Increasingly competition is going local

Geotargeting-led businesses are highly scalable because brands are no longer targeting a universal lead,
BASKAR SUBRAMANIAN, co-founder of targeted advertising platform Amagi, tells Sangeeta Tanwar
challenges with such a dual role?

The television industry never had

an intermediary prior to Amagis
debut in the market. Industry folks
were comfortable with the standard
and familiar set-up of advertisers
talking to the agencies and agencies talking to broadcasters. With
the entry of Amagi in 2008 as an
intermediary initially people did
not understand how we were going
to impact the entire value chain.
Over the years, people have
acquired a clear understanding of
the whole value chain and the role
that Amagi plays in it. Larger advertisers look at us as an alternative to
regional TV channels whereas smaller brands that dont have access
to larger media agencies come to us
seeking guidance on their brand
and media strategy. For smaller
brands we strive to understand their
marketing needs and translate that
into advertising possibility for
them. We work very closely with
smaller brands. When it comes to
broadcasters they consider us as an
aggregator of advertisers. We have
been able to build a relationship of
trust with different industry stakeholders over a period of time and in
the process we have addressed the
confusion around our role and
place in the industry.

BASKAR SUBRAMANIAN
Co-founder, Amagi

Geotargeting may not be an

entirely new concept, but it is not
widely understood. What does a
geo-targetting platform bring to
advertisers and marketers?

We largely enable advertisers and

brands to target specific regions of
interest with communication messages. We work with TV channels,
buy inventory from them and then
beam it through satellite. By splitting the beam, Amagi offers different advertising options in different
regions. This way we are able to
bring in huge targeted efficiencies
for brands which have been lacking from television. India is a
diverse market and Indians are very
different from each other in terms
of our habit, cultural leanings and
behaviour as consumers. This diversity poses a big challenge to fast
moving consumer goods companies in terms of reaching out to their
target audience with the right product accompanied with an apt
communication message. We
essentially provide such marketers
with tools to create communication
and brands that are specific to that
market. Thats the core of what we
do in India.
As regards to our international
business, we are leveraging that
technology-based footprint for geotargeted advertising as well as content targeting. What that essentially means is that you could have a TV
channel that covers all of Europe
but you could still have the option
of broadcasting it in Poland or Turkey alone. So instead of creating
(beaming) a new TV channel, by sp-

In that case, the biggest

limitation for your business
model would be that larger
brands with a national footprint
might prefer to align with larger
media and advertising networks.
In such a scenario, how do you
hope to scale up your business?

litting the satellite beam we can create different channels in different

locations basis specific content.
Internationally, Amagi has created
a cloud infrastructure where the
content is pushed into cloud which
is subsequently delivered to different regions.

Given your scope of operations,

Amagi seems to be an intermediary between the media
agency and the broadcaster.
Broadcasters look at you as
buyers of media whereas
agencies and advertisers look at
you as broadcasters. What are the

We have an extremely scalable

model. The reason why Im saying this is that brands are no
longer targeting a universal lead.
We work with a number of large
advertisers such as Unilever,
GlaxoSmithKline and Wipro. The
challenge that they face is that
either they have a regional brand

to be marketed or have to pursue

regional promotions for specific
brands. The second problem for
them lies in the heterogeneous
nature of the Indian market
that is, the same product cannot
sell equally across all regions.
Therefore, they need targeted
advertising solutions.
Could you explain it with an
example?

Lets look at the advertising dilemma that brands face through an

example. Regional advertising has
witnessed huge growth over the last
few years. However, a large part of
that growth has come from the
southern part of the country, from
markets such as Tamil Nadu,
Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and
Kerala. In all these regions, 95 per
cent of viewership is in vernacular
channels. Now consider Maharashtra and Bengal. In case of
Maharashtra, while Marathi
accounts for 27 per cent of the viewership, Hindi accounts for the rest,
which is the larger chunk of the
viewership. In case of Bengal, the
viewership is split equally between
Bengali and Hindi. The point Im
making is that as we move northwards, to markets such as Uttar
Pradesh, Bihar and Punjab, Hindi
viewership is much higher compared to vernacular viewership.
Besides having to addressing the
language-led diversity, brands are
also up against a growing number of
local brands. A lot of new brands
are coming up across markets in
categories such as flour, detergents
and biscuits. In such a diverse market, advertisers continuously struggle with the question as to how can
they start targeting or communicating more in particular regions to
increase their market share or what
I call share of voice. They are always
on the lookout for solutions that
will equip them to boost their communication in specific regions.