ITV

Tag: iProspect

  • 55% marketers make better decisions with machine learning: iProspect report

    55% marketers make better decisions with machine learning: iProspect report

    MUMBAI: Digital agency iProspect has released its third annual Future Focus whitepaper geared to examine how machines and technology are impacting marketing and advertising in the year ahead. The paper takes a look at how brands can make the most of machines in 2018, from facilitating seamless consumer experiences to delivering greater efficiencies.

    iProspect interviewed 250 of its global clients, including FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 companies, and used real-time feedback to outline key insights and priorities necessary for businesses to thrive in our fast-moving, high expectation digital economy.

    Feedback shows that the transformative impact of voice, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) is being felt across the entire business landscape with 55 per cent of marketers surveyed agreeing that ML will allow them to make better decisions in 2018. 56 per cent of the marketers surveyed highlighted effective management of large data sets to deliver personalisation and relevant one-to-one experience as their main priority in 2018.

    The 2018 Future Focus whitepaper discusses some new machine rules. Brands enhanced customer experience by closing the gap between consumer expectation and brand reality. While 2017 was about understanding how best to connect data to understand consumers better, 2018 will be the year where marketers put consumers firmly at the centre of communications.

    The concept of ‘consumer moments’ will become widespread in 2018, encouraging marketers to seek out data signals that help them understand not just who their customers really are, but what are the moments that matter most as those consumers interact with brands at different stages of the purchase journey.

    Digital assistants have become the new gatekeepers and are set to fundamentally change the relationship between brands and consumers. According to market intelligence company Tractica, more than 700 million people use some form of digital assistant today, be it Siri on their mobile phone, or Amazon’s Alexa via a home device. With word error rate now at parity with humans, digital assistants can understand us better than ever, and usage of assistants is expected to soar to almost two billion by 2021. Within the next five years, most of the developed world will be using a digital assistant in one form or another to automate and manage many aspects of their daily lives.

    And it’s not just millennials who are early adopters of this technology. Forrester estimates that while 66 per cent of 18-24 year olds are using digital assistants, almost 40 per cent of the 70+ age group are also engaged. For marketers, this represents a new challenge in 2018 and beyond on learning how to market not to the consumer, but to the machine.

    AI & ML have transformed marketing and it is time for brands to get ahead of the intelligence curve. Simply put, AI aims to emulate human cognitive capabilities through artificial systems. One of the specialities of AI is machine learning, which enables computers to solve a problem by themselves, learning through examples, rather than being programmed especially to solve a distinct problem. If AI and ML capabilities are sought-after by tech companies, it’s because those companies understand the benefits for customer experience (eg., personalised recommendations on Netflix), security (eg., fraud detection on Paypal transactions), or product development (eg., autonomous cars for Uber).

    In 2018, we can expect mainstream brands to truly start testing the potential of AI and ML in advertising, taking marketing efforts to the next level. ML has the power to improve efficiency, help scale personalisation, and predict consumer behaviour with greater accuracy. As a result, 2018 will bring greater investment and experimentation in this area.

    VR will take commerce to new horizons and the distance between inspiration and conversion is now smaller than ever. Global e-commerce sales reached nearly $1.9 trillion in 2016, and are forecasted to grow to $3.9 trillion in 2020. As consumers expect to be able to buy everything, everywhere and at any time, this staggering growth will be increasingly supported by ecosystems which weren’t designed to be transaction first, but are now developing commerce features.

    There will be a rise of Amazon, the ‘everything store’. There can be little doubt that 2017 was a significant year for Amazon, as its seemingly irresistible expansion broke new ground across some of the biggest categories in the world. Amazon’s enormous capital power and evident knack for winning in any division it turns its attention to means it truly is becoming the oft-quoted ‘everything store’, apparently achieving the impossible — major, simultaneous expansion without sacrifice of either product or profit.

    Yet the company remains highly secretive, rarely announcing its intent or offering strategic insight. This means that as Amazon claims not only more net shoppers, but also creates new shopper behaviours, the onus is on today’s marketers to be proactive, rather than reactive, in developing their understanding of it. The good news is that there’s no more opportune time to learn than now. As Amazon finally turns its attention to the long dormant opportunity in ads by outlining plans for it to become a major income stream, marketers should seize the opportunity to get in at ground zero and start including it on media plans today.

    iProspect global chief strategy officer Shenda Loughnane says, “Advances in ML will allow for greater effectiveness and efficiency in marketing communications, freeing both marketers and agencies to focus on adding strategic value. Brands will need to understand how to balance the human versus machine elements of their business in order to leverage the full value of both.”

    iProspect India CEO Rubeena Singh adds, “In an increasingly complex digital economy, ML is set to play a pivotal role in our ecosystem. In India, we are already feeling these forces of change are driving better data understanding, enabling personalised conversation at scale and delivering greater efficiencies. We are at an inflection point where brands need to learn how to marry human capital and machines in order to succeed in the transformation that lies ahead.”

    Advances in ML will allow for greater effectiveness and efficiency in marketing communications, allowing both marketers and agencies to focus on adding strategic value, whilst allowing machines to take on more of the more complex administrative tasks associated with digital optimisation.

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

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

    One trip to the US in 1997 was all it took for a young man’s entrepreneurial journey to begin. When this man, who was taking global trips on behalf of his family business to sell tablas and sitars, decided to sing a different tune, he was told by his father to pack his bags and get going without turning back.

    Fast forward 20 years ahead to today – 2017. This Bollywood-sounding real scene is the story of Vivek Bhargava and his successful digital agency iProspect. He actualised his idea back in 1997 when he founded Communicate 2. The company joined hands with iProspect from the Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN) in 2012 where he led iProspect Communicate 2 as the founder and managing director. The company was rebranded to iProspect India at the end of 2015 and Bhargava was made CEO. In December 2016, Rubeena Singh was made CEO and he was promoted to a larger role as CEO of DAN Performance Group.

    Indiantelevision.com spoke to the man who took a leap of faith in 1997 and the newly appointed CEO, Rubeena Singh where Bhargava speaks at length about his journey, challenges in the digital environment, talent retention and much more. Excerpts:

    How did the iProspect journey begin for you? And how did you pick digital as the medium?

    Bhargava: When one speaks of 20 years, it makes me feel really old but it has been a great journey. I come from a conventional family that sells tablas and sitars. It is called Bhargava’s Musik that was started in the year 1944. As kids, we used to go abroad for trade fairs once in every two to three months and that is where the seed of communication was sowed into our minds. What we noticed was that western countries were using technologies for marketing communication and advertising, which we didn’t see here in India. By the time I was an adult, I decided to quit my family business and start my own venture as I wanted India to make a mark in digital communication. When I gathered courage to tell my father about my decision, in an ominous tone he told me that if I quit the family business, I can never join that again. Today when I look back, I am glad I took that decision because when I went through tough times during these last 20 years, what kept me going were my father’s words.

    You decided to sell off Communicate 2 to Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN). Why did you take that route? 

    Bhargava: As an independent agency, you’re restricted in doing things. When you want to grow to a certain size to work with bigger clients and you want access to bigger technologies, you have to take the plunge and look for a bigger agency to partner with. The biggest challenge I faced in my career before joining DAN was talent attraction and that problem was solved to a great extent.

    What are the perks of working with a full service agency? 

    Bhargava: The most amazing thing about DAN is that it retains 70 per cent of entrepreneurs after the earn process (acquisition) is over, whereas that ratio is only 20 to 30 per cent in other networks. DAN gives you complete freedom, they let you have your individuality and let you run the company. They also give you the ability to approach anybody in the network to help out and we have one P&L (statement) per country and that truly creates the feeling of ‘One DAN’.

    We haven’t seen any major structural changes in your organisation which is a common practice in almost all networks and agencies today. Why is that?

    Singh: iProspect has a high-performing team and so we don’t believe in making major structural changes. We’ve just built on what we already have. We’ve launched new products and carved out new roles for people, but, on a larger level, we are trying to automate a lot of repetitive work. We are upscaling our people to spend more time thinking and looking at data in order to help clients out with their problems and offer solutions rather than doing mundane desk labour.

    How challenging is it for agencies to retain clients in today’s time? What do agencies need to do to ensure client retention?

    Bhargava: If agencies continue to deliver value and you are authentic about your capabilities, you can retain clients for a longer period. Usually, clients tend to move on because agencies are not solving the real problem, and it’s always about achieving a price or delivering a service. As my father would say to me, “Taking interest in client’s brand and taking interest in team members is the only way an agency will grow.”

    Singh: It is really important to look at both sides of the spectrum. We have been fortunate enough to work with clients that have been with us for over 10 years and we have been able to grow them and that comes from the mindset of ‘client first’. We believe in evolving our products and services in line with clients’ needs.

    Clients usually have high expectations from an agency but they keep their pockets zipped. How challenging does it become to deliver the product?

    Bhargava: We have always charged premium amount in the market. A client once refused to do business with us because he said that they couldn’t afford us. To that my reply was, ‘The problem is not that we are expensive, but that we are proud of it.’ We believe that since we charge more, we are able to deliver more value to their brand. I’ve seen a lot of agencies that started up around the same time as I did and had to wind up because they reducing rates which led to inferior talent coming on board leading to inferior output. Of course, clients left. For an agency to deliver the best output, it is very important that it prices right and does not succumb to client-satiating tactics.

    How do you ensure you meet your yearly targets? 

    Bhargava: We have always been very honest with our clients and given them honest reviews because we believe in setting realistic expectations and being on their side of the table. A lot of times agencies tend to take care of their self-interest and give different advice to clients and when numbers aren’t as promised, clients will move away.

    How different is the Indian media industry as compared to the West?

    Bhargava: Western agencies charge for every single planner. For instance, if a client is meeting an agency where six prominent people from the agencies are present in the meeting, they charge $6000 for that meeting as they believe every minute of a media planner is worth that kind of money. That is not the case in India, as here we believe in spending hours trying to solve the client’s problem and ensuring that they leave happy after the meeting. Here, it is about understanding and building a rapport with them. In India, things are less technology led but solution led. Most of the clients in the west are very precise about what they want but here it is more about solving the client’s problem where we may end up working twice as hard than what we expected but you hope that the client will take care of you.

    You’ve seen India transition and adopt technology along with digital in these 20 years. How would you say has digital evolved over the years in the Indian context? 

    Bhargava: It took 14 years for digital to come in India and as a digital agency, we have been a witness to that evolution. Earlier, no brand wanted to include digital in their marketing budget and advertising. Today, almost every brand spends around 15-20 per cent of the advertising budget on digital. Today, it is playing the role of a catalyst and it’s not limited to advertising. We are living in a digital age today as compared to doing just digital advertising. In future, people are going to stop seeing digital as digital but it will only be known as advertising just as today we don’t say, ‘cellular phone’ but we just say phone. In future, the word digital will be dropped out.

    What does the industry need to do to attract more talent and to ensure talent retention?

    Bhargava: Truth be told, the salary of a person working for a digital agency as opposed to someone working in a conventional media agency will be twice as high. Hopefully, some would be motivated by money, so if they want to earn more money, digital is the best option. It will be one of the highest paid jobs in just a few years from now.

  • Dentsu’s iProspect bolsters leadership with role elevations

    Dentsu’s iProspect bolsters leadership with role elevations

    MUMBAI: iProspect India, the digital agency from Dentsu Aegis Network, has strengthened its leadership band through different role advancements. The digital landscape is evolving, a dynamic industry coupled with seasoned client demands are re-defining the way it works. In keeping with this change, iProspect India has made key meritorious promotions.

    Ankita Pande, previously AVP – Operations, is now Head of Strategy at a pan India level, based in Delhi. She comes with a keen strategic bent of mind and great potential to add value to the business. She will also work on growing the branding business amongst other basket of objectives.

    Based in Mumbai, Venkat Gavaskar Dontha has been assigned the responsibility of Branch Head – West. He was AVP – SEO prior to this. The new role involves heading the Mumbai region and surrounding cities with respect to client servicing, business development and operations.

    Ankita and Venkat will both report into iProspect India CEO Rubeena Singh.

    Shipra Tandon, Strategist – Content Marketing, will head the agency’s new content marketing division Intelligent Content at a national level. This business line will primarily facilitate the use of content in digital performance, providing an end-to-end solution on content strategy, creation, promotion and impact. She will report into Srikar Nagubandi, Senior Vice President – Operations and is based in Mumbai. Shipra was earlier Strategist – SEO.

    Rubeena Singh, CEO, iProspect India said, “Various factors such as changing industry dynamics, enhancing the client experience, ensuring best interests of the business and doing justice to the skillsets of some of our leaders, demand that we always have a passionate and result-oriented leadership team at the helm.”

    She added: “The strategy and content marketing pieces take top priority at iProspect India as we move forward and are crucial elements of our growth, which will feed into business development and client servicing.”

  • Intelligent Content vital for branding: iProspect CEO about new solution

    Intelligent Content vital for branding: iProspect CEO about new solution

    MUMBAI: iProspect, Dentsu Aegis Network’s global digital performance agency, has launched Intelligent Content – an offering that links production and performance – in India.

    A holistic messaging strategy spanning across all digital channels to ensure relevance, visibility and performance, Intelligent Content is already available across iProspect’s other key markets globally. For the record, Intelligent Content is an end-to-end solution that uses intelligent data and insights to design strategies around content creation, amplification and measurement.

    Meanwhile, as part of the launch, iProspect India has partnered with Aegon Life Insurance to pilot this solution.

    iProspect India CEO Rubeena Singh says, “In the performance space, content has been an untapped area. Brands are increasingly more aware of the pivotal role content plays in brand communication and engaging with the target audience. With Intelligent Content, we will not only drive business outcomes for clients but also expand our holistic performance offering. Shipra Tandon from iProspect Mumbai, who comes with an impressive work profile, will lead this service offering for us.”

    Aegon Life Insurance CDO Martijn De Jong says, “We focus extensively on digital within our overall media spends and are open to exploring and experimenting. Digital is at an inflection point in India today and content forms the crux of it, proving to be a game-changer. Content will play the lead role to achieve our business objectives.”

  • iProspect bags 4 DMA awards, ICICI ad wins gold

    iProspect bags 4 DMA awards, ICICI ad wins gold

    MUMBAI: iProspect India, the global digital agency from Dentsu Aegis Network, has won four awards at the DMA India Awards 2017 in Mumbai.

    It won gold for ICICI Bank (Business for iCalculate), silver for Max Life Insurance in sector insurance (The Smart Display Banner), bronze for leveraging video ad formats to build interest for ICICI Bank home loans and a Leader Certificate for trouser exchange scheme, Raymond in retail and direct sales.

    The DMA India awards honour the creative par excellence in marketing and advertising campaigns that have raised the bar of originality, response strategy, interactivity and marketing impact.

    The objective of the ICICI campaign was to increase sales for personal and home loans. The challenge was when most customers used the loan calculator on the website to get details on eligibility, interest rates, loan amount, etc. did not click on the ‘Apply Now’ button. It was counted as a conversion only if a user applied for a loan by clicking.

    The idea was to use iCalculate which passes real-time data to the Google Analytics Cloud on a Windows unload event as a solution to this problem.

    iProspect India CEO Rubeena Singh said, “I congratulate all the teams that have put in a lot of hard work to strategise and execute these innovative campaigns,”

  • iProspect names Philips as global chief product officer

    iProspect names Philips as global chief product officer

    MUMBAI: iProspect continues to bolster its global executive team with the appointment of Rohan Philips as the global chief product officer. In his new role, Philips will direct and oversee iProspect’s roadmap for central product development, adoption and commercialisation across its 52 markets.

    iProspect will report to the global president Ruth Stubbs, and will be based in Singapore.

    “A dynamic approach to the development and evolution of our global product set is a vital component in our ability to engage audience across all platforms and connect brands to consumers. As a business, we must become more sensitive to the challenges clients are facing. With Rohan’s hire, we have now finalised a recalibrated leadership team – designed to address delivering these capabilities for our organisation, Dentsu Aegis Network and the clients that we serve,” commented Stubbs.

    “iProspect has a heritage of driving business performance by innovating in a complex digital landscape,” said Philips .

    “The impact of data and automation has led to the convergence of media, media becoming more accountable and ultimately performance based. I am looking forward to leveraging iProspect’s strong foundation to expand its capabilities, whilst also contributing to the successful Dentsu Aegis network operating model to ultimately deliver business performance to our clients,” he added.

    Philips joined iProspect from GroupM, where he had served as the vice-president at [m]Platform and Xaxis, prior to which he played key roles on data and technology across Europe and Asia Pacific.

  • Pepperfry campaign: iProspect recognised at Google Awards

    Pepperfry campaign: iProspect recognised at Google Awards

    MUMBAI: iProspect India, the global digital agency from Dentsu Aegis Network, has won the Mobile Innovation Award for its campaign for Pepperfry.com at the Google Premier Partner Awards in India.

    The campaign will now compete at the APAC level and the winning campaigns at APAC will further be shortlisted for the global awards to take place in New York on 28 September, 2017. The first ever Google Premier Partner Awards recognizes and celebrates the top-performing Google Premier Partners for their contributions to digital marketing, product innovation and client growth.

    iProspect’s proprietary tool iSync was used for the Pepperfry.com campaign. iSync delivers online ads synchronised with television, radio advertising, weather, sporting events, and 3rd party in real time. The objective of the campaign was to leverage the online opportunity created by the offline (TV) campaigns of Pepperfry.com and its competitor. The strategy was pegged on the insight that the online brand searches of the competitor’s brand would increase during the time period that its television ads were aired. It focused on dynamically bidding up on the competitor’s brand keywords, during their TVC slot, which ensured that users saw Pepperfry.com ads on searching for the competitor’s brand. Similarly, bidding up Pepperfry.com’s brand keywords 20 per cent on mobile during their TVC slots, amplifying the reach of its ads online.

    iSync synced Pepperfry.com’s digital media buys to Pepperfry.com’s and its competitor’s TV ad slots. Messaging to capture the consumer’s content such as compelling offers in the ad copies, in sync with the messaging on TV were highlighted. This increased relevancy from the customers’ point of view and therein increased clicks on the ad. Results comprised 42 per cent of the mobile impression share on competitor keywords, 146 per cent increase in impression share, 82,000 brand impressions achieved in just 21 days against the competitor, 63 per cent increase in CTR (Click through Rate), 1 per cent conversion rate on competitor traffic, 301 per cent increase in number of clicks and 235 per cent increase in sales.

    iProspect India CEO Rubeena Singh said, “The e-commerce category is the top digital spender. It spends the majority of its digital ad spends on search (42 per cent ), followed by social media (20 per cent). Ad spending on mobile is estimated to grow at a rate of 59 per cent CAGR to reach Rs 133.25 billion in 2020. These figures are testimony to the fact that mobile will continue to grow at a rapid pace in the future and companies will accordingly increase investments in this digital platform.”

    “It’s been exciting to see the submissions from digital marketing leaders from India. We’re delighted to celebrate the Premier Google Partners who have made it to the winner list for Awards,” said Google India director – India agencies Sam Singh.

    “To sync our existing digital marketing campaigns to offline marketing inputs was a creative solution to an age-old omnichannel ambition. We congratulate the iProspect team for winning the coveted award – it is well deserved! The award winning campaign has been instrumental in improving business metrics for us. We look forward to more of such interesting innovations going ahead,” said Pepperfry.com senior manager – digital marketing Abhishek Dasgupta.

  • iProspect co-sponsored team Shazé is UTT runner-up

    MUMBAI: Shazé Challengers, the table tennis team owned by DAN Performance Group CEO Vivek Bhargava and co-sponsored by iProspect, were announced as the runners-up of Ultimate Table Tennis (UTT) as Falcons TTC beat Shazé Challengers 14-9 to bag the inaugural UTT title.

    The finale between Shazé Challengers and Falcons TTC on Sunday evening at the NSCI stadium in Mumbai proved to be an electrifying end to the inaugural season.

    Some of the star players in Shazé Challengers include Han Ying (World Ranking 6), Petrissa Solja (World Ranking 13), Andrej Gacina (World Ranking 18), Li Ping (World Ranking 26) and Soumyajit Ghosh (Youngest National Champion and Qualifier for London Olympics) along with India coach A Muralidhara Rao and Foreign coach Elena Timina from Netherlands.

    The team went from strength to strength at every stage of the competition, climbing up steadily to the finals. Shazé Challengers won four out of the five league matches and German paddler Han Ying remained undefeated all through the league till the last match.

    Shazé Challengers quick statistics:

    Total games: 181. Games won: 96. Total matches: 61. Matches won: 32

    Supersavers: 186. Total ties: 7. Total points: 1629. Service points won: 833. Lucky points: 41.

    Bhargava said, “We have some of the best Table Tennis players and coaches – both domestic and foreign – in the world. They have given it everything they have and shone throughout the league. ”

    Bhargava has been a medallist in the last two national tournaments in the 40-plus category. He has helped set up and run a table tennis academy at Elphinstone Road, Mumbai.

  • iProspect appoints digital expert Srikar Nagubandi as SVP – Ops

    MUMBAI: iProspect India, the global, leading, multi-award winning digital agency from Dentsu Aegis Network, has hired Srikar Nagubandi as Senior Vice President – Operations. He comes with more than 15 years of experience in the digital space with a focus on Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media and Web Analytics. Nagubandi’s core responsibilities at iProspect India will comprise leading the SEO and Analytics verticals and overseeing the Paid Media mandates.

    Nagubandi will report into Rubeena Singh, CEO, iProspect India and will be based out of Mumbai.

    Prior to iProspect India, he was Director, Media Engagement & Technology at W20 Group, New York. Some of his stints before this include those at Razorfish & Razorfish Health which is a part of the Publicis Group, AppliancesOnline.com. He has worked in international markets like New York and Australia throughout his career.

    Given his digital marketing and analytics background, Nagubandi is adept at both the planning and technical implementation side of the business having been a developer earlier in his career. He is also an industry thought leader who has spoken at numerous conferences and written articles focused on search innovation and best practices related to eCommerce, social media and blogging, particularly in healthcare.

    iProspect India CEO Rubeena Singh said, “We are elated to welcome Srikar on board the iProspect team. He brings immense value to the company’s capabilities with his extensive experience in global markets. We want to increasingly bring on board senior talent who can carry forward the learnings of developed and evolved markets to our clients, providing them with innovative and effective business solutions and helping them stay ahead of the curve. I’m positive Srikar will drive higher RoI and propose effective digital solutions to our existing and potential set of clients.”

    Srikar Nagubandi, Senior Vice President – Operations, iProspect India said, “In my experience in working with some of the best brands in the world, I have come to believe that it’s crucial to make the complex simple and the simple understandable and actionable for the client. Digital is only growing in complexity and the agency of the future needs to harness deep learning to innovate relentlessly and delight our clients. I am thrilled to be starting a new chapter with my role at iProspect India, and be a part of this ongoing evaluation in not only the fastest growing economy in the world, but an economy where digital advertising spend is experiencing double digit growth.”