More data is good – but relevant data is better, says Manish Bhatia, North American CEO, Kantar Media. Bhatia offers his take on the burning issue in advertising.Cynopsis: Where do you see the digital ad market heading?
Manish Bhatia: Advertisers follow eyeballs, and whichever screen gets an increasing amount of people’s time and attention and shows efficiencies in reaching the right people and eliciting the desired response will get the ad dollars. All signs suggest that the march of digital is continuing. Advances in technology (faster, more ubiquitous bandwidth, slicker screens, IPTVs) suggest that more and more of the content will be delivered and consumed on digital platforms. The digital ad market is headed up.
Cynopsis: What do you project the balance will be between traditional and digital in two years?
Bhatia: Tough question. Hard to tell where things settle because the technology innovation and consumer behaviors are still evolving. But in the near term we’re seeing consumers add digital to the mix rather than replace traditional media – this was reinforced by our recent DIMENSION study. So it remains important to track and understand all of it.
Cynopsis: You joined Kantar in January at what appears to be a turning point in audience measurement. What is the single biggest challenge in audience measurement today?
Bhatia: Given that video has escaped the TV set, the need to capture and report viewing (content, advertising) across all platforms in totality and be able to parse unique/unduplicated reach (one of the key measures of an ad campaign) is a burning issue. Kantar is working with comScore to integrate digital measurement with traditional TV measurement to provide clients the full view in multiple countries around the world. The question is not just around audience, it’s also on advertising. Clients want to be able to see the totality of advertising activity for themselves and other players, including competitors in the marketplace. How much is brand x spending on advertising, and which media are they heavy on? Which platform is driving more sales? These are age old questions that continue to be asked but the answers now need to incorporate the various flavors of digital (PC, mobile, OTT TV, display, video, search).
Cynopsis: Kantar recently launched a new corporate identity that encourages collaboration. What is the goal, and have you seen results? What could other companies learn from the process?
Bhatia: In a world of increasing and increasingly complex sources of data, clients are looking for the right insights, presented to them in a concise, user friendly and actionable manner. More data is good but only after you have filtered through the mountain of unnecessary and irrelevant data to find the most relevant nuggets. Our goal is to do exactly that for our clients. It’s not only to create the right insights, but also to help clients put the pieces of the puzzle together so they can see the whole picture.
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