Mumbai: With 2022 drawing to a close Indiantelevision.com caught up with RD&X Network co-founder, and chairman Ashish Bhasin to get his views on the adex. He feels that television channels need to focus on putting out good-quality content. Out-of-home advertising badly needs a common measurement system, or else it will continue to struggle. He is also optimistic about the India growth story in the mid to long term though in the short term there may be blips.

Bhasin has been a well-known personality in the advertising and media industries in Asia Pacific for the past 34 years. He is one of the world’s only unified marketing and advertising AI automation platforms. Prior to this, he was Dentsu International's CEO for APAC, chairman of India, and a member of the Dentsu International Global executive team.

An astute businessman, he built the Dentsu Aegis Network in India from a 50-member team to a 3000-member powerhouse, which became the second-largest Advertising and Marketing Communications Group in India, overturning for the first time the existing ranking, which has historically been in place for over 80 years. He thereafter drove the growth and resurgence of Dentsu APAC, overseeing 17 countries and 14000 people.

Prior to this, he had set up several of Lintas India’s (IPG) businesses and successfully led Lintas India for 20 years. He also had the global roles of executive VP, Lowe Worldwide, and Asia regional director for integrated marketing.

He was appointed as the 2021 Asia-Pacific Effie Awards chairman. He has served as the head of jury for the Asia Pacific Effie Awards 2017 and has served on several global juries, including Cannes Lion 2016, Cannes Lion 2007, Dubai Lynx 2008, Festival of Media Global 2013 at Montreux, and Asia’s Most Promising Brands and Leaders 2013 in Dubai.

He serves on or has served on most industry bodies in India, including as AAAI president, MRUC chairman, Goafest 2017 and 2018 chairman, AAAI-IBF committee 2010–2018 co-chairman, Broadcast Audience Research Council (Barc) board member, Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) board member, Media Abbys 2012 and 2013 chairman, Readership Studies Council of India chairman, and founding chairman of the Sydenham Institute of Management’s Alumni Association.

He has been conferred a PhD (Honoris Causa) for his outstanding contribution to the advertising and media industries.

Excerpts:

On how the adex fared in 2022

I think that overall we should land at low double-digit growth for the year. Given the fact that last year saw a revival and that this year has seen a revival on top of that, I would say double-digit growth is good.

On the exponential growth being seen in digital ad spends

The general trend that digital is growing faster than other media continued this year as well. However, India is a market where all media are growing and all have some room for growth. It is not like some of the Western markets, where it is TV v/s digital. In India, both are growing. In the West, print is really, really struggling in many ways, but in India, print grew in 2022. I think that digital growth got affected a bit because the big tech companies had headwinds, though this was seen more globally than in India.

Also, the startup funding situation got affected. When there was a boom and money was flowing, the first thing startups spent money on was marketing and advertising activities to build brand awareness and onboard customers. The moment that cycle breaks, there is an issue. Startups take years to turn a profit. So they rely heavily on funding. If that gets affected, then marketing and advertising spending are the first things that take a hit. India was relatively less impacted, but India is a part of the global ecosystem. Therefore, the impact was felt in the second half of the year. So while digital did grow fast in India in 2022, it would have been even better had it not been for these factors.

On whether companies have a better understanding of how to use digital

It is about a continuum of knowledge improvement. Things are moving in that direction. However, we have a long way to go. A better understanding of digital is directly correlated to two things. One is a better understanding of data. We talk about big data. But I am not sure too many people are able to use it in as intelligent and effective a manner as they could. Data is stored in a silo. The other big problem is that digital has grown in silos in different areas like data analytics, performance, search marketing, and social media. They've evolved into super-specialties. These must be brought together. Adtech is not even talking to martech. There is a need to bring it all together. That is when the real impact of the medium will come. I predict that the future of digital advertising will be platform-based, and it will entail the unification of ad tech and martech into what is called madtech. Unless technologies start talking to each other, it will not be effective.

On the need for media agencies to be more tech-savvy

That is a huge and pressing need. I think that agencies have totally under-invested in technology. Their solution to every problem has always been to put more people on the job. This drives up costs and squeezes agencies' margins. People who do not invest in technology are at the receiving end of the equation. Agencies have to do more and more for less money. Talent is expensive, and people want to do high-end work. They are not interested in repetitive, mechanical work. Technology can automate repetitive tasks easily. Also, automation can remove errors, make processes more efficient, and release manpower from doing work that can be done better by a computer. Talent can be released to do things like analysis and strategic input. Here, agencies have been pretty lacking. This has been a weakness in some ways.

Unfortunately, I do not see this changing. They invest in front-end display systems and not in real technology. My fear is that this space will be usurped and taken away from agencies if they do not act soon. We are already seeing global trends such as in-housing emerge. There is a need for agencies to invest very heavily in technology. I feel they have missed the boat. Agencies are in a bad position when it comes to margins because of this.

On tech impacting the media buying and selling business

The first thing that unified technology will do is bring more visibility to the whole process. Right now, there are two to three problems for both clients and agencies. First of all, there is the whole complexity issue. Earlier, you had the two walled gardens of Google and Facebook, and they accounted for about 80 per cent of ad spend globally, including in India. Now 22 walled gardens have come up like Amazon, Tiktok, and Quora. I heard that Marriott and Uber are also moving in that direction. Whichever company is in the digital space and has rich consumer data at scale, that company is putting up a walled garden. There will be 2222 walled gardens, created by anyone who has data. This will make life even more complex. Tools were supposed to have helped us, but today you have 5,000 tools that do not talk to each other.

Another problem is addressability. If Mercedes wanted to advertise a car 20 years ago, you could put an ad in TOI and reach 10,000 relevant people, but there would be a lot of waste since the ad would get seen by a million people beyond the 10,000 you targeted. Then, when digital came along, we thought that it would bring in sharper segmentation. But as we move towards a cookieless world, addressability remains a huge issue. Almost 30-40 per cent of advertising dollars are still being squandered. We do not know if the monies are being directed to the right consumer. The third area is transparency. There is a black hole between what the client is spending and what the final publisher is getting. That is being obfuscated by several players in the food chain. Everybody is now very uncomfortable about it. In the US, ANA has given an assignment, I read, to PWC and Kroll to look into this.

Now, Kroll is a company that you would normally use for fraud detection, forensics, etc. The level of distrust and lack of transparency has reached a record high. So complexity, addressability, and transparency are the three very big problems. The only solution is to create a platform that can unify everything. Silos lend themselves to these problems. That is where the future is, and I am banking on that. RD&X Network is developing one such platform, ReBid, that can unify AdTech and Martech in real-time. I hope that the whole ecosystem can create solutions like these that will resolve these problems.

On whether the drop in television viewership this year impacted growth badly

I do not think so. TV is still growing, but for better growth to happen, the content has to be excellent. Television’s growth going forward is clearly going to depend on content. If content is not good, then eyeballs will move to other avenues like OTT. Ad funds will also follow, though there may be a time lag sometimes. Ad spending will eventually follow the eyeballs. It is a very simple rule that occurs 100 per cent of the time. The customer is becoming more discerning, and the options available through OTT are vast. If you have good content, you will get good customers and strong growth. If you do not have good content, then the situation will become difficult. People watch a piece of content, not a channel. People focus on engaging content. The focus must shift towards creating great content. TV has a huge reach, and that is its advantage.

On some news channels dropping out of Barc

It is not a good sign at all, and it is not a sensible step. I find it amusing that some media companies are okay with Barc when it comes to their GEC channels but have an issue with the same system when it comes to news. It is a myopic view. I understand that some companies feel compelled to do something when their ratings fall. But Barc is an ecosystem that was created by industry. It is jointly owned by clients through ISA, agencies through AAAI, and broadcasters through the IBF. Now our own system is important, as you need a currency that is commonly agreed upon. I am sure that a thousand improvements can be made with Barc. The industry needs to ensure that this happens and not start saying that the ratings do not suit me. So I will pull out. The answer does not lie there.

On measurement issues plaguing different media verticals

Whenever a medium does not have measurement, that medium really suffers. A classic example of that is "Out of Home." In a country like India, where people spend a lot of time stuck in traffic and where there are so many out-of-home opportunities, the outdoor medium has not been utilised to its full potential. That is because there is no commonly agreed-upon measurement system. Today, clients put millions of dollars into advertising, and they want accountability. Many are listed companies, and so they are also accountable. You cannot just put money in. You need metrics to show if there are relevant returns.

On whether print is struggling to remain relevant

I do not think so. In a country like India, there is a lot of trust in the printed word. It has a very important role to play. As a psyche, we believe and trust in print, especially in this fake news era. However, trends are definitely changing. The challenge of print is engaging younger audiences. Also due to covid, the print habit has to be recreated. Print is a very habit-driven medium. I feel that print advertising will get more localised. Regional languages and Hindi print will grow better than English and national print. But it is still a very relevant medium in India. It needs to make sure that research and measurement are top-notch. Those writing the epitaph of print are making a big mistake.

On the role that in-cinema advertising plays

It has a tactical advantage and is beneficial. It is something that is not as well structured as it should be. Any medium will get better as it gets more structured and better measured. In-cinema advertising has to professionalise itself and present itself in terms of facts and numbers. What the ROI is for advertisers has to be made clearer. It is an interesting niche, but not big in the larger scheme of things.

On how web 3.0, the metaverse will impact media buying and selling

These are big words that people do not understand even as they use them. In the coming three years, another 250 million Indians will be online. They will not come from Mumbai, Delhi, or Kolkata. They will come from tiers two, three, and four towns and cities and from rural areas. This will create a need for more unification of data for media planning and buying. Platforms, software that helps unify the process, and ad tech, martech, and databases from different places will play a big role.

This is where media buying and selling will need to change. A.I. will help predict how a campaign will work. It will do a hundred other things that you cannot imagine today. This is why I feel very displeased that media buying and planning agencies have not invested enough in technology. The reason for that is that everyone is looking at it from a short-term point of view. You have to invest a lot in it upfront and reap the benefits years and decades later.

On how covid has changed the relationship between agencies, advertisers, and consumers

Covid accelerated trends that were already there. Nobody had ever imagined that we would be able to do so much remotely. But human beings are very adaptive. When the time came, we managed to do quite a bit. So the whole relationship has changed. The mystery and the black box have been reduced. People want transparency and to see how things are progressing. So relationships are becoming more transactional, more tactical, and more short-term in general. This is the new way of working. Also, we have to come to terms with the fact that we are heading into an era of complete transparency. We have to adapt to that.

On the expectations from 2023 and if an expected hard land recession will cause a big problem

It will be a mixed year. Globally, there are economic headwinds. Recession is being discussed in Europe and the United States. India still seems to be in a good position and doing pretty well. We are getting into a two-speed world. 2023 should also be a good year and see a 10 per cent+ ad growth in India, in my view. But a lot will depend on macroeconomic factors. We are no longer isolated from the world. If there is a crisis elsewhere, we might see a slowdown here as well, though we may be doing well. We can already see it in some areas, like the slowdown in funding for start-ups. India has produced many great startups because we have great technology and great manpower at very affordable rates. This is not going to change. Yes, if there is a shortage of capital in the global startup economy, there will be a temporary slowdown here. India is not isolated. But once the recovery happens, Indian startups will be the first ones to get off the blocks and start running.

Unless something dramatically impacts the macroeconomic situation here, I think 2023 will still be a good year with another double-digit growth. India is the fastest-growing major economy at the moment. India is not going anywhere near a recession. So the hard-land recession will not happen here. There is so much scope for growth in India. The next 10 years belong to India. If India does well, then advertising by default will also grow. While there may be short-term blips, in the medium to long run we will do well. We should not be fazed by short-term blips.