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Tag: Affle

  • Affle’s programmatic platform Jampp releases iOS SKAdNetwork 4.0 Guide

    Affle’s programmatic platform Jampp releases iOS SKAdNetwork 4.0 Guide

    Mumbai: Jampp, a leading programmatic mobile marketing company that helps mobile app  advertisers acquire and re-engage their users has recently launched an iOS SKAdNetwork 4.0 Guide to  help APAC App Marketers scale their business on Apple devices. This latest guide aims to empower  advertisers across APAC markets with valuable insights and strategies to fully leverage SKAdNetwork  4.0 for driving privacy-centric app growth for their Apple iOS apps.

    According to the industry average, in India, only 36 per cent of users allow advertisers to track their IDFA  data, which suggests that marketers who choose not to test SKAdNetwork are potentially failing to  reach over 60 per cent of their iOS users. Conversely, ambitious advertisers investing in SKAN campaigns are  already seeing positive results, securing full coverage of their iOS audience and achieving enhanced  campaign performance.

    Over the past years, Apple devices have been expanding their presence in APAC, the leading  smartphone market in the world. This year, India notably joined China and Japan securing their  position within Apple’s top 5 iPhone markets. Given the top-tier nature of iOS devices and premium  users, their direct contribution to in-app transactions and revenue surpasses their device market  share across various markets. However, effective advertising on iOS has become a challenge for App  Marketers after the introduction of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework in 2021.  This privacy-focused initiative limits user data tracking for mobile marketing, which brings difficulties  in serving personalized ads, as well as accurately understanding campaign ROI.

    In the context of ATT, Apple released SKAdNetwork, an attribution solution for users who opt out of  being tracked by advertisers and Jampp’s latest guide will help advertisers navigate SKAdNetwork  4.0 and come up with the best solution to measure and optimize the impact of their iOS campaigns.  

    The guide covers a full overview of how Apple’s ATT is impacting app growth strategies across the  digital industry and the opportunities SKAdNetwork provides. It also features detailed insights from  expert voices in the industry, such as Affle’s Anuj Kumar, M&C Saatchi Performance’s Roshat Adnani, MicroAd’s Yuki Kubota, and BIGO LIVE’s Jane Zhi.

    Jampp, which was acquired by global technology company Affle in 2021 offers a programmatic mobile  advertising platform used by leading app marketers to acquire new users and drive repeat usage and  transactions with existing users. The company’s deep focus on leveraging unique contextual and  behavioural signals to deliver in-app engagements has helped it drive incremental growth for top  marketers in North America, LATAM, APAC and many other markets. 

  • The CTV India market maybe small, but it surely packs a big punch: mediasmart’s Nikhil Kumar

    The CTV India market maybe small, but it surely packs a big punch: mediasmart’s Nikhil Kumar

    With the changing digital landscape, consumers are warming up to connected TVs (CTVs) like never before. As Indian audiences increasingly embrace OTT content while gradually making the shift from traditional linear TV viewing, the change also presents an untapped advertising goldmine for brands and advertisers alike.

    On the sidelines of the Indian Digital Brand Fest organised by Indiantelevision.com, we caught up with mediasmart vice-president of India & SEA Nikhil Kumar, an Affle company, to understand how advertisers can buckle up to face this new beast in advertising. Last year, mediasmart commissioned research that helped understand the CTV behaviour patterns in India to provide greater market understanding. With mediasmart recently releasing its latest industry report on the CTV ecosystem in India that would help fast-track the growth of this industry, we take a deep dive into some of the underlying challenges and come away with some key takeaways.

    Kumar, a consumer marketing professional with over a decade of experience working in FMCG , retail, F&B, and ad-tech set-ups with global brands like TikTok, Puma, L’Oreal, Cafe Coffee Day, and InMobi, is extremely bullish about the current and future role of CTV as a medium for delivering impact for brands. He believes that CTV consumption today goes beyond the inhibitions of individual consumption on mobile screens and probably also brings back the family-viewing phenomenon of linear television, but with very measurable metrics of targeting and delivery.

    In an in-depth interaction with Indiantelevision.com, Kumar also talks about his journey from primarily marketing brands spread across the consumer goods sector, food retail, and sports & wellness, to now navigating the ad-tech space. While managing marketing for multiple brands, there were great learnings towards understanding consumer behaviour and sentiments, advertising objectives, media channel goals and analysis, and so forth. What I have really enjoyed after switching sides and working within ad-tech/mar-tech set-ups is the understanding of how each dollar spent is effectively reaching or not reaching the intended consumer. More importantly, the journey from ad exposure to intended purchase & the continued lifetime journey are built on strong data tech stacks with due diligence on consumer privacy. So for me, the whole journey from the brand side to now the adtech side has been an immense learning curve.”

    My learning, which I often share with my team, is—”Never sell the product, sell the insight—sell the solution to the problem that the marketer is intending to solve—that’ll bring better adoption for your offering,” shares Kumar.

    Edited excerpts:

    On why advertisers are cautious adapting to the CTV medium, despite the rapid adoption of it by consumers

    We live in an era that can be defined as pre-covid and post-covid. Covid played a huge catalyst in the growth of connected TVs as people realised that they could view the same content they see on their mobiles on a bigger screen via connected TV , thereby providing a better experience.

    For advertisers, the caution is actually natural, primarily because of the newness of the medium—connected TV & the scale/reach it brings from a planning lens. I think the hesitancy could also be derived from not understanding whether CTV reach spend should be bucketed under offline or digital spend, because it’s still TV and that’s well covered by most large spenders.

    Most large traditional advertisers feel they are already advertising on TV to a much more mass audience on broadcast, so why do they need to spend extra to advertise on CTV?

    When CTV started getting sold in India as an inventory for monetisation, it was being talked about as a digital medium. But then they are doing enough advertising for OTT already on mobile. And suddenly there’s this new accessibility for users via CTV. So you have to educate them that OTT is not CTV. The subset of CTV can be OTT, but that’s not the totality of it. There’s so much more that you can do on CTV, like play games, watch live news, etc., which led to its phenomenal growth. I think brands and advertisers, rather than being hesitant, are becoming more inquisitive.

    A year back, there was hesitancy, which has turned to inquisitiveness, and today, if you look at it, it’s a Fomo (Fear of missing out) created for every media planner or agency owing to the scale of CTV growth globally. If they don’t have CTV as a top priority, clearly it’s a miss. Even the agencies catering to smaller brands from tier II and tier III categories feel the need to hop onto the CTV bandwagon. More so because of the sheer pressure that the clients are creating on how to get their brand’s ads on the medium. Because that is where their audience is, watching their content.

    On whether the decline of DTH and linear TV viewing is leading to the spurt in CTV or vice versa

    It’s important to understand that sometimes users weren’t even contributing to DTH for them to decline from the database. These are the cord-nevers beyond the cord cutters.

    Suddenly, people are realising that the decline of DTH doesn’t mean the growth of CTV. Yes, it does imply that. But connected TV by itself as a base is growing. There’s a section of consumers who have never had a cable/DTH connection (cord-nevers), who bought a smart TV and immediately connected it to the internet and started watching it.

    Advertisers are also understanding that some of the audiences they want to reach out to are not there on TV. Thus, more than being hesitant, I think they are convincing themselves that this is a medium that’s creating more impact and providing a way to reach audiences they can’t reach otherwise on TV.

    Around 2.5 million DTH and cable subscribers have declined in the past two years or so, while comparatively, nine million wired broadband subscribers have increased. According to these two data points, the home wifi/broadband ecosystem is growing. There’s an accessibility to TV, while at the same time, there’s a decline in DTH, and last but not least, there’s suddenly a growth pattern in the availability of content. The number of OTTs that are available in the market is not just restricted to Hotstar, Netflix, Amazon, Sony, Zee, and Mx Player. There are 40 plus OTT players today—vernacular, regional, multi-lingual, event dialect-specific OTTs—there’s so much happening in the space.

    We have recently released a report titled “India CTV Report 2022,” which is one of the most comprehensive reports on this subject. Last year, when we first released it, it became a bespoke reference point for most avid marketers and media houses. This year, we did a very interesting comparison of the prices that you are paying. A comparison of the cost of these OTTs versus the average price of a DTH plan has not been put into perspective . If you compare the prices, it is actually not that expensive. So you can have all the content from around the world that you want to see at a price that is affordable. These are some of the factors that are really contributing to the growth of the connected television market in the country.

    And it’s not restricted to Gen-Z or millennial users, as we realised from our survey report. In our first-party survey covering a diverse audience segment across metros and non-metros, we realised more than 84 per cent claimed to be watching CTV with someone in the household rather than alone, similar to the TV broadcast era, in which family viewing was the dominant form of consumption. The TV broadcast era was followed by the era of mobile phones, which meant we went from a family viewing/co-viewing to a personalised content consumption experience on our mobile devices. This received a huge boost with the Jio revolution from 2016 onwards. And now, in a post-pandemic era, the connect TV experience has brought everybody back together for co-viewing, implying we have come full circle, but now with a way to answer the question: what happened after the TV ad was served?

    On how can agencies & advertisers overcome the lack of standard industry metrics- one of the key reasons limiting faster advertiser adoption of CTV

    There are always challenges related to a new medium in how measurability is going to happen. In fact, globally, one of the reports released recently claimed that there’s massive ad fraud happening already within the CTV space globally. If you see, most of the OTTs are owned by large broadcast networks. The OTT, or the platform, is evaluating the user reach and where your ads were served, along with who saw them. How does one evaluate ad fraud, which is obviously a difficult area?

    This is where programmatic advertising is becoming more and more important for advertisers, because for them it’s not important where the ad is shown, it’s more important to whom the ad is shown. The idea is to target audiences as opposed to targeting platforms where your ad is running, and hence, targeting the same user across multiple platforms becomes possible.

    Additionally, programmatic advertising provides transparency. You can access the dashboard. You can see the ads getting served, what time they were served, how they were served, which audience segments they were served to, and which audiences are engaging with them. Today we have technology where you can map a TV to a device id on a mobile phone. Hence the intuitive understanding that “this is the guy who has a TV at home; this is the device ID so I can continue the lifetime journey of engaging with that consumer either on his TV or on his mobile.”

    Technologies like ours are building that trust so that while currently there’s no measurement for what can happen on TV, you can link that journey to a user on their mobile where all possible mobile measurement options exist.

    And you can control it because it’s digital. So we know who saw the ad. Because you can track it down to a TV, to a location, to the size of a TV, to a certain household. So many data points can come up. You can target users by the size of the screen, by location, etc.—so many targeting options are available because of the digital nature of the medium. Hence, the trackability of success is also there. And hence, it’s clearly an impactful medium.

    On some of the underlying challenges & emerging trends in advertising on CTV in the domestic market

    So challenges can also be opportunities, and some of them we saw were in education, as India is still a market with high spending on traditional platforms like TV and print. We need to focus on educating advertisers and agencies on how CTV, as a digital medium, is a growing channel and an incremental reach medium at that. For instance, the festive season this time is all going to be about going back to retail, OOH, a massive print spend, and a big burst on television across brands. But, was your brand able to reach the users on CTV where they are most engaged and spend close to 4 hours a day? If not, you have clearly missed an opportunity. So that’s the first challenge in the ecosystem’s education.

    If we talk about trends, the growing trend is that gaming has grown by leaps and bounds on CTV and is going to become a destination. Another major trend is programmatic advertising via CTV to avoid spillovers. We are a country that does almost 60 per cent of media buying directly as opposed to 40 per cent programmatically. But how do you integrate the user’s journey across multiple ecosystems and screens that he operates on into one experience? That’s where programmatic advertising comes into the picture, which can help you build a unified view of the consumer.

    On how can marketers maximise viewer engagement on ads and improve the ad viewing experience for users on CTV?

    That’s an interesting premise because on CTV there are multiple ecosystems that clearly users spend time on—there is the OTT or on-demand content ecosystem, and the other is user-generated content (UGC) platforms. Beyond this, we also have news, gaming, and music, which are growing very fast.

    What does a user tend to do when they see an ad on a UGC platform? They are more likely to skip it since the 20-or 30-second ad in a three-minute video is more of a distraction.

    The user’s behaviour on on-demand OTT is observed to be very different, where on average they spend anywhere between 30 mins and an hour watching their favourite on-demand show or movie. The user is committed to spending a longer time there and hence doesn’t mind watching a 20-second ad here. Another thing to note here is that, as per the Ormax OTT Audience Report: 2022, only 31 per cent of India’s digital video audience is paid users, while the remaining 69 per cent is an advertising-based video-on-demand (AVoD) audience. Clearly, a huge chunk of the audience is reachable via ads on OTT and CTV.

    Also, CTV, with its immersive brand storytelling on the large screen, along with the ability to connect the journey from TV to mobile, can create an ecosystem that enables a user to retain the ad better for all kinds of segments like beauty, cosmetics, auto, FMCG, e-commerce, app-first etc. Ad retention and a CTA (call to action) created via omnichannel audience targeting, CTV household sync, and drive-to-store technologies enable users to act upon the ad that they have seen. Because at the end of the day, what is advertising for if not to act upon it?

    On how does the India market differ from the US and European markets in this aspect

    From a CTV advertising standpoint, I think the US and Europe are more evolved markets. They saw the trend almost three to four years ago. In the US, almost 90 per cent of households have at least one CTV device—clearly, it is a highly evolved CTV market. Besides, non-pay TV households are set to exceed pay TV households by 2023, indicating cord cutting and cord nevers are on the rise in the US.

    The European Union is very similar, though it obviously has GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) laws and other regulations that affect how users are tracked. But in both global markets, the share of CTV impressions is growing really fast. In fact, in the US, the share of CTV impressions has exceeded the share of mobile, which has skewed the global average as well, in favour of CTV. If you look at the US, CTV ad spending will touch almost 10 per cent of the total ad spending by 2024. And within that high share, most ads are being transacted programmatically, not even direct buys. They have moved from a system dealing with multiple publishers. So, that’s the evolution and mindset that we are moving towards.

    If you compare it to India, it’s a very small market in terms of adoption. It’s been just two years since we started CTV advertising. So it’s early days, but last year we grew almost 30-40 per cent. We have seen the CTV reach go from six million to nine million and now to 14 million, and the pace is only increasing Q-o-Q. So, while the size of the market is small today, the adoption rate is very high in the domestic market. CTV penetration is growing really fast, and we predict that it will be 40–50 million by 2025. So, even though the Indian market is small, it is surely packing a big punch. CTVs are here to stay and grow.

  • Affle board appoints four additional directors

    Affle board appoints four additional directors

    Mumbai: Technology company Affle on Monday announced the appointment of four additional directors to its board. The new members include independent director Lay See Tan, executive director Vipul Kedia, non-executive director Noelia Amoedo and non-executive director Elad Natanson.

    Vipul Kedia has been associated with Affle for 16 years and is currently serving as chief data and platforms officer and head of MAAS Platform in India.

    Noelia Amoedo is the founder and CEO of mediasmart, now part of the Affle Group. She has extensive experience in mobile, internet and social media, with a proven track record of developing profitable businesses from scratch in international markets.

    Lay See Tan is a seasoned finance professional who has served as CFO of public-listed companies on Singapore Stock Exchange, NASDAQ and led hyper growth tech start-ups across various industries.

    Elad Natanson is the CEO of Appnext, now part of Affle group and has been at the forefront of mobile and internet innovation for more than 20 years evangelising several companies in the digital sphere.

    With this, Affle’s board will now comprise 10 directors led by an independent non-executive chairman and will include four women directors. The additions are designed to support Affle’s accelerated growth momentum, provide greater accountability to the senior leadership and reflect upon the company’s commitment to maintain highest standards of corporate governance with enhanced depth of expertise.

    Affle non-executive chairman and independent director Bijynath said, “I am pleased to welcome new directors to the board where their years of invaluable experience, skills and diversity of opinion will help us on our journey ahead. This will further enhance our overall corporate governance, risk management processes & thought leadership enabling holistic organisational development and sustainable value creation for all our stakeholders.”

    Affle managing director and CEO Anuj Khanna Sohum said, “These appointments come at a time when we are amidst our accelerated growth trajectory, embarking on several innovations and I am elated to welcome the directors joining our board at such a pivotal phase of Affle. The directors’ unique and entrepreneurial perspective will further augment our strategic differentiation, global market position following the highest levels of transparency and governance. We look forward to leveraging their scientific and strategic expertise while keenly promoting our Affle 2.0 culture of diversity, equity and inclusion across the organisation including at our board of directors.”

  • Affle Q3 results: Reports revenue growth of 125.5% y-o-y

    Affle Q3 results: Reports revenue growth of 125.5% y-o-y

    Mumbai: Affle (India) has reported a strong performance for Q3 FY2022 with a consolidated revenue from operations of Rs 339.4 crores, an increase in revenue of 125.5 per cent y-o-y from Rs 150.5 crores in Q3 last year.

    The consumer intelligence-driven global technology company announced the results for the third quarter and nine months ended 31  December 2021.

    EBITDA was at Rs 67.7 crores, an increase of 76.4 per cent y-o-y. PAT increased by 102.6 per cent y-o-y to Rs 62.1 crores from Rs 30.6 crores in Q3 last year. This growth was broad-based coming from both CPCU business and Non-CPCU business, across India & International markets.

    For 9M FY2022, consolidated revenue was at Rs 766.6 crores, an increase of 104.3 per cent y-o-y. EBITDA was at Rs. 154.8 crores, an increase of 62.4 per cent y-o-y. PAT increased by 90.6% y-o-y to Rs. 145.4 crores and PAT margin stood at 18.0 per cent. 

    The CPCU business continued the growth momentum delivering 5.8 crores of converted users in Q3 FY2022, an increase of 91.2 per cent y-o-y and taking the total converted users delivered in 9M FY2022 to 13.9 crores. The top industry verticals for the company continued to be high growth, helping it register a strong performance in this quarter, it said in a statement.

  • Advertisers are closing the gap between TV and mobile advertising: mediasmart’s Nikhil Kumar

    Advertisers are closing the gap between TV and mobile advertising: mediasmart’s Nikhil Kumar

    Mumbai: The growth of Connected TV adoption in India fuelled by affordable internet and smart TVs and availability of a range of streaming devices has opened the floodgates for newer technologies of content monetisation, digital/programmatic advertising and viewership measurement.

    In our continued effort to unravel the complexities of this space, this interview with Nikhil Kumar, who is currently heading the business of India and Southeast Asia for mediasmart – an Affle company, throws light on the Household Sync technology pioneered by the organisation and emerging digital advertising trends in the country.

    Kumar is a consumer marketing professional with over a decade of experience working in FMCG, retail, F&B and ad-tech set-ups with global brands like Puma, L’Oreal, Cafe Coffee Day and more recently Bytedance and InMobi. He was recognised as one of India’s Most innovative Mar-Tech leaders in 2019 by World Marketing Congress. With a career spanning over 14 years, he has worked across multiple functions with his domain expertise primarily being brand marketing (digital & offline), business strategy/ sales and go-to market plan/ execution across consumer goods, retail and start-up ecosystem.

    In his recent roles, Kumar has spearheaded business functions across India, SEA, and EU.

    Edited Excerpts

    On the adoption of CTV viewing in India viz-a-viz global CTV landscape

    Connected TV and CTV advertising are both fairly well-known and penetrated categories in the western markets, especially the United States. India has started well on consumer adoption of CTV and cheaper Smart TVs, Dongles and data plans together with compelling content propositions of leading OTT players are only going to accelerate this change going forward. As consumers have started to spend more time on this device or content format, ad dollars should also eventually move in this direction.

    The India market is expected to see growth for both subscriber-funded SVOD content and advertiser-funded AVOD content on CTV. We thus remain bullish on this opportunity and see India as a key market for the CTV business.

    On CTV opportunities for brands in India and the segments that will benefit the most

    The world is moving towards immersive watching experiences and CTV is an exciting space to be in. Industry observers are keenly following how India’s multi-screen viewing habits are shaping up. CTV has already made a significant impact on the digital advertising industry in the western part of the world and India is following suit. It is interesting to watch leading advertisers across verticals within the country adopt CTV advertising as a critical new addition to their media mix. It is here to stay. While CTV advertising is relevant for all categories active on TV and/or Digital, we expect the maximum impact of our interactive Household Sync augmented CTV advertising to be for categories looking for instant engagement like mobile apps led categories, consumer electronics, fashion etc. 

    On Household Sync Technology and how it can help brands with their digital ad campaigns

    Though programmatic CTV ads have been available in the industry, advertisers can drive interactivity with follow-up household synced mobile ads. This is where mediasmart’s advanced industry-first Household Sync technology helps in taking the advantage of CTV even further. It makes ads more engaging by syncing CTV ad campaigns with ads on other connected devices in the same household. CTV ads can thus be made significantly more relevant by personalising them for specific audiences within the household. This brings together the twin strengths of engaging storytelling associated with TV and CTV advertising and brands can launch CTV campaigns to a specific audience in the same household, measure results, and drive them to the nearest store. It uses fresh data for each campaign and is based on IP addresses, which undergo several layers of validation.

    On the reach and user base of CTV in India

    CTV, which was until recently seen as an alternative to linear TV, has emerged from the shadows and into the spotlight on how audiences consume content. The pandemic has further accelerated the shift in viewing habits as more and more people stayed indoors accepting the “new normal” and taking to CTV as a common entertainment source for families to enjoy together. Of course, the increasing internet speeds and better access to internet-enabled devices have also contributed in many ways to the recent growth of CTV.

    As per the India CTV Report 2021, CTV viewing in India is on a significant uptick and increased by 31 per cent. Globally, while CTV viewing increased by 81 per cent, India is still a young market with tremendous potential for CTV adoption by consumers. In April 2020, 21 per cent of CTV viewing households were cord-cutters (households who cut the cord within the past five years), whereas 22 per cent were cord-nevers (households with no cable/satellite subscription in the past five years).

    On emerging digital advertising trends in India

    Connected TV & OTT – CTV & OTT apps across devices, which were until recently seen as an alternative to linear TV, have emerged from the shadows and into the spotlight on how audiences consume content. The pandemic has further accelerated the shift in viewing habits and contributed to its recent growth due to an increase in internet speeds and better access to internet-enabled devices.

    Multi-screen audience targeting and attribution – Advertisers are closing the gap between TV and mobile advertising by targeting ads and taking advantage of multi-screen environments.

    Privacy and personalisation – There is an increasing demand for data privacy and for a more personalised ad experience, so brands have to play a balancing act to offer relevant experiences through data-driven advertising while also respecting privacy choices at the same time.

    Digital Out of Home (DOOH) – DOOH with its programmatic capabilities, which can automate OOH advertising, is expected to grow because COVID-induced confinements have accelerated the adoption of digital and programmatic methods in the OOH space.

    Mobile measurement – It has been defined this year by the changes in privacy settings announced by Apple with the launch of iOS 14. Incremental app marketing has been a buzzword in the industry for some time, but as advertisers lose access to attribution level data in a considerable percentage of their target audience, measuring the incremental impact of advertising actions should become a reality to more and more advertisers.

  • OACT2021: The evolution of Connected TV in India

    OACT2021: The evolution of Connected TV in India

    Mumbai: The addressable connected TV (CTV) advertising universe is estimated at six to eight million, according to mediasmart, an Affle company, India and SEA, senior director- brand and strategy Nikhil Kumar.  The CTV evolution has arrived in India. Today, you can easily join the CTV ecosystem via a smart TV, dongle, gaming console, or connected set-top-box (STB).

    Kumar was addressing the ‘OTT Advertising and Connected TV Summit 2021’ organised by Indiantelevision.com on 7 October. The two-day event is co-powered by mediasmart, an Affle company and summit partner – The Q. Stakeholders across the industry engaged in insightful discussions on the dynamics of OTT and CTV advertising.

    The growth of CTV in India is driven by several factors. Chinese manufacturers have played a pivotal role by introducing low-cost smart TVs for as much as Rs 15,000. Low-cost dongles like Amazon Firestick and Google Chromecast are popular ways to access web content. Jio has led the adoption of connected STBs. These technologies have driven the penetration of the CTV market to a point where you don’t necessarily have to be from a metro or Tier-1 city to be a part of the CTV ecosystem. According to a report by Counterpoint Research, India’s smart TV market saw 65 per cent year-on-year growth in Q2 2021 due to increasing demand.

    Some may conflate over-the-top platforms with CTV but they are completely different ecosystems. While OTT can be seen as a subset of the CTV ecosystem, its journey began almost two decades back with Netflix. Certainly, a majority of the usage on CTV is driven by OTT viewing. A report indicates that 91 per cent of users watch movies on CTV, there is also a small but growing audience that is listening to music, playing games, and catching up on the news.

    “CTV is reaching an incremental base of evolved users who have come into the ecosystem to enjoy everything that the internet has to offer,” said Kumar, adding that the pandemic has played the role of a catalyst for CTV.

    “People confined at homes realised that linear TV was mundane because of repeated content and were looking at new ways to entertain themselves,” he added. It helped that India has the cheapest data costs in the world at $ 0.09 per Gb. A survey showed that 78 per cent of smart TV users were accessing the internet via direct apps instead of search and discovery platforms.

    Even though the base of CTV was nascent compared to other media, mediasmart was excited to tap into the opportunity. “We’ve always been a platform that’s believed in strong digital ownership of the consumer journey,” said Kumar.

    The company did not look at CTV in isolation. When it targeted a CTV household, it assumed that there were three to four members in the household who owned a smartphone. They developed a technology system called ‘Household Sync’ that maps the user journey on CTV and mobile.

    Marketers have always bifurcated between brand and performance, opined Kumar. “Here’s a technology that puts your brand advertising on the largest screen possible but also delivers middle and bottom-funnel conversions, so it takes you across the entire funnel. At mediasmart, we’ve always valued metrics such as cost per conversion and verticalisation approaches.”

    mediasmart’s solutions looked at delivering immediate action-oriented feedback to advertisers on the brand impact. Their platform allowed them to look at completion rates on TV followed by retargeting on mobile devices. It also let them measure click-through rates to analyse if the brand was reaching the last mile. “Ultimately, what every brand is concerned about is the bottom-funnel,” opined Kumar.

    The CTV market is growing in double-digits month-on-month that will lead to an increase in users, advertising penetration, and reach. In markets like the US, the share of video impressions on CTV is as high as the share of video impressions on mobile. While the US was never a major mobile market, unlike India, Kumar explains that the opportunity is still attractive because even though the base is small, the impact is large.

    He added, “There is a lot of headroom for CTV to grow in India. There is still a significant base of box TV users in India who may potentially migrate to low-cost smart TVs. Apart from cord-cutting, there is a whole new generation of ‘affluent cord nevers’ who are opting for CTV systems over DTH and cable connections.”

    (Source: India CTV Report 2021 by mediasmart, an Affle Company, VTION, and Interactive Avenues)

    For more information: https://indiantelevision.com/events/oact-summit-2021/

  • Over 66% of CTV users subscribe to more than one OTT app says new report

    Over 66% of CTV users subscribe to more than one OTT app says new report

    Mumbai: India is undergoing digital transformation and consumers are steadily moving away from traditional linear TV to Connected TV and OTTs – a change that presents an untapped advertising opportunity for brands and advertisers. As many as 78 per cent of people own a Smart TV and 93 per cent of these smart TV users access internet-based content found mediasmart- an Affle company in its latest report.

    The survey – ‘India CTV Report 2021 – Mapping Connected TV (CTV) Viewership in India and the Opportunities for Brands’ released this week documented this changing media consumption patterns of the Indian consumer with an expert view on the possible advertising potential of the CTV medium. According to the report, mobile-first, active, and aware CTV consumers are young, urban adults who are already mobile-first and are actively engaging with diverse apps.

    Nearly 89 per cent of the respondents are social media users, and 82 per cent are e-commerce, 44 per cent are gamers and more. Over 59 per cent of respondents prefer downloading apps via Smart TV App Store, while 26 per cent respondents primarily consume content via pre-installed apps and a small section (15 per cent respondents) use the dongle to stream content on TV.

    Close to 70 per cent of respondents spend between one to four hours on CTV watching movies (91 per cent), streaming music (64 per cent), playing games (47 per cent) or watching news (64 per cent).

    In terms of the pending ability and OTT preferences, over 65 per cent of respondents subscribe to more than one OTT app.  There is over 40 per cent adoption for the leading eight OTT apps in India: Disney+Hotstar, Amazon’s Prime Video, Netflix, Zee5, MXPlayer, Sony LIV, VOOT , and Alt Balaji. The inclination on app usage is also heavily dependent on seasonality and timing

    There are limited barriers to viewership and adoption. Unlike mobile usage of the internet, which requires literacy levels, CTV consumption cuts across age, language, and city barriers. By going vernacular, advertisers can engage with users in ads of their language

    Mediasmart, senior director, Nikhil Kumar said, “The world is moving towards immersive watching experiences and CTV is an exciting space to be at. It is interesting to see leading advertisers in the country adopt CTV advertising as a critical new addition to their media mix. CTV advertising is here to stay and with evolutionary solutions provided by mediasmart on Household Sync technology, we are powering brands to engage with relevant consumers across the connected devices.”

    India is a young market with tremendous potential for CTV adoption. CTV inherently is more engaging than traditional TVs and brings together the twin strengths of (a) engaging storytelling associated with CTV advertising and (b) targeting associated with Programmatic & Digital advertising. 

    According to Interactive Avenue CEO Amardeep Singh advertisers globally – and in India – are lapping up the CTV opportunity as it continues to grow as an exciting medium for digital advertising. “We have seen great results and ROI for some of our top clients who are already using the CTV ad technology from mediasmart. This research is a step in the right direction to build standard industry metrics, even as technologies like Household Sync make CTV more measurable and impactful,” said Singh.

  • Affle appoints Martje Abeldt as chief revenue officer of RevX Platform

    Affle appoints Martje Abeldt as chief revenue officer of RevX Platform

    NEW DELHI: Affle (India) Ltd, the consumer intelligence technology company, today announced the appointment of Martje Abeldt as chief revenue officer – Affle RevX Platform to strengthen its leadership team as part of Affle2.0 growth strategy. In his new role, Abeldt will drive business and platform growth for RevX, and will be based out of Singapore.

    An accomplished practitioner in digital domain, Abeldt joins Affle with 20+ years’ experience in leading and scaling high-growth businesses across AdTech, Mobile, SaaS, IT and Consumer Goods industries. Proficient in six languages and with an international perspective, he excels at creating sustainable competitive advantage for key platforms and products in the mobile apps ecosystem. In his most recent role at Remerge, he was spearheading the App Retargeting Platform business for APAC. Prior to Remerge, he has been instrumental in driving business performance for App Annie in Central Europe, Russia and CIS, preceded by the Country Manager role at Smart AdServer. He holds a Global EMBA from IE Business School in Madrid/Fudan University in Shanghai, a bachelor’s degree in International business & economics from London Metropolitan University and a degree in marketing communications from BAW in Munich.

    Anuj Khanna Sohum, the Chairman, MD and CEO of Affle said, “We welcome Martje to our leadership team and wish him a successful journey at Affle. His cross-functional and relevant industry experience will enable us to drive further growth for our platforms and the CPCU business across all markets. We also welcome Raghav who has joined our Data Platforms and Operations team and look forward to achieving continued success as we strengthen our foundation for Affle2.0 growth journey.”

    Abeldt said “I can't imagine a more exciting time to join Affle and look forward to complement the exceptional entrepreneurial capabilities of the leadership team. It gives me immense excitement to lead the RevX Platform to help drive business growth across markets through new strategic initiatives.”

    This announcement comes along Affle’s another key appointment of Raghav Maheshwari as director – global account management, who joins with 10+ years’ experience. In his last stint, he was working for Inmobi as director – sales (south east Asia) and has played key roles in the ad tech ecosystem across APAC markets. He has previously driven growth initiatives for companies like Fidelity Investments and The Smart Cube.

  • Affle appoints Sujoy Golan as chief of marketing & omni channel platforms

    Affle appoints Sujoy Golan as chief of marketing & omni channel platforms

    MUMBAI: Consumer intelligence technology company Affle (India) Limited has appointed Sujoy Golan as chief of marketing & omni channel platforms to strengthen its leadership team. Sujoy will lead the marketing function and help drive the business growth for Affle’s omni channel platforms on software/platform-as-a-service business models.

    Sujoy Golan joins Affle with 14+ years’ experience in driving and scaling high-growth businesses across Fintech, SaaS, AdTech, and e-commerce industries. He has been a part of leadership teams at Lendingkart, Unbxd, InMobi, Flipkart and Directi, contributing to their growth since early stages.

    In his most recent stint at Lendingkart, he played a key role in building one of India's largest MSME fintechs as VP & head of marketing. Prior to Lendingkart, he was head of marketing at Unbxd, and global head of digital marketing at InMobi, managing growth marketing across businesses and geographies. Sujoy actively mentors startups and business school students and has helped design the digital marketing course at IIM-Calcutta. He holds a PG diploma in Management (PGDM) from IIM-Kozhikode.

    Anuj Khanna Sohum, chairman, MD and CEO of Affle said: “We welcome Sujoy to our leadership team and wish him a successful journey at Affle. His experience in Fintech, e-commerce and SaaS businesses would strengthen our verticalization strategy for omni channel platforms and his expertise in global marketing would propel our international growth significantly. We would also like to welcome the new team members who have joined our Data Science and Product Management teams to grow our Platform-as-a-Service business.”

    Sujoy Golan said: “I am delighted to be a part of the growing Affle family and I look forward to complementing the exceptional entrepreneurial capabilities of the leadership team. Affle’s unique competitive advantage is powered by its differentiated business model and its proprietary tech platforms. It gives me immense excitement to lead global marketing and help drive growth for Affle’s businesses with strategic emphasis on the omnichannel platforms.”

    This announcement comes soon after Affle’s other key appointments of Tarun Aditya to lead the data science team and Pranesh Sharma who joined to lead product management for the Platform-as-a-service business.

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  • Affle acquires Appstudioz and sets up its global R&D centre in India

    Affle acquires Appstudioz and sets up its global R&D centre in India

    NEW DELHI: Mobile Apps & Ads service (MAAS) company Affle has acquired India based mobile technology company Appstudioz.

     

    Set up in 2011, Appstudioz platform has grown rapidly to help deliver a robust mobile application platform which is already being used by over 400 customers globally.

     

    Along with this, Affle has also set up a significant R&D facility in India to help strengthen its mobile app & ad technology platform. The Affle R&D centre in India is already over 200-member strong and is expected to grow significantly in months to come with new platform modules being rolled out.

     

    Affle founder, CEO and chairman Anuj Khanna Sohum said, “Over the last eight years, Affle has been focused on building next generation technology platforms to cater to the mobile industry. We saw challenges and complications within the current eco-system which required advertisers to work with multiple partners for development, attribution, analytics, media procurement and monetisation. We have thus unified our platforms to create the industry first end-to-end mobile marketing platform catering to advertisers, publishers and agencies. We are very excited by this acquisition and believe that the Appstudioz technologies would significantly strengthen our propositions and its team would form the nucleus of our growing R&D facility in India.”

     

    Co-founder & executive director Anuj Kumar added, “Our mobile ad platforms have matured over the years and in Appstudioz we found the perfect ally to strengthen our propositions for mobile apps, and thus build much greater value for our MAAS based approach. We are very happy and excited by this acquisition as this significantly strengthens our offering and unique position across markets. Being the largest mobile (internet) first market, we see India as a perfect location for doing cutting edge R&D for our businesses and the setting up of our global R&D centre here is a solid step forward for us and for the mobile industry in India. We expect our engineering team here to grow rapidly and help deliver to our global technology leadership aspirations.”

     

    Commenting on this acquisition, Appstudioz co-founder & managing director Saurabh Singhsaid, “Over the last three years we have seen rapid growth and progress at Appstudioz. We realised that to pursue greater global aspirations we needed to simplify our propositions and be part of a larger integrated platform. Affle through its unique approach provided us that and we are thus very excited by this association. We believe that through our integrated approach we now offer a much greater platform & service to our customers which should help build further growth momentum.”

     

    Appstudioz co-founder and executive director Abhinav Singh added, “This is a new phase for growth for Appstudioz and we are all very happy to become part of the Affle family. The integrations with Affle’s cutting edge technology platforms and global customer base would definitely help us chart even greater growth in years to come.”

     

    Through this acquisition, Appstudioz has now merged with Affle’s Media Lab business and has become a fully owned subsidiary of Affle Holdings Private Limited in Singapore.

     

    Affle is a Singapore headquartered, end-to-end Mobile Apps & Ads as Service (MAAS) platform for marketers & publishers, having started in 2006.

     

    Affle’s investors include D2C Japan (An NTT DoCoMo subsidiary), Microsoft Corporation, Itochu Corporation of Japan, Bennett Coleman Company Limited (BCCL) & Centurion Private Equity.