory content on hate or hate speech per se is something that we have seen recently but that's not the limit of the content right that's not the only content which harms a brand's reputation right there is the thought of other other content like beat violence or disaster or beat terrorism adult content right all these contents also equally harmful and it does affect a brand's reputation right and I completely echo what the man everybody else said at the beginning with your first question right it's not only about brand safety right a media quality should comprise of all four or five components right it needs to be a brand safety plus it needs to be free plus it needs to be fraud free and plus it needs to be into you which is a which is a hygiene practice for marketers today but on ground reality because we have these conversations day in day out right a lot of marketers still say that hey I am looking at highly viewable placements I am looking at fraud free placements but if your placement is highly viewable but it's not brand safe or it's highly viewable but it's a fraudulent impression right then that impression is of no use to you so when you look at media quality you need to look at it in totality holistically keeping all these four parameters in mind and then qualify whether that impression is a quality impression for you or it's not a quality impression for you you compromise even on one of these parameters then probably all that dollars that you're putting in is a wastage for you and which applies to brand's reputation as well right so so we did a small survey with Harris Paul sometime back we're about 90% of the consumers or the respondents say that it's brand's responsibility to ensure that they appear against the right content it's not publishers responsibility right that's according to consumers that's how they feel right but we you know as stakeholders we believe that it's an entire ecosystem who needs to come together and ensure that the brand safety has been taken care of and while 90% consumers say that it's brand's responsibility to appear against the brand safe content out 67% respondents say that they would probably rethink of using the brand if they find the brand's placement in non-brand safe environment which is a massive number right so consumers are getting more aware they're getting more educated they're responding to brand's awareness and brand's responsibility towards the society and obviously that that that it's a value can right and it's it's a snowball effect which probably directly impacts brand equity right and brand equity I don't have to tell it to anyone right it it does impact sales volumes and profit profitability and more than that you know we as a brand have invested millions of dollars over the years to build the reputation right and it can't go in when just because you know some of your impressions appeared against you know unwanted content so yes it it does impact and and we need to look at all the possible you know content pieces that are that are going out in different categories and not Divya or Vishal would you want to add something to this I mean Divya would you want to say something about this completely so there it is I mean we've said it earlier the consumers are exercising their right and rightly so and they're ready to listen and hear them and acknowledge them so I think it's a hugely I look at it from a positive perspective it's it's very very good for our system where there is clear accountability and visibility I mean see there is no debate about this right I don't know the question is basically you know how important the entire element of you know being visible in the right environment for a brand I think there is no doubt that I think I don't think that's not in debate as such right the question is basically how do you go about it now in reality if you look at it also and if you take you know if you think the environment in irrespective I mean we work with a lot of multinational companies and a lot of the m&c's basically are very clear guidelines in terms of how to go about ensuring that there's negations across multiple keywords negations across multiple sites negations across multiple channels and so on so forth irrespective of putting all those negations in place there are very sophisticated ways in which the traffic scan can be hijacked if you put all the tools in place it still can get the the point I'm trying to make essentially over here is that irrespective of what you do there is the other element over here of what does the campaign do for your ROI or for the for the business basically what's the end goal that you manage to drive and the question is what can you do about that and to and to and to arrive at that essentially you need to look at a whole lot whole lot of things that's essentially so while you put the high genes in place there's also a lot of stuff that you do to do on your analytics right so and then the interplay between brand safety measures that you currently do right now versus the kind of work that you do on your google analytics or adobe analytics there has to be an interplay between the two so you can actually get the real true picture of how your campaign is actually done and to me again it's no longer a debate about should we be focusing a little bit more on brand safety and I thought I think the question over here is how can we kind of try better outcomes and when we've seen that we've done and we've we've reacted across the consumer journey irrespective of the campaign it's always been a 20 plus increase 20% increase on the ROI that we can get out of the campaign so I think that's the way I think all marketers should start looking at it not necessarily as a cost but more as an investment. I know with so many factors like so many things that you guys have been mentioning what I would want to understand is that whose responsibility is it you know is it only a brand's responsibility to ensure media quality or should it be shared but across the supply chain? Anyone I mean Ruchira or Arvind or Shira, any anyone of you can answer that? So you know while Bishal was talking earlier and he was talking about clients and what mandates you put out so first of all I'm going to deviate a little bit Nazia before I come back to your question but to my to what Bishal was saying earlier as well I think it's very important that you have the right metrics in place and you're measuring for the right impact I mean you know this whole cost per click I just got to go beyond that there was a time when we were so excited by impressions and cost per impression right I mean not so long ago whether it's the actions taken for engagement which is how we like to look at you know quality engagements quality views and then to your point on the supply chain the supply chain has to work with you so we will actively choose and I'm saying we as what we'd like to do of course in partnership with our agency which is wave maker what you'd actively like to do is work with partners who are delivering the right kind of metrics for you in the supply chain otherwise you would choose not to work with them so it does make a difference to them in terms of the the dollars that they're able to attract equally to your point we also have other metrics so we use other digital tracking rules to tell us that when this was on literally day by day week on week right how did your metrics move with what we call our digital tribes you know so as it's not just so in an environment of course it's my business where my brand go where my advertising goes what content I go with the guidelines that Vishal spoke about but equally and of course it's the agency's point as part as well to then you know double down on investing in the right kind of tools to ensure that we're cleaning up but you know we're only working with people who can do that but equally on the supply chain side if you're not able to come back to me and share with me impact of those campaigns I'm not going to be able to come back and you know invest again and again so the other impact of COVID which no one has really spoken about is how precious dollars have become right on advertising and how limited the inventory on digital has become I think Hotstar was the first to sell out on IPL when it happened last season so it was so in that environment even more so it is literally a consolidated value chain that has to clean up you know not just a mandate from one global earlier it used to be all about global multinational global brands how do we ensure we have the right kind of you know brand or safety parameters so that's why we're at and I'm happy to hear from the rest of the panel in terms of their experiences. Radha what do you want to add to it? Yeah sure I think I agree with both of what Ruchira's points are right one is about what's the measure right how do we what is the objective around what we do you know in the past it was all about performance measurement through clear you know financial metrics or business metrics right click impressions reach I think performance measurement is still important of course because it's all driven around you know business results but I think there are two important elements that have been added over time that one is consumer experience and second is reputation I think and we talk about consumer experience earlier it was all about the experience of the consumer once they reach our platforms you know a virtual or physical when I call it physical for automotive it's a dealerships and within the virtual it's our website you know is the engagement that they have in our virtual showrooms virtual test drives but that's actually gone beyond to the experience we generate with them the moment they think about our brand and it actually starts from the awareness level now repetition is not just about what experience they have with our product but what experience they have with our brand at every stage you know how are what is the context of our brand setting you know that's important for us as well so of course you know I think so it's critical you know I go back to what Nachiket mentioned Vishal and of course Ruchira I think we're all saying the same things right but the context of advertising especially for digital because it's much more trackable which is the big benefit of it is gone from just performance measurement to consumer experience and repetition management and we look at you know taking you know how do we manage repetition right of the pre you know the stage when the customer is still not reaching our site and that's true you know brand safety and suitability measures like viability right for us we have actually gone and we track viability very seriously almost you know I get a report every week and we work with our media partners to actually boycott key publishers who are not giving us the viability rates who are not giving us the quality that we are looking for from them and we are constantly tracking our bot traffic of course but that's more about performance management right actually have you actually boycotted someone yes we have yes we have we constantly look at see this is part of you know at the end of the day everything boils back to business metrics right so if you're not actually managing repetition it has may not have a short-term impact tomorrow but it has a medium-term long-term impact on how a customer views the brand and has higher propensity to click and higher propensity to stay and experience a journey on our virtual you know site so so extremely critical for us to really bring it back to some very measurable metrics but go beyond what we've been doing in the past. Nachi K. if I can bring you back into the debate and if I if you can you know explain the difference between brand safety and suitability because these two terms are quite interchangeable you know so what what is the exact difference between these two terms? So brand safety has been in play for for years now right that's something which every brand must adopt at a basic level so there are certain categories like say pornography or violence or you know substance abuse etc which no brand would want to advertise on right that's applicable for all the brands universally. Now coming week 2.4 with everybody every single individual is a publisher anybody can go out there and start the employer to start putting content with that a lot of other content categories emerge right not all of them are probably suitable for all the brands so as I will mention earlier right they are a family brand right they wouldn't want to advertise on content around alcohol or content around parenting not not necessarily parenting or an alcohol brand for example wouldn't want to advertise on parenting related content or kids content right but not necessarily that piece of content is harmful for other brands right parenting you know content is suitable for you know and vice versa that's where brand suitability kicked in right which means that each brand has to develop their own brand safety strategies right there are certain ground rules which applies to everyone but beyond that you need to as a brand identify where you want to play right where you can balance the reach with the scale at the same time where you want to balance your brand safety policies or guidelines for your brand and that's really where everybody's moving so that they're evolving from being present on avoiding brand safety categories to scaling further and add on more to brand suitability pieces of content. How have these demands changed in this last one and a half years that we were you know stuck we all were stuck with pandemic so you know this has been a very different year the new cycle got impacted and the strategies of brands that hopefully you must have you know they would have asked for something different so how did it change in last one and a half years. Now I think it hit the brands and everybody right all of a sudden and which made all the marketers take a second look at the brand safety strategies right because a lot of marketers use news websites or channels or content blindly right because that's the most trustworthy platform that you're going to go on which can give you good quality audiences but what happened probably in last year and a half is about 80-90% of the content was around COVID right and at that point of time a lot of that content is around you know increasing the positivity rate in the deaths and how infrastructures collapsed but on the other hand there are a lot of positive that it came out right how you know work-life balance is better now how everybody is spending more time at home not commuting right spending time with family so while as a marketer I don't want to be present on COVID negative news but I'm comfortable to be present on COVID positive sentiments or COVID positive related news which we started you know as a technologist segregating in different categories right so all our COVID negative news we started categorizing in natural disaster but all the COVID positive news we started categorizing in different categories depending on the kind of article or kind of content that is there so initially we saw a lot of brands blocking their inventory on COVID content which slowly started opening up which helped them achieve the scale maintain the reach deliver their you know on target numbers for their plans and at the same time safeguard their communication from you know probably not so good COVID related content Divya if I can have you again in the debate and I am getting a lot of questions for mostly for Divya you know I'll start addressing them also but first I want to ask the generic question that you know I have for you is that you know what are the major challenges that advisors face when implementing brand safety and sustainability in context to Indian market? I think firstly for most I would I would still go back to what Divya said and my conversation with Stata Malia. I asked Divya sorry. Oh you asked Divya sorry. I asked Divya. If you want to complete you can complete I mean. Yes please let Natu complete please. I think quickly before Divya starts first and foremost I think as a brand you know understand that this is a hygiene for every single brand right and one needs to look at how you want to major the media and whether how you want to buy the media quality and how you want to evaluate the media that you buy. If you are kind of ready to put back across as your strategy then probably the next steps is finding the agency partner to evaluate the platform and get going. I'm going to address this in again a larger context you know we just recently concluded a study that indicates that the human behind the impression has returned right and therefore privacy has become a human right. In the context the message to people, publishers, advertisers, agencies is very clear ethics, data ethics is going to become paramount in the next few years. Now that the larger play at hand all you know according to each other mutual respect because what has happened or you know Ruchira mentioned this and I was smiling away Ruchira. We have grappled with all that we are talking today across media across media all these years and I can regale you all with stories and stories but that's not what we are here for in when we did this on print to get on TV it's right now digit and so on but you accord each other respect, responsibility and accountability all in a straight line that to my mind is paramount. I was again going to say hygiene we've said hygiene enough number of times but this you know and then to all my panelists what I've heard again and again you see whatever metrics we follow and whatever metrics we decide are more important than the other the point is you're in an active conversation with your consumers right you want to hear you want to behave responsibility so that they behave and the consumers holding us accountable is very very healthy for us. But what are the challenges that you face you know when you're dealing with brands what if you can give some example you know without naming a brand. So we spoke about brand safety brand suitability so and Natchike tried to give examples and that's the thing wherein for example you do have guardrails given the category that you function in right you do have guardrails even on the brand safety but that often as a marketer and I'm sure my fellow panelists will agree there is a constant push and pull between wanting to scale up go for reach and wanting to keep it safe right so you depending on the elasticity of what you want to but you do not want to you do not want to act irresponsibly that to my mind is a perennial dilemma that all marketeers will have to grapple with reach scale versus your guardrails number one number two I loved it when you know there was a clear call out that we have actually debarred so you know publishers because what you're doing is you are you are walking your talk it's all a good and great way to you know call for transparency and trust and all as marketers if we are exercising that call it I salute you yeah and the third one if I may is when I say respecting your consumers and the ecosystem so respecting your agency respecting your publishers all of that and quid pro quo will automatically happen so I hope I've addressed it larger perspective uh Michelle would you want to add some fourth or fifth point to it yeah see I'll be very honest over here right if you if you take all the impressions that's being served in the digital industry today and Natchik it will add will agree to this basically it's it's less than 10 percent of them are actually being monitored for brand safety and sort of the end song okay there's a whole lot of 90 percent of the vector that's out there that's not being done right I think one the reasons for that is because I'll be very blunt and honest over here most of a lot of marketers tradition see this as a line item which is a cost item for them right they don't see it as a revenue item they don't see it as an investment other than the cost item and I'll be very honest over here that I think it's it's the it's a failure of the entire ecosystem where we're not able to kind of show that uh show that show that kind of merit towards it right the kind of delta that we're able to do and like I said basically wherever we've been able to kind of do it we've seen an uplift of about 10 to 20 odd percent and I think to me that's that's the if I can be very very honest I think that's the real problem when we look at the barrier for adoption right I think they enough they're not enough stories that are going out they're not enough conversations around this they're not enough kind of you know case studies and kind of metrics to prove this right so if you look at if you go about five years back or the other 10 years back also right you look at ad serving as a as a concept it was a massive difficulty to get a lot of clients who didn't put put money on ad serving and use a third party ad server to kind of figure out a validate the kind of impression that are out there this is probably two notches after that right so I think India has a still a long way to go uh and and if I can be very very honest I think marketers start need to start looking at this as an investment or not as a cost item and when they start doing that and when they start constantly monitoring it and constantly be added to kind of see results like the way you know she was saying that they're currently on it and they keep monitoring and they look at the number of ongoing cases make it those sites and can constantly evolve I think that's when we'll actually start seeing results if I may say so I'll start taking some audience questions now I have one addressed to Divya so this is Mr Deepak Saxena so hi I'm Deepak I'm into TV ad sales working with Saachi TV a Telugu news channel my question is uh to Divya when already in media planning of TV there is NCCS consumer classification system which ascertains the right eyeballs or audience as per brand requirement in this robust system of media measurement is there really further need to be cautious about media quality and brand safety a short answer is yes Deepak of course there is uh just because you have classified by NCCS does not in any which take away from the fact that you need to have robustness and brand safety and just drawing panels I'm sure you didn't mean the question only for TV on digital you do need to like I keep saying that is table stick hygiene you need do need to address it Arvind if you can take is Arvind there Arvind if you can take this next question this has come this is based on the latest controversy how do we view Ronald's action two days back it is not a fraud or bad intention but impacted the company is there any digital parlance of such incidences if so how do we protect it well there isn't any caption I can come up with to describe that in the context of this particular topic but I think it's just a case of you know very important and influential you know artist expressed expressing her opinion or his opinion right and I think the brand's response also has been pretty much in the right zone saying that you know everyone to their preferences so so I think in this day and age this is something brands would keep seeing more and more and be cautious about you can never plan for it but I think you know self expression and authentic expression just like brands are worried about I think people and individual artists are also worried about because it's add to that because it's add to that Arvind's point right it's interesting to note essentially that even Cristiano Ronaldo is a brand right I mean he's a brand and the environment around him was not suitable for the other brand if I didn't put that right it's a very interesting and then build on that and then build on that really yes it is about environment so the effort is brand suitability at its absolute basic right brand suitability into that context but I think the bigger one is also what's the threat what's the risk for all of us when something's unsuitable the virality of the moment is what is and I think that's one of the questions that will come up say what are the threats the virality of that moment and that means someone taking a screen grab of something that's not suitable putting it on a social medium and it going viral right we've seen any number of examples of that I think that's a big watch out so how do you you know so therefore the risk like Vishal was saying don't look at it as only as a cost and I'll tell you we are all guilty of it at some point with the other and maybe continuing to do which is you go for the scale and you tend to say okay listen do I really want to spend money on the you know on the audit lines of the model but that's the watch out and for me I mean that was the thing right to say I actually look at this context the brand in it the brand otherwise is a perfectly safe brand but it was just the context that was wrong and then if it goes viral I mean it gets interpreted in all kinds of different contexts and that's a challenge Ruchira you have something to add please I'm looking at the question for me as well and I would like to combine these response along with what Ruchira mentioned and also what Arvind and Vishal have talked about right how do you measure customer experience and and repetition um so customer experience their performance measures of you know you know bounce rates and you know how much engagement do they have with each and every elements you know now we have very you know adobe tools are fantastic to actually understand experience time engagement in our own platforms and social you know customer experience and engagement on social platforms is very well measured but I think it goes a little bit more than that it's not just the quantity but also the quality of experience and it actually comes back into how it's placed no way what kind of contents get generated and that's brings me back to the repetition because it's kind of interconnected you know we try to always look at binary digits of measurements but then we kind of dig deep repetition measures are various right there is brand leaf studies there are repetitions five stars and you know social media you know you've got the repetition for each and every location all our dealers have a google my page and you know each of them will have a star rating and we actually get them to publish their star rating but that's repetition after the customer's experience our brand but what before that right and that goes back to what the viewer was mentioning right the the narration and the story and the dialogue that we're having the customer actually generates the right kind of content and that kind of drives a better reputation overall you know and that has a halo effect which is hard to measure but it has a halo effect on your measurable metrics you know today most of the content you know especially you know coming back to post-covid what's changed user generated content it is so much user generated people have a lot of time to comment on everything else you know everybody else so on one end from a content generation user generated content memes you know taking something which is easy to understand and making it viral or actually translated into multiple that's hugely happening there on the other side tolerance for bad content has come down significantly and it goes back to the you know metric that nachiket was mentioning you know 90 of the customers feel that it's brand's responsibility to have the content right the tolerance level for watching bad content has gone down significantly because they're spending more time on the digital media right now they're more there's actually you know we've we've seen that the video completion rates have actually gone up post-covid you know I'm sorry I'm only left with 10 minutes we have lots of questions coming in I can I think I also have to take closing remarks so I'll take one more question from the audiences which can I think nichik nichiket can address it how do you track control the context in which your brand appears particularly how do you control what goes and I think you want to say what comes after your ad after once your ad is already there how do you control the content so you don't control the content you control your content right you can't control the content that's going out however you can control where your communication is appearing on and there are ways and means there are tools available like might be right where it's not only the content but the context of that page is so for example in a in an article if apple is a keyword that apple can be a fruit that apple can be an iphone or apple can be a chemist nearby you right so does that article really make sense to you then we you need to really look at what that really means that keyword means is it talking about nutrition is it talking about the latest iphone or is it talking about the or is it talking about the text for you and then you decide whether you want your communication to appear against that that content or not right so that's how you contextualize and read the context of that of that of that piece of content and then you can optimize your communication you can in fact stop the creative delivery or you can completely negate delivery your ad on that on that piece of article so there are means and ways to kind of tackle that you don't have to wait till the till the time your communication is still involved on that content uh you know uh before we close i have two questions i mean i can club the questions because i would want each one of you to you know sum it up for me one is how can we as an industry work together to improve this trust issue and achieve greater transparency between brands and agencies secondly you know what are your hopes from the digital advertising ecosystem in india moving forward i mean if we can club these two questions and if we can if we can start from divya uh you know start with divya if you can tell me how how do we you know work together you know to improve the things that are in our control okay so a transparency transparency transparency transparency more important than all parts of the industry and it leads to greater trust so if we can and it's easier said than done but if we can strive towards that and it is a constantly move we target and it requires constant work but if we can all strive towards that then uh the entire ecosystem will become that much more healthier and uh the next point i would uh cite is respect i spoke about it very briefly earlier uh mutual respect for our consumers for our ecosystem and you know if we do that and with respect obviously you can only get respect when you hold yourself accountable that to my mind would be key Vishal yeah yeah i kind of if we uh see when when you look at it right our ecosystem consists of multiple players right so there is there are the publishers there are the advertisers there are agencies there's tech partners and so on so forth and i think when you talk about respect and uh transparency it has to be across all the people who are connected in the entire ecosystem and the challenge is basically when you look at uh fraud and you know mobility to a large extent also uh the publishers tend tends to kind of gain from it let's be honest about it okay and and as a result of which it's it's very difficult and that's that's the reason why the industry has not seen a solution for so many years right of for the longest time my uh general belief right and i've been doing a lot of research on this and and i honestly feel that uh one way to solve this problem uh and i think seven days back also to my uh you know to my belief basically there was a report which was published by uh Erneston Young which talked about how blockchain can at least be the kind of solution to this right because it looks at standardization across all the three all all the ecosystem all the partners across the journey and it looks at standardization also of identity across each part elements basically and that's where uh you know you can bring the element of trust and respect and transparency basically and i think uh to me and my and my hope uh is is basically that we will move towards an industry where we can implement uh the solution of this manner where there is some level of standardization that can translate into a respect and transparency Richira would you want to that give the after two industry heavyweights you're making me go next uh but yeah i think like she'd like Vishal and Divya said transparency let's have the uncomfortable conversations let's be honest uh Vishal you put a number on bots right who talks about it when you make a media let's be honest about the fact that this is what you've got we need to we need to go up against it sometimes and i'm not one for making bodies and legislations and everything but look what's happened with the paid tag for influencer advertising suddenly you're going to find a completely different universe right operating over there in a sense we need to do the same thing which is to actually call out and and maybe it needs body it maybe it needs the coming together of you know big uh you know heavyweights in the media industry including for example a forum like yours to say this is what you should do because otherwise the medium itself goes down the tube right so i think that's what what that's one big thing to your point on what do i to look forward to a lot there's a lot of innovation coming in here i mean i'm looking forward to shopical content i'm looking into i'm looking forward to content integrations and into how i can market more accurately to people who really want to hear my message i don't want to talk to people who are not interested and we're going to mute the damn thing you know sorry during a program and then walk out of the room right that's wasted media so i'm looking forward the bat because that can drive it can be good for small brands it can be good for big brands i mean everyone benefits from that universe so there's a lot to look forward to but we need to have the honest conversation first otherwise you're going to be condemning this whole you know and every time you have a conversation with someone they'll say yeah you know great great regional campaign but have all those and that's a kind of conversation you typically have so yeah alvin well i i think it's the time for uh you know much more transparency i would say for me that's the theme uh and given the trust you know consumers uh brands uh agencies uh publishers etc have kind of placed on this medium they all place have placed a huge bet on the medium right uh and rightly so uh but i think it's a need for there's a need for transparency in terms of metrics in terms of who you are serving the ad to and so on so forth uh and just connecting it to one of the questions you asked earlier uh you know uh nazi i uh i would say while the ecosystem has the responsibility everyone in the ecosystem have a responsibility uh much of it uh starts with marketeers asking the right questions right so uh you know if you look at the latest tools and techniques that are needed to do the right thing in the space in terms of measurement control ad fraud less than 10 percent of marketeers uh use those tools and techniques right uh which which means we have a long long way to go so marketeers the owners are marketeers to ask the right questions which means they need to be updated on the top topic uh and they ask the partners the right questions and then the whole kind of chain moves in that direction uh i think that's where i would put the owners uh and uh and of course then the ecosystem have to be equipped to kind of give the right answers uh you know uh from a perspective of transparency i think that's that's very important uh else very soon uh there would be questions on roi uh and uh if there is any doubt on those roi's uh the faith in digitalism medium there is a risk that is shaken hi i would i would just uh say the same things that everybody has said i think number one asking the right questions as a marketeer you know absolutely i remember very few actually um look at uh digital as atl you know we still kind of talk into you know these are the five different mediums and hey digital it is actually more precision marketing through a very uh combined way of communicating um and it is not creative which is driving actually it's data and audience which is driving our communication plan so data becomes important for us education around how this digital ecosystem works is critical number one number two like divya mentioned and and uh you know richard i mentioned as well it's about conversations the publisher is really understanding the key parameters having constant reports and reviews to be able to track and take corrective actions and third is i think more importantly self-regulation i think from a publisher's perspective i see that happening in otts right now self-regulation is also very important i think that's an responsibility and accountability that most of us have to enforce or take on ourselves to make sure that you know we're delivering the best content for the consumer at the end of the day the consumer is a winner right and they are the ones who give us the bread and butter so if they are not happy we are not happy that's a reality that we need to address that's okay if you can give us some final solutions and you know what what should be the way forward i think all of us have spoken uh ever wanted right there is nothing beyond this uh right uh it starts with asking hard questions uh making all the stakeholders accountable uh right we as a marketers uh so so we are i believe that uh marketers they have the fundamental right to get clean media right if they're buying and paying for impression that needs to be a quality impression right nobody wants nobody wants to pay for a impression or a non-brand setting impression or a unviable impression right we all want quality media so it needs to be a fundamental right and it needs to be measured and it needs to be reported and if it's not being measured then i think that should be the first step right that should be the first step uh for any digital strategy because if you're not qualifying the audiences then all the dollars that you have spent on building digital experiences CRM personalization advocacy probably will go for a toss because you're not getting the right footfall in first place on your on your web assets so uh so so we probably uh indicate and that's where we talk to clients saying that you start with quality media uh evaluating media uh and i agree with sriram right you need to ask hard questions and make publishers they will see as well as players like us accountable and answerable for uh for everything that's getting reported and act on it um and to deliver better ROI uh you know the quality inventory is a must right quality impression is a must uh yeah and and probably that's where we can all start uh with asking right questions and evaluating the building that we're buying i would request michael if if we can email these questions there's a lot of questions that have come into all of you and if you can take out a few minutes to respond you know over the email and we can give the answers to our viewers so because right now we are completely out of time we've already exceeded two minutes and i i think that only asked you for your one hour so we'll not stretch it beyond thank you very much for joining i hope you all are more transparent with each other going forward i mean that's what i've understood uh that you know you all need to be transparent with each other and us also so thank you again for joining and uh for all the insight and i uh this panel was brought to you uh with by e-forum with association with double verify and uh i hope to see you all again so thank you very much thanks thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you everyone take care