Mumbai: Astus Group has made its spectacular entrance in India in the dynamic world of media trading and advertising, bringing with it a variety of ground-breaking methods and unique ideas. It will be spearheaded by Sparsh Ganguli, who joins as India head and has over 25 years’ experience working for agencies and media houses.
Originally founded in London in 2003, the company has presence in 20 countries with over 300 clients and trades over US$400m annually. Astus Group is poised to transform how companies traverse the media trading landscape by providing a full range of services that enable brands to expand their reach, engage their target audiences, and maximise their advertising expenditures.
Before we jump more into details, let’s get a basic idea of the functioning of a media trading company. This form of business entity operates in the media industry and specialises in buying, selling, and trading various forms of media assets. They do this by acquiring media inventory at a lower cost and then selling or trading it to advertisers, agencies, or other media companies at a higher price, thereby generating revenue and maximising profitability.
For the business and the country’s advertising sector, its arrival into the Indian market represents a critical turning point. Businesses in India are becoming more aware of the critical role that media trading plays.
Astus plans to invest multi – million dollars in India and expects a turnover of three million US Dollars in the next one year.
Indiantelevision.com caught up with Astus joint chairman & founders Frances Dickens and Paul Jackson along with Ganguli to know the further plans and goals of the company that entered India for the very first time.
Edited excerpts
On seeing India in the global market today for Astus to enter India
Dickens: India is going to be incredibly important to us. We see that it will probably become our third most important market after the UK and Australia, where we’ve been established for 20 years and 12 years respectively. We think India has such an opportunity, and quickly become our third market. I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t overtake Australia, very quickly as well. For us, getting somebody with Sparsh’s reputation and experience was critical. I don’t think we would have had the same confidence as we do now. So I’m excited about it.
Jackson: I think it’s all about the team as well, because we’re not a media agency, we have to work with the media agencies. So those media agencies need to be confident that the person they’re dealing with in Astus, understands their world, and what they’re trying to do for their clients. Also then we need to work with the media owners, TV stations and other media partners. Those guys must want to deal with someone who understands their business that’s familiar to them. So getting the right person was the key. I think, being part of the JV, we were very fortunate to have worked with Sparsh over that period. It’s obvious that it was allocated to him as part of his role because he was in a good position to understand the media trading side of the business, but also how it can be applied to clients. Essentially what we’re doing is allowing clients to part-pay for their advertising using products or services.
But there is a media trading behind that that has to be understood and has to complement what the media agencies are doing as well. So although we’ve learned we’re not a JV with GroupM anymore, we very much want to be with their preferred partner in this business. But we also want to be able to go and talk to Omnicom and Dentsu, where we do a lot of business in the other markets. So we want to be able to complement that as well. Some global brands have been saying to us, we want to work with you in India, we couldn’t do it previously, because we could only work within GroupM and these brands were outside of that portfolio. So that’s why we think there’s a big opportunity for us, but obviously, we’re not just charging in and making a big noise and messing everything up. We’d love to do it with slow and steady growth.
One of the things that we were saying before about our USP, it is all about accountability. I think that there are other trading models in India, contra trading and things like that. But sometimes that relies on the client being flexible with what they do with their product and the media that they get delivered. What we’re saying to the client is that your media plan is 100 per cent the same as if you’re paying cash, we don’t want to change that as your agency is in control of that. In terms of your product, when you brief us on that product, we will come back with a solution that will be contractually bound that will essentially mean if we take that product and sell it anywhere, you know exactly where it’s going, which secondary retail outlets it might end up in, because most of the time they’ll end up delivering that product to the unused So, what we’re trying to do is take away any uncertainty from media trading deals, so we can say to the client that it is guaranteed, this is what’s going to happen to your product and your media will be the same as it was before.
On the elaboration of media trading in the media buying space
Ganguli: If you look at media trading in a very conceptual way, how it is perceived when you buy media in bulk, you get it cheaper than what the normal cost would be and then it is sold to individual clients at various prices. When you’re selling it to various clients, you have a margin in between that’s what it’s called trading, on one hand, you’re buying and on the other hand you’re selling it and making a margin. Now, this is a traditional media trading which is happening across India by various agencies.
When it’s trading, the value which is brought in, whatever the client’s price is, that value is given back to the client. Let’s say I have a huge media pool. Out of that X amount of media is a client requirement. So, when a brand buys an X amount of extra media from us, there is value. This value can be used across various mediums depending on what the brand’s requirements are, and some products can also be offloaded. The extra media the brand has can be used for activation etc., which earlier was not possible.
On the business model and the main categories, Astus Group works in
Jackson: The client needs to spend on media because media is where we create value. It could be across cars, it could be across travel, hotels. Hotels are particularly good and if there are empty rooms, that’s wasted revenue. If they give it to us, and we use it and turn it into media space, they get value for it. Sometimes it’s about unsold inventory. There has to be a commitment from the hotel, and then we try and bring them over or increase the volume over a while. Or we might bring them a big corporate client that they didn’t have which helps to increase their overall yield at that particular property. So it’s often about listening to the client, but the key thing is they have to have a media spend.
We know our business as a media trading business, so they need to be spending on digital or TV or print media and outdoor. The key thing is they have a media plan and budget. Then there are so many different ways we can apply that value and it can be goods and services, FMCG or white goods products, Auto etc. We’ve done deals with clients where we’ve taken bands in payment, which we then traded those brands on to a broadcaster who uses it as per their needs. So there’s a benefit for that broadcaster because they offset hard cash costs.
When we get under the skin of it, and we get to talk to the client about what their wishes are, we can put together a more bespoke deal. But then also, one of the brands that want to come into India is a brand we’ve been working with since 2004. They have done a multitude of different deals, and given us access to their product, and we have helped them with product launches, by placing it at events etc.
At one point, we were taking more products from another major supermarket chain, we launched their product at sporting events which got them the visuals and publicity and PR. This links in with the activation. This is the way we like to see that we work with clients on an ongoing basis, we create a lot of value every year, and the brand can decide what to do.
On the challenges to be faced in India
Ganguli: To my knowledge, I have not come across any group or any company in India that is doing the same model. Media trade, almost all agencies across India are doing it but not in the way we do media trading. So it’s very new and I don’t find any challenge very honestly, as of now, in India,
Dickens: We have the luxury of testing the Indian market. We know there’s a demand for it. I think it is a sign of his confidence in this model that he has left GroupM after a long tenure to join us and set up Astus in India.
On the immediate focus and objective of the company
Ganguli: Our first objective would be that we’re working with GroupM, and we will extend our service to other agencies. We need to have our inventory and that would be the second phase for Astus. Once this grows in shape and size, probably we need to also grow in terms of our manpower, we’re here and I’m sure in a couple of years I want to see Astus offices across India, that would be the third phase of my vision very honestly.
On the media spends during the festive season followed by the Asia Cup and ICC World Cup
Ganguli: It’s the right time that we have entered the Indian market because all the other strains will probably happen, let’s say, August, or September onwards, the planning is on right now. As we’re entering the market at this point, independently, we will be part of that. We are very optimistic about the festive season. This year, probably going to be good, even the monsoon is quite good. Everything seems to be quite positive. It couldn’t have been better than this time, very honestly, to enter this market. And as I said, if you’re looking at the sectors, the FMCG would be booming now and we would be cashing it in. The automobile, is on a positive note at this point in India. So I think that’s another sector we will be looking into.
On the question of linear and connected TV as the spends being divided between traditional medium & Digital
Jackson: We’ve invested in businesses that actually plan and buy connected TV as well, but that’s from a London perspective in new start-ups. So we see that that’s the future of media marketing and we have got our own Astus marketplace SSP, which we can connect into agencies DSP, and trade through that model across digital because we don’t trade with Meta. Meta has always had a fairly bullish attitude towards media agencies and clients and to be fair, so we don’t trade with them. But we can trade across the rest of the market in sort of a protected marketplace.
We have a digital offering, which we’re not looking to roll out immediately because we know there are other opportunities we can dive into straightaway. But later on in the first year, we hope to be doing a lot of digital. We have invested in a company called Lightbox. They’re based in London at the moment, they’re a start-up tech business, they offer a connected TV planning tool, which essentially means you can go to one place to plan all of your TV requirements, and it’s similar to Fincast, which is limited to GroupM clients.
