Tag: Gautam Mehra

Former dentsu exec Gautam Mehra joins ProfitWheel as co-founder

Mumbai: Gautam Mehra, dentsu International’s former chief data and product officer – APAC, has announced that he will be joining the recently announced SaaS platform ProfitWheel as co-founder along with Vivek Bhargava and Aman Khanna.

ProfitWheel is a product company focused on creating a customer data-led marketing intelligence platform for the new direct-to-consumer world.

“Gautam and I have worked together for over a decade, and I am delighted to have him on board as a co-founder,” said Vivek Bhargava. “Under his leadership, we will have an increased focus on driving tech innovations and building new products that will enable true intelligence in the mar-tech ecosystem. His past experience of solving a problem local to each market and driving a global product-led solution is precisely what we intend to deliver at ProfitWheel.”

Mehra had joined dentsu Group in 2014 as business head – social media division at iProspect Communicate 2. In his last role at dentsu International (previously dentsu Aegis Network), he spearheaded the programmatic and data segment for the group in the region. He also built DMC (dentsu Marketing Cloud), the proprietary data insights to activation stack for dentsu.

“I am driven by building products that solve large business challenges, and this feels like the right time to build something new, as ad tech reinvents itself,” Mehra said on his new role. “With ProfitWheel, we are focused on solving the biggest problems for D2C brands on effective customer acquisition, enhanced profitability, marketplace expansion, and growth in the most privacy-compliant manner.”

September 22, 2021
Focused on building a unified APAC data & product offering across dentsu network: Gautam Mehra

Growing at around 25-30 per cent year-on-year, digital marketing is sailing the boat of popularity and recognition for many brands these days. The investments are pouring in and the role of data and analytics is spanning beyond just digital marketing. What used to be a throwaway thought for marketers just a few years ago, is now at the core of every planning and strategy meeting.

And leading the field in delivering data-driven marketing solutions are stalwarts like dentsu programmatic CEO & chief data officer of denstu– south Asia. Gautam Mehra. Now, as he takes on additional charge as chief data & product officer – Asia Pacific (APAC) for the agency, he spent some time with Indiantelevision.com’s Mansi Sharma, sharing his thoughts on the industry, how it has evolved, and his plans to navigate the diverse APAC market.Excerpts from the interview:

· On the evolution of digital marketing over the years.

Digital marketing has been one of the most dynamic and vibrant components of the realm of advertising. I remember when I had started, we used to buy keywords for twenty dollars a month (back in ’99) and that was digital marketing. Then it came down to brand heads and CMOs telling us to put out say 12 Facebook posts a day and 10 tweets a day (around ’05-‘09). Next was putting the ad on Facebook ads section, which my then agency Ignitee was the first-ever agency to deliver in this country. Their only intention was to make it visible to the higher management of their organisations. I remember a period when brands would quote 2 lakh rupees for an account that we had quoted Rs20 crore for.

Today, in a world of high-touch customer experiences driven by technology and strengthened by the volume and veracity of consumer data, digital advertising continues to dominate. There is no dearth of funds when it comes to driving improved ROIs and brands are willing to invest as much as is required. Over the years, I’ve seen digital marketing move from a “needs to be sold” to a “must-have” avenue of client investment.

· On his new roles and responsibilities.

APAC is a very unique and diverse region. There are so many cultural differences amongst the markets within the cluster. Even if you just look at south east Asia; China is a completely different market from the rest, Singapore is very different from, say, Vietnam or Indonesia, and ANZ is again distinctively placed. So, APAC is not just one big region but 15 very different markets and that is very exciting for me to dive into in my new remit.

I would be focused on building a strong and unified APAC data and product offering across the dentsu network in the region and establishing data-led solutions to localised client challenges.

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On digital marketing’s position in the APAC region.

Digital marketing in APAC is the most vibrant and fastest-growing in the world with the largest players in bigtech heavily invested in driving their next level of growth. I suppose the common perception is that we often set Europe or the US as the benchmark when it comes to digital marketing. But as for mobile and conversational marketing, many APAC countries are leading the charge. The Philippines and Indonesia have a vibrant conversational commerce ecosystem and WhatsApp commerce is exploding in India. As a matter of fact, a dentsu report shows a leading majority of voice searches are coming from India. So, it is a very unique time and place for APAC.

On whether the education system in India and APAC needs to change to facilitate the development of data and analytically skilled (wo)manpower.

Speaking specifically for a market like India, I think there is a huge gap in the Indian market when it comes to vocational training. We are still teaching the same curriculum that was meant for the German manufacturing industry. It definitely needs a wave of future-proofing and I suppose the new changes to the system is but a first step in that direction. Interestingly, when it comes to women in tech, India has 32 per cent women in engineering education, compared to just 20 per cent in the US and 28 per cent in the European Union, according to Catalyst. I’d say there is a definite drive for women to take up more leading roles in tech in India and other markets in the region.

On how the next generation of professionals can be trained better to take up these roles.

We need to develop a culture of learning to learn. Digital is an evolving medium and no amount of training can equip you for the changes that keep on happening. You earn a new skill today and it will be non-relevant in the next three months. Therefore, we need to develop this spirit of constantly learning and evolving and only industry leaders can drive that change.

On his short term and long term goals.

With the start of every new specialisation, step one would always be to take stock and consolidate. I have already been in touch with our teams across the region via the dentsu Marketing Cloud (DMC) ecosystem that we have built and scaled across the globe. Having grown a team of in-house experts who are thinking beyond just providing data solutions or providing a dashboard, and actually creating software like dentsu Marketing Cloud, dentsu Play, denstu True Value, that solves numerous challenges uniquely. We are going to add more to the list as we discover areas of opportunity to solve client challenges in the region. There are social media platforms apart from Google, Amazon, and Facebook, that are popular in APAC markets. We want to extend our solutions for marketers to analyse their marketing performances on them as well.

On his experience of being assigned a new responsibility during the lockdown.

Fortunately for me, I had already been interacting with 32 global markets for our dentsu Marketing Cloud (DMC) ecosystem and have already travelled extensively within the region for numerous pitches. With the advantage of already being in touch with our teams and having known them for quite some time, it has not been a really big challenge to me in connecting with teams during this lockdown phase as we progress in creating new solutions even during the lockdown.

October 21, 2020
Gautam Mehra gets additional role at Dentsu International

NEW DELHI: Dentsu International has now entrusted Gautam Mehra, currently CEO, dentsu Programmatic & chief data officer, dentsu – South Asia, with the additional charge of chief data and product Officer – Asia Pacific (APAC) with immediate effect. He has been assigned to this new role with the intent to build a strong and unified APAC data and product offering across the dentsu network. Based in Mumbai, Gautam will report into Merkle APAC president Zhengda Shen for his additional role.

Over the years, Mehra has been responsible for driving the data quotient for dentsu across India and South Asia, both internally andth clients. Notably, he led the creation of dentsu’s proprietary adtech product, the dentsu marketing cloud ecosystem – a cohesive system that brings together a slew of dentsu proprietary ecosystems such as the Facebook Marketing Partner (Ad-Tech) Badged DMC Explore, dentsu Play, dentsu TrueValue and other proprietary mar-tech tools used in over 32 markets globally. He has also led the unification of the data sciences and Amnet teams to create dentsu Programmatic, the leading programmatic player in India today.

Mehra had started his career 20 years ago with his entrepreneurial venture, which was one of the first web development firms in India. Over the years, he did several stints in digital advertising working with the top brands in the country such as Viacom, Government of India, Standard Chartered Bank and Microsoft. In 2013, he joined dentsu following the acquisition of Communicate2 and led the Social & Display businesses of iProspect, the leading performance marketing and search agency of the country. Subsequently in 2016, he took on the role of Chief Data Officer for South Asia and has driven the groups data narrative in the sub-region.

On the appointment, dentsu Asia Pacific CEO Ashish Bhasin said, “Data is central to our business strategy and the ability to handle data well and utilize it to its full capacity is critical in fine tuning way of reaching, interacting, and causing a reaction from the consumers; it ensures advertising efforts are in the right direction.”

“Having Gautam drive this data agenda for us is crucial in the era of data explosion. He has earned a reputation of developing and delivering highly innovative data-led initiatives while embodying the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurism. This is a well-deserved promotion and I look forward to working closely with him,” Bhasin added.

Zhengda Shen said, “Organizations are constantly challenged to evolve with agility and speed and adapt to ever changing consumer dynamics. Providing leadership for clients by integrating data, media, content and technology to navigate through this shifting landscape is a critical function of agencies. Gautam’s track record for driving innovations and developing globally scaled solutions makes him perfectly placed to help our clients in the region and to ensure that dentsu international continues to lead through innovation.”

Mehra said, “There are almost no limits to what we can uncover by studying consumer behavior and their interplay with brands. I’m excited to apply my leadership, knowledge, and experience in delivering globally adopted tech driven products and solutions to further the data-driven culture of dentsu international and to build the practice across APAC, further cementing our dominance in this area within the region in using cutting edge technology to solve everyday client challenges.”

October 1, 2020
DAN Programmatic launches creative insights engine ‘DAN Vision for Creative’

MUMBAI: DAN Programmatic, empowered by The Data Sciences Division of the Dentsu Aegis Network in India along with AMNET, the network’s programmatic arm has announced the launch of “DAN Vision for Creative”, a machine learning and neuroscience based engine that delivers path breaking insights into the predicted performance of a creative even before the creative has actually run.

“DAN Vision for Creative”, through its sophisticated technology, endeavours to accurately present a visual heat map of effective elements of a creative and forecast the likelihood of its performance based on algorithms that have been trained over the performance of thousands of creatives and analysing millions of elements.

Commenting on the launch, Dentsu Webchutney CEO and co-founder Sidharth Rao says, “One of the biggest game changers in modern marketing is the use of data to better the decision making capabilities of professionals to yield better outcomes. Creativity without data is a shot in the dark. Even when a creative professional claims to follow his gut, he or she is in reality analysing data generated through experiences for a particular outcome. Having co-founded an agency that deploys new age solutions to solve common problems, ‘DAN Vision for Creative’ is just the right weapon to solve the age old creative problem of “Why are certain creatives performing better than the others?.” It is creating for us a unique differentiator by providing a justification or even starting points for our creative approach to deliver brand success.

Using a battery of neuroscience research-based models that integrates psychometric and eye-tracking approaches with media effectiveness, ‘DAN Vision for Creative’ creates a platform for data and creativity to work together.

“Today, creative testing is about determining which creative is performing better for which audiences. This involves testing 100s of creatives. The by-product of this is, lots of budgets invested into creative production, time spent to create them, marketing budget spent towards testing them and the time involved to get a confident decision. All of this deters most marketers from doing comprehensive creative testing. To top it all, even after this, all we get is which creative is performing better, and no clue on which element is influencing it to perform better or worse. By combining advanced AI techniques such as RNNs (recurrent neural networks), Computer Vision and NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), we are now able to provide predictive intelligence for the creative even before it goes live. This shortens the creative testing cycle and saves on time and money for our clients. Additionally, DAN Vision for Creative provides clues to the “Why” of the creative; making the future creative cycle even more sharper and focussed,” adds DAN Programmatic CEO & Dentsu Aegis Network chief data officer (South Asia) Gautam Mehra.

‘DAN Vision for Creative’ will be merged with the Programmatic Predictive Technology, DAN Vision, launched earlier this year, and is available for global use.

August 21, 2019
DAN Programmatic launches AI-powered audience insights engine ‘DAN Explore for Programmatic’

MUMBAI: DAN Programmatic, empowered by the data sciences division of Dentsu Aegis Network, has collaborated with AMNET, the network’s programmatic arm, to launch ‘DAN Explore for Programmatic’. It is an Artificial Intelligence-based insight engine for programmatic audience performance, which merges with its flagship insights Engine – DAN Explore.

Despite being one of the fastest-growing components of digital media investments, the programmatic advertising ecosystem is still plagued with the common challenges – that of transparency. With a view to address these mounting concerns and to provide insight into the performance of programmatic audience segments for better buying and optimisation prospects for clients and the agency, DAN Explore for Programmatic endeavours to take cutting-edge AI algorithms and statistical modelling to the programmatic environment. It represents audience performance for programmatic cohorts in line with campaign and brand objectives.

Commenting on the launch, Amnet India vice president Salil Shankar says, “Despite the obvious benefits of the ecosystem, when it comes to programmatic advertising, the environment is mainly opaque. With the tech still being very much of a black-box, the lack of transparency still remains a major point of concern for publishers, brands and marketers. With its unique ability to provide more understanding to audience cohort performance, DAN Explore for Programmatic will be one step closer to our vision of making this ecosystem more transparent as well as providing us with the insight to sharpen our audience buys and set new performance benchmarks.”

Keeping true to its motto for providing actionable insights, the data sciences division of the network aims to connect DAN Explore for Programmatic with its proprietary insights engine (DAN Explore) and audience activation layer (DAN Planner).

“Armed with the right algorithms, DAN Explore for Programmatic aims to become a translator in conversations by bringing trust between industry stakeholders in the programmatic space. With its unique access to data and proprietary logic frameworks, DAN Explore for Programmatic will help classify programmatic audiences accurately and reliably to analyse the performance of audience cohorts in line with marketing objectives based on thousands of real-time data points – forming a base for future planning and real-time optimization of programmatic campaigns,” adds DAN Programmatic CEO & Dentsu Aegis Network chief data officer- south Asia Gautam Mehra.

July 22, 2019
Kotak Securities partners with DAN Data Sciences & Dentsu Webchutney to reinvent Customer Acquisition

MUMBAI: Dentsu Aegis Network’s (DAN) Data Sciences division has collaborated with Dentsu Webchutney to reinvent ‘Customer Acquisition’ for Kotak Securities. The teams have developed MarTech solutions to reach out to potential consumers with DAN Sync. For the record, DAN Sync is a proprietary custom solution built to link CRM with online marketing endeavours.

The consumer journey is no longer linear. While a lot of the journey is completed offline, the online signals are not strong enough. Meanwhile, acquisition of a new prospect has become increasingly expensive, especially in the cluttered BFSI space.

“The better one is able to harness the intelligence of data mines, the better the end numbers look,” believes Kotak Securities EVP and head marketing, products and customer service Jaimit Doshi,

Dentsu Webchutney director media Nishant Malsisaria identifies the problem. He says, “For Kotak Securities’ Trading account offerings, performance campaigns ran on multiple channels online. However, optimization was possible only for first level leads since a large part of the final conversion is done through offline call centers. The resultant marketing strategy assumed focus on high acquisition rates with lesser control over quality leads, since reverse transfer of marketing intelligence was not happening then.”

With Facebook being one of the key platforms of the acquisition strategy, the task at hand for Dentsu Webchutney was to narrow the acquisition funnel by reaching out to the closest prospects for conversion.

Explaining the strategy, chief data officer (South Asia), Dentsu Aegis Network and CEO DAN programmatic Gautam Mehra says, “The problem with the traditional form of digital advertising is that intelligence built offline is not passed back to inform online strategies. Using a custom built product such as DAN Sync that was created to transfer offline learnings for online optimizations, we deployed the globally renowned DAN Data Labs Product Suite – that uses best in class machine learning algorithms – over the hashed data from the client’s CRM to deliver a new benchmark for the industry.”

“Although expected, the results were astounding enough for augmenting the client’s confidence. The tool performed magnificently well, improving the lead to account open ratio by 500%,” adds Mehra.

June 26, 2019
DAN gets Facebook Marketing Partner (Ad-Tech) badge

MUMBAI: Dentsu Aegis Network India has announced that it is now an official Facebook Marketing Partner (Ad-Tech), making it the first global agency network to receive a badging for Ad-Tech, through its flagship platform Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN) Data Labs developed out of India.

Facebook Marketing Partners are companies that have clearly demonstrated unique capabilities that help marketers scale and achieve efficiency with Facebook marketing and must demonstrate expertise and specialisation.

Commenting on the badging Dentsu Aegis Network chairman and CEO – South Asia Ashish Bhasin said, “Aligned with our global vision of being a 100 per cent digitally-led business, DAN Data Labs is just the kind of innovation that drives our growth towards that mission. Led by Gautam, the data sciences team has had a record of driving innovation in digital marketing by bringing to the forefront new technologies to transform the way we do business today not only in India, but in several other countries around the globe.”

DAN Data Labs is a globally scaled platform built by the data sciences division of Dentsu Aegis Network India. It includes a suite of sophisticated products that deliver deep audience insights, ability to activate across platforms and performance optimisation towards various goals. All of this in on a single system that is designed by digital marketers for digital marketers.

Dentsu Aegis Network chief data officer- South Asia Gautam Mehra added, “We are proud to be recognised by Facebook as a Facebook Marketing Partner and being vetted for excellence in exactly the things needed to drive successful marketing campaigns. Receiving this validation is an added testament to the success DAN Data Labs has enjoyed in the 30+ markets where the platform has delivered efficiency at scale. It is indeed an honor to be the first global agency group to receive this badge and continue to achieve client satisfaction through innovation on a worldwide level. With this new partnership, we hope to continue to build new solutions on the backbone of machine learning and being exposed to even more product alphas from Facebook.”

January 30, 2019
DAN India launches proprietary tool ‘DAN Explore’

MUMBAI: Dentsu Aegis Network’s science team has launched its first proprietary tool ‘DAN Explore’ which captures the trend of changing audience behaviour and understands the nuance of various consumer cohorts across media touchpoints, backed by behavioural triggers and psychographic understanding.

Dan Explore will be the first tool in the market which examines the difference in media consumption habits across TV, digital, out of home, mobile and other touchpoints in the consumer’s journey. And it will also help marketers combat the challenge to determine when, where and how best to reach their audiences.

Dentsu Aegis Network South Asia chief data officer Gautam Mehra says, “With data and smartphone prices being more ubiquitous, India has seen a distortion in the traditional path to purchase of the digitised consumer. While traditionally there have been challenges in brands understanding nuances in audience traits of the various subsets of their consumers, the growing needs of clients and brand strategists alike have inspired us to probe further in assuming ways to extracting these rich insights.”

“The influence of sophisticated techniques like artificial intelligence, on the backbone of heightened processing capabilities has now made deeper understanding of audiences across various touchpoints very real. Through our access of deep rooted APIs with our partners in traditional and new media and our proprietary data sources, we have endeavored to decode audience behaviours across various platforms to capture a unified audience view to solve brand challenges,” he added.

Commenting on the same, Dentsu Brand Agencies South Asia group executive and strategy officer Narayan Devanathan said, “There have been two ‘fights’ in the communications business one that’s been around for a couple of decades now and the other of more recent making. The first is between media and creative. The separation of these two components has resulted in a gap in how a media planner sees the audience and how a brand planner sees the consumer. The second is between big data and creative. What we seem to have forgotten in all these ‘fights’ is that everything we do is in the interest of best matching consumers and brands. What that requires is a connecting of the dots so that we understand people as people not only as consumers of media or brands. DAN Explore opens up countless ways to connect the dots precisely because it collects all kinds of dots about people and their lives. From passion points to brand and media consumption, from offline to online behavior, from individual to group affinities. In doing so, it does what data is supposed to do in the first place – help explore and find unexpected, inspiring insight.”

The tool is also integrated with Dentsu’s proprietary data sources like SVG Columbus’ app inventory and M1 Panel.

The aim of DAN Explore is to paint a much more detailed and nuanced portrait of consumers than has been available to date. The tool is not only meant to bolster media and communication strategies for the network’s clients but also to inspire creative themes.

June 27, 2018
Dentsu Aegis Network launches video planning & insight tool

MUMBAI: The data sciences division of Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN) India has announced the launch of DAN Prism, a unique video planning and insights tool that provides a single audience view across television and digital.

DAN Prism overlays the consumption pattern of the digital consumers on Facebook, YouTube and Programmatic Video with TV viewership measurement company Broadcast Audience Research Council to provide rich audience insights. These insights are then used for planning and activation through a single reach curve across all media platforms in a matter of minutes using a series of Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms.

Today India boasts of 800+ TV channels watched by 780 million Indians. There are nearly 100 million subscribers to over the top (OTT) platforms and nearly 260 million online video watchers in the country. Evidently, multi-screening has become a part of the natural video consumption habit of the average Indian

Dentsu Aegis Network South Asia chief data officer Gautam Mehra says, “In the ever-changing media landscape, we are experiencing a golden age of video consumption in India with fantastic content and platforms. The proliferation of smart devices is changing the way consumers consume content. One of Dentsu Aegis’ core objectives today is to deliver a proprietary, audience-first approach to video planning that maximises client investment across TV and digital video. The idea here is always to harness the true power of data. DAN Prism is just one more step in that direction.”

The tool will be used for all DAN India clients. The tool is a collaboration across the TV and digital brands under the network’s umbrella in India.

Carat India CEO Rajni Menon adds, “The TV viewing landscape of the country is swiftly changing owing to the mushrooming of a large number of OTT players, better connectivity and increased smart-phone penetration. As a country, we are now spending a lot more time watching video content. A large part of this is done on the mobile and on tablets. DAN Prism serves to be a powerful tool that reflects people’s behaviours today, enabled by convergence.”

April 3, 2018
Has advertising finally begun to embrace AI?

MUMBAI: Artificial intelligence (AI), a tool that uses logic to mimic the human brain, has been the buzzword in the advertising industry for quite some time now.

AI was founded as an academic discipline in the year 1956, and in the years since, the technology has experienced several waves of optimism, followed by disappointment and the loss of funding (known as an AI winter), thereafter by new approaches and success.

People often tend to use the term AI interchangeably with machine learning (ML), but they are completely different tools. While AI is the broad concept of teaching machines with data to do things in an efficient way, ML is the technique of using algorithms to process data, learn from insights and make predictions that train AI. As Wunderman AI’s global leader Robbee Minicola rightly says, “You can have machine learning without AI, but you can’t have AI without machine learning.”

With the implementation of AI in advertising and marketing, brands can discover the price at which networks are willing to pay for an impression and identify the optimum times of data to serve an ad for target consumers.

AI’s potential for improving campaign effectiveness is only just being unearthed with a limited understanding of impact. AI-driven elements like image and voice recognition on smartphones, algorithm-based viewing suggestions for Netflix and Google’s real language analysis in search are now gaining mainstream status. It is believed that AI will soon become indispensable in advertising.

The concept of ‘technological singularity’, in which machines become better at developing themselves, is a reality but human intervention will always be required. Isobar executive vice president Gopa Kumar doesn’t believe in giving everything to automation and AI as it is an indispensable part of the future media ecosystem.

According to Adobe’s 2018 Digital Trends report, top-performing companies globally are more than twice as likely to be using AI for marketing (28 per cent vs 12 per cent). The report also found that less than one in five global respondents said their companies are pushing forward with AI and nearly half of respondents said their organisation has inconsistent integration between technologies.

Although advanced and matured markets like the US, UK, China and Japan have been early adopters of the technology, India is catching up at a fast pace because of its risk-taking ability. Programmatic platforms and advertising are the first kind of AI intervention in advertising and is increasingly becoming more and more pervasive.

It is still early days for AI in India as compared to the western world in understanding and implanting these technologies. Havas Media Group India MD Mohit Joshi believes that the adoption of technologies is already happening, however, reaching the US level of adoption will require the clients to be equally convinced and more importantly give them some ‘use case’ success stories.

Programmatic advertising will contribute to more than 60 per cent of advertising in the next two years in India which is the currently world average.

Isobar India EVP Gopa Kumar thinks that AI in India is still at a very nascent stage and in media it is just being initiated. He adds that though it will take a while to be the prime choice, but once it does, its adoption will be widespread and then the usage of AI in advertising will be across platforms and mediums.

In India, sectors like BFSI, e-commerce and FMCG have been able to make the most of artificial intelligence, big data analysis and machine learning to have better connect with consumers and enhanced consumer experience. But there’s a lot to learn from the daddies like IKEA and Alibaba.

Since AI is an expensive tool and hiring an agency for it is often expensive, advertisers today are looking at building their own in-house AI capacities. With benefits including improved consumer engagement through personalisation, leaner marketing operations and cost savings on ad serving, the return on investment (RoI) prospects are rather appealing for advertisers. What it does require is a heavy initial investment in hardware and software for data collection and processing and acquiring the right talent.

Dentsu Aegis Network chief data officer Gautam Mehra admits that AI is not a magic sauce and it will not change the brand’s RoI overnight and clients (brands) need to understand their business challenges before they plan on investing in these technologies. “The primary challenge for any advertiser is how do you know which data to go after and how do you bring that data into your warehouse (cloud or physical) and maintain that data warehouse to give data insights. Brands need to trust data and have a data driven culture in the organisation,” he adds.

Not all advertisers may understand the technicality of AI and the automation of basic data processes and the implementation of integrated analytics. This is precisely where advertising agencies can help their clients, both as trusted advisers and execution partners.

The lack of good media infrastructure is a barrier to better implementation of AI in India. Our challenge is how do we make AI actionable because our other mediums are not evolved enough and we don’t have programmatic OOH or digital OOH except at airports. Mehra asks how do we bring about a real time change in media when our media itself is not programmatic? While India’s radio is still terrestrial, a majority of set-top boxes for television are not trackable and, therefore, there is reliance on BARC data.

India is still a data-starved market and AI works only on data. Joshi concludes that the biggest challenge for India will be getting the right talent, as we need great data scientists and the best of them ignore the media space.

While India is on its way to becoming AI-ready, some major players including Vodafone, Myntra, Flipkart, HSBC Bank and SBI Bank have started putting in the effort to adopt the technology.

Also Read :

The Glitch to leverage GroupM data to reach rural India

2017 – The year of long-format ads

How iProspect’s Vivek Bhargava foresaw a digital future two decades ago

Talent retention is key, says Mindshare’s Prasanth Kumar

March 12, 2018