Real Time Marketing, ISB Digital Summit

– Aneesh Hiremath

One of the most eagerly awaited sessions in the ISB digital summit was the Real Time Marketing (RTM)

session. Fast become the standard for online marketing, RTM is marketing on the fly to target customers

optimally at a certain point during his or her online experience.

On the panel were eminent members from the industry – Umang Bedi (MD, Sales & Marketing South

Asia for Adobe Systems), Vijayanta Gupta (Director, Industry Strategy, Adobe Systems Europe; ISB 2002),

Prabhvir Sahmey (Head of Media Platforms, Google) and Kedar Gavane (Director, comScore; ISB 2006)

A brief about the event in order of speakers:

Vijayanta Gupta Industry Strategy Director, Adobe Systems Europe

‘Internet of things’

Nowadays Brands can turnover very quickly. What can become a fad can be turned into a sell quickly.

Online marketing captures a lot of user data which can be leveraged intelligently and quickly to have

more efficient marketing to synch with the fast paced online trends and user experiences.

He took us down the history and into the future of online marketing and social media:

2003 – 2006: Mobile and Social media took off during this period. FaceBook and Youtube were

launched and this was the first instance where marketers got a glimpse of the data deluge. There was an

explosion of lot of text messaging and social activity. The way people were engaging with each other

started to change.

2006 - 2009: Smart phone age began with the Palm Pilot which almost resembled today’s Smartphone.

But the revolution really started when the iPhone was launched. This age saw a true convergence of

tech into one device where a phone no longer remained just a phone.

2010 - 2012: App economy boomed. The first app was in 2009, a mobile check deposit app. With the

launch of iPad content became truly engaging, marketers could really engage with consumers in many

dimensions smartly. Smart phones started surpassing feature phones in developed countries. By this

time GE also started investing into the tech area. With the increase in number of ad impressions and

number of times they were acted upon- more data was getting generated

2013: Today: We are in a time where we are all digital natives. We users started engaging across

multiple channels, we would research online and purchase offline, research offline and purchase online.

In such an environment, Marketers now need to engage users smartly, they would need to connect the

dots beyond just placing ads in the right place.

Several corporations have began investing in the digital side of marketing activities than offline one.

They are asking the question, (Big) data is being generated; now how do I make sense of this?

At this point, Marketers if they do not invest they will lose out on opportunities

2014 – 2017: The near future. Data is generated online from various touch points. Our devices know

more about us than ourselves. For example the Nike Fuel band or the Fitbit flex which track our health

information and processes it smartly. There are smart phones, smart meters and devices.

The 'Internet of things emerge'

2018 – 2022: Digital omnipresence: Objects are smarter by default; they interact with users and know

exactly who the user is and tailors interactions accordingly. Marketers do not expect consumers to have

devices. Location equipped can identify who has walked in and generate interaction in real time – this

would change the way marketers analyze consumer behavior.

Of course there would again be a massive explosion of data. Big data is a challenge today, at this point I

future if marketers don’t have the capability to deal with it, they are surely in trouble.

Devices themselves will start to disappear and our expectation for engaging with brands will change. A

user will expect relevant and instant interaction, smarter and personalized

But we cannot see into the future, we do not know how things will shape up and when. Marketers need

to be prepared for this exciting future.

Umang Bedi MD, Sales & Marketing (South Asia), Adobe Systems

‘Marketing is the new finance’

We as users are doing today, more complex actions with more devices on platforms with tools and tech.

From all these interactions, marketers today have more questions than answers. From his experiences in

the industry, marketing is wrongly perceived by CXOs to be hot air, with the exception of the CMOs of

course. Though 70% of marketers are disconnected from the real world, which might even support the

allegation that marketing efforts can go fruitless.

But, with the digital revolution marketers are able to spot trends and spot what can come and identify

and make those trends. Marketing is actually potent, marketing is powerful and Marketing could justly

be called THE NEW FINANCE

In the new paradigm getting defined, all commerce is e commerce. Marketers are engaging brands

online and then fulfill requirements from the online world in the offline world. The lines between online

and offline are blurring - with incredible speed.

RTM is meeting some of challenges of this new paradigms.

A good example is Harley-Davidson which practices listen, predict, assemble and deliver when engaging

a potential customer online.

Real Time Marketing is about how consumer engages with a brand – in the last millisecond.

The concept is to deliver a personalized engaging user experience almost instantly to build a high quality

relationship with the user. Price wars and other tactical maneuvers do not build a relationship with

consumer.

Interactions do and interactions should be meaningfully. The only way is digital. Whatever a user does

online is a point where the brand has an opportunity to provide a meaningful experience. With a

perfectly delivered RTM it takes about 300 ms to deliver that experience to keep the audience engaged

The Harley Davidson website

Listen – to who the user is when he or she comes to the website using what online non personal

identifiers. This is married with offline indicators like Facebook for example to try and get a profile of the

visitor - to build a digital persona. The only way is by RTM by marrying online and offline variables

Predict - The brand know about what the user wants. By analyzing behavior of affiliate websites, the

system tries to induce and seduce an action by predicting. Sophisticated algorithms to look into behavior

analysis and predict what user is going to do or like

Assemble – every marketing engagement has a creative aspect. Its crucial in RTM to assemble those

creative aspect in real time and deliver them.

In the example, Harley-Davidson website picked up an offer that Umang might like and served him in

real time; imagine the capability to do it for a billion people on the net.

Ability to deliver - experiences need to be delivered to users consistently across devices. The system

should be able to detect which device the user is using and tailor the experience accordingly and deliver

it within the close of the interaction.

Web experiences are enriched by integrating creative cloud and the marketing cloud which are

assembled and delivered in real time

Makemytrip.com for example now utilizes actionable analytics, user targeting and ad personalization.

Previously make my trip delivered offers for travel to Goa in Sept and Oct very close to the peak season.

Analytics identified trends of users planning trips 2 months advance in July and August. Using these

insights they shifted travel offers 2 months earlier and doubled the impact. Conversion efficiencies were

increased manifolds.

Manohar – I have taken out the example of Malyala Manoram spoken by Uman cause it was not

related to the topic

The key message for marketing is to embrace rocket science - data deluge has to be managed and

leveraged in real time. Data has to be analyzed not using segments but in entirety in real time. Analyzing

segments of traffic is a thing of the past. Marketer has to connect the dots - take creative aspects and

deliver them in Real Time building meaningful experiences.

Prabhvir Sahmey Head of Media Platforms, Google India

‘RTM is not scary’

RTM is like fairy take in India. Marketers are still stuck in campaign mode and those campaigns are not

evolutionary or revolutionary. Spend on Digital marketing is still stuck at 5 - 7 % excluding e commerce.

The Creative strategy is static and remarketing considered as RTM.

Marketers really haven’t challenged the digital platform. They are still a last click industry. Marketers

and their clients do not see eye to eye with the online marketing methods.

The RTM eco system spans onsite, offsite and beyond.

RTM can be broken down into:

Site

Analytics

Reservati

on BuyProgramm

atic BuyDynamic RTM

The current marketing in India can be called myopic with a onsided view towards brands. For a new

outlook one must unlearn what we have learned. Marketing has to put the user in centre not the brand

and look at different touch points that he or she goes through during the web experience.

To make the marketing efforts successful 4 keys things are needed -

1. Courage –a lot of risk in the form of reputation involved

2. Passion – to build an RTM can be stressful.

3. Intelligence – to enable and execute and finally

4. Money - essential to run a campaign

These 4 elements have to become part of marketing DNA.

Programmatic buy programmatically buying online advertising inventory, brings advertisers and

publishers together using tech and data. This gives better targeting of ads and less wastage of inventory.

The advertiser gets to decide who is the target

But why go programmatic? Started in 2007, it dynamically controls creative aspects, which should not be

linear. Its all about using data creatively and is another way of rethinking the creative process. A perfect

ad is in the right format, audience, setting and message.

Creative process has to be shifted from the newsfeed mentality to become intelligent interaction based.

Cultural touch points are different today. Life happens in small moments. And thousands of little

moments are preferred over one big moment – for a consumer little moments count than 1 big moment

The impact of RTM:

There is a change in customer sentiment. Huge uplifts the way people respond. For a B2B you can use

intelligence to know your audience, using programmatic buy target them efficiently. For B2C, change

messaging in real time.

To conclude:

RTM is not scary as we think it is. We can use the right technology to solve the challenges today using

data using creative messaging and methods like reservation buy, programmatic buy and creative buy of

media.

Kedar Gavane conScore

‘Improve ROI using RTM’

India is 3rd largest population in internet users. India has crossed 150 million people using different

devices. With more devices there are more touchpoints to serve marketing content. The total number of

display ads so far has been 3.7 billion ads with a spend of 400 crores online of ad impressions at average

rate card and much of the spend is by online media. 40% and most advertising was done on social

media.

There is disparity of spend on advertisers and categories - campaigns are run are done by gut feel of

executives who are 25 - 30 years old. Social platform targets users using a wide brush. Usually the

advertising is done hoping It will reach the right audience for example ads on TV.

But through online advertising, you can accurately analyze how effective you are. How many primary

targets was served, secondary and so on. Which website was better, which creative was served, concept

placement etc. all this information can be available to marketer

Ineffective placement causes wastage of money. But with the new capabilities, one can see which

publisher was able to serve best, the frequency of exposures was done. Target reach analytics is possible

– one can see which agency or network was effective in serving ads. The viewability of ads. The % of

total relevant impressions.

We can realize better ROI by knowing the visibility, right audience, geography, brand and whether traffic

or fraudulent. An effectively measured, monitored and modulated campaign can result in better ROI

I haven’t written about the Q&A as the conversations became very abstract