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Tag: Gautam Mehra

  • On ‘The Next Normal: The Rise of the Contactless Economy'

    Dentsu Data Sciences unveils Millennial & Gen Z Study

    By Our Staff

    The Data Sciences Division of Dentsu India, has unveiled its latest Insights report, ‘The Next Normal: The Rise of the Contactless Economy’ under its specialist consumer insights wing — Dentsu Marketing Cloud (DMC) Insights. The report covers deep findings of the impact of a contactless world on consumer behaviour and sentiment of the Gen Z and millennial audiences from Urban India.

    Said Gautam Mehra, Chief Data Officer (Asia Pacific) & CEO dentsu Programmatic: “While the world grapples with the impact of the covid-19 pandemic, there is widespread uncertainty. However, in an ‘at home’ economy, the only assurance is that a next normal is being created, promoted by a hyper-connected world. Pegged to globally reach a $3trillion size by 2025, the ‘at home’ consumption economy has been fueled by the need for consumers to look at digital channels to maintain normalcy in their lives – be it to connect with friends and family virtually, purchase necessities, subscribe to content or discover and learn new skills. Millennials and Gen Z consumers, being digital natives, have been better equipped in adapting to a virtual world with demonstrating a greater adoption of cashless payments and an openness to discover and try new brands.”

    Added Abhinay Bhasin, Vice President (Asia Pacific) and Head of DMC Insights, Dentsu International: “The Next Normal has given rise to a hyper-connected virtual world fueled by better internet connectivity promoting an increase in online consumption and fulfillment of the needs within a contactless world. Being tech-natives, Gen Z and millennials will form a cornerstone of new age marketing and brand engagement given their growing spending power and digital literacy. A virtual world has given rise to human experience platforms. With the virus hitting home, there has been a hyper awareness of health and safety amongst Millennials and Gen Z audiences. This report builds on the commitment of DMC Insights to deliver industry leading insights on this demographic covering their impact on various aspects of consumption and growth.”

  • To produce several iterations of creative copy

    Dentsu launches GPT-3 powered content creation engine

    By Our Staff

    Dentsu Asia Pacific’s Data Sciences Division has announced the launch of a GPT-3 powered content generation engine. The engine is designed to produce several iterations of creative copy tied to historic and predictive performances of content and is embedded in Dentsu Marketing Cloud (DMC) – Dentsu’s proprietary consumer insight and intelligence platform for creative and performance marketers.

    Generative Pre-trained Transformer version 3 (GPT-3 or GPT 3) by OpenAI is, by far, the most powerful language model in history. By linking GPT-3 with performance data, this one-of-a-kind content generation engine, built by Dentsu’s Data Sciences Division, puts the power of artificial intelligence-led copy-creation in the hands of every Creative across Dentsu.

    Said Sidharth Rao, Chairman, Dentsu Webchutney and Dentsumcgarrybowen India: “One of modern marketing’s most powerful enablers has been using data to understand audiences and create content that resonates powerfully with them. While compelling storytelling is paramount to connecting brands with their audiences, data enables one to move beyond a single limiting thought to unlock the full potential of an idea. As a digital-first creative network, products such as the GPT-3 powered content engine will enable our teams to mitigate the pressure that content creation requires through the intelligent use of technology to drive efficient creative product and deliver better customer experiences.”

    Added Gautam Mehra, CEO, Dentsu Programmatic and Chief Data Officer, Dentsu Asia Pacific: “AI and ML allow for the intelligent processing of information to deliver better efficiencies. With Neuro-linguistic Programming and deep learning coming to the forefront of data-driven creative messaging, enabled by GPT-3 and its applications, the link between effective creative messaging and content generation at scale is entering its golden era. The use of this new technology within our creative product is testament to Intelligence Augmentation at the driving seat of creative innovation and yielding better outcomes for clients and marketing practitioners the world over.”

    Available in 15 languages and applicable globally, the product is very easy to use. The GPT-3 powered Creative Engine will be merged with Ddentsu International’s marquee data-driven marketing engine – the Dentsu Marketing Cloud. Users simply feed the engine with a seed social media caption, theme or topic and the engine generates several iterations of the best predicted performing caption(s) or post copy within a few seconds. The underlying intelligence of the tool can apply quantitative analysis to both pre and post-live-testing cycles and uses AI & ML to predict how audiences will engage and react to any creative message in real-time.

     

     

  • On a Privacy-First World – ‘Who Ate My Cookie?’

    Dentsu Data Sciences unveils industry position paper

    By Our Staff

    The Data Sciences Division of Dentsu international India has published a new industry position paper ‘Who Ate My Cookie’ under its specialist consumer insights wing Dentsu Marketing Cloud (DMC) Insights. The report details both the challenges and opportunities faced by marketers, publishers, consumers and data brokers as they struggle to adapt to a changing ecosystem landscape built for a privacy-first world.

    Cookies have for long a time been the cornerstone of digital marketing ever since their inception in 1994. They have been the basis of digital advertising. With a goal to deliver more relevant ads to consumers, companies have amassed troves of customer data via third-party cookies, which eroded customer trust. This industry position paper aims to describe the shift and need toward a privacy-first world by demystifying ecosystem changes and attempts to provide guidance to marketers and publishers on navigating a “privacy-first” online world devoid of third-party cookies.

    Gautam Mehra
    Gautam Mehra

    Said Gautam Mehra, Chief Data and Product Strategy Officer (Asia Pacific) and CEO Dentsu Programmatic: “The digital revolution that created so many new business and marketing opportunities is now driving the customer revolution. Developing strong customer relationships has always been fundamental to building a successful business practice. This becomes more vital in a privacy-first world. Through our position paper, we endeavour to assist the industry in navigating through the fast paced ecosystem changes and provide guidance on a few possible solutions to strengthen customer experiences with privacy at its core.”

    Nishant Malsisaria
    Nishant Malsisaria

    Added Nishant Malsisaria, Vice President– Product Strategy (Asia Pacific) Dentsu Data Sciences: “To succeed in the new customer-driven environment, organisations must be able to use consent-based information, technology and analytics to deliver relevant customer experiences across channels. A privacy-first world promotes the need to develop first-party data sets in a far more secure and privacy-focused way. Future competitive advantage will depend on the ability of brands to have more control over their audiences in a trust based world.”

     

  • Based in Mumbai, Mehra will report into Zhengda Shen, President of Merkle APAC for his additional role

    Dentsu promotes Gautam Mehra to Chief Data & Product Officer – APAC

    By A Correspondent

     

    Dentsu International has now entrusted Gautam Mehra, currently CEO, Dentsu Programmatic & Chief Data Officer, Dentsu – South Asia, with the additional charge of Chief Data & Product Officer – Asia Pacific (APAC) with immediate effect.

     

    He has been assigned to this new role with the intent to build a strong and unified APAC data and product offering across the dentsu network. Based in Mumbai, Mehra will report into Zhengda Shen, President of Merkle APAC for his additional role.

     

    On the appointment, Ashish Bhasin, Dentsu Asia Pacific CEO said: “Data is central to our business strategy and the ability to handle data well and utilize it to its full capacity is critical in fine tuning way of reaching, interacting, and causing a reaction from the consumers; it ensures advertising efforts are in the right direction. Having Gautam drive this data agenda for us is crucial in the era of data explosion. He has earned a reputation of developing and delivering highly innovative data-led initiatives while embodying the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurism. This is a well-deserved promotion and I look forward to working closely with him,” Ashish added.

     

    Added Zhengda Shen, President of Merkle APAC: “Organisations are constantly challenged to evolve with agility and speed and adapt to ever changing consumer dynamics. Providing leadership for clients by integrating data, media, content and technology to navigate through this shifting landscape is a critical function of agencies. Gautam’s track record for driving innovations and developing globally scaled solutions makes him perfectly placed to help our clients in the region and to ensure that dentsu international continues to lead through innovation.”

     

    Said Mehra: “There are almost no limits to what we can uncover by studying consumer behavior and their interplay with brands. I’m excited to apply my leadership, knowledge, and experience in delivering globally adopted tech driven products and solutions to further the data-driven culture of dentsu international and to build the practice across APAC, further cementing our dominance in this area within the region in using cutting edge technology to solve everyday client challenges.”

     

     

  • The platform targeting Netflix audiences outside the platform for Tata Nexon EV

    Dentsu Programmatic targets premium OTT susbcribers under Dentsu Play

    By A Correspondent

     

    In an effort to plan for activating OTT audiences from premium platforms such as Netflix, Dentsu Play partnered with sibling WATConsult  on Tata Motors and came up with a solution to target premium, behind-the-pay-wall OTT audiences on platforms outside of the OTT through integrations using first-party and second-party data partnerships.

     

    Ramesh Dorairajan

    Commenting on the success, Ramesh Dorairajan, Head – Sales, Marketing and Customer Care, Electric Vehicle Business Unit, Tata Motors said: “The Great Reset has highlighted several audience trends that will help us enhance our overall brand reach. The increase in OTT content consumption has transformed the way people consume content. This unique data-driven approach from dentsu Programmatic has opened up additional avenues for us to interact, particularly with the audience behind the paywall, while creating a phenomenal impact on our campaign performance as we pioneer an industry-first approach.”

     

    Gautam Mehra

    Added Gautam Mehra, CEO, Dentsu Programmatic and Chief Data & Product Officer – APAC: “With our industry first partnerships and integrations enabling insights from platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Zee5 and large players in the sector, coupled with our proprietary technology, dentsu Programmatic is proud to have unearthed a unique way to drive business success for clients wishing to target OTT audiences. Using Machine Learning at its core, coupled with intelligence from platforms such as Facebook and Google, we aspire to deliver many such industry leading solutions to common client challenges.”

     

    Heeru Dingra

    Sharing her views on the same, Heeru Dingra, CEO, WATConsult said: “As OTT platforms grow and evolve at an exponential rate, they seem to emerge as one of the key focus areas for brands as well as marketers. Therefore, dentsu Programmatic’s tool to effectively tap those audiences has efficiently helped us in actioning a campaign for our brand Tata Nexon EV. From targeting the right set of audiences to creating awareness about the brand and attaining the right amount of consideration, it delivered some remarkable results for the brand.”

     

     

  • DAN Data Sciences has unveiled its OTT Report 'Now Streaming: The Indian Youth OTT Story'

    65% of millennials & Gen Z prefer OTT over TV: DAN report

     

    By A Correspondent

     

    The Data Sciences Division of Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN) India has unveiled an OTT Insights report, ‘Now Streaming: The Indian Youth OTT Story’ under its specialist consumer insights wing Dentsu Marketing Cloud (DMC) Insights. The report covers deep findings of OTT content and gaming habits of the Gen Z and Millennial audiences from Urban India.

     

    India’s on demand digital streaming industry surpassed the national film industry in terms of both viewership and growth. With entertainment gone online coupled with a surge in online gamers, the pandemic has proven to be a fillip to the sector with consumers confined to their homes. With the Indian OTT base being pegged to triple this year, the OTT sector presents a huge opportunity for investment into video content and mobile gaming services.

     

    Here are the key highlights of the report:

    :: 49% of India’s youth spend 2-3 hours a day binge watching content.

    :: 4 hours is the average time spent in consuming OTT video content in a day by millennials and Gen Z.

    :: On average, people signed on to 3 new OTT platforms during lockdown.

    :: 65% of millennials and Gen Z Prefer consuming video content on an OTT platform over TV.

     

    Gautam Mehra

    Commenting on the launch, Gautam Mehra, CEO, DAN Programmatic & Chief Data Officer, DAN – South Asia said: “While a large chunk of India is a single TV household, affordable data and advancements in mobile technology has been a huge boost to the country’s growing online content and gaming consumer base. This, coupled with the effects of the lockdown has led to the dramatic growth of online video content consumers and gamers with a high increment of audiences coming from a very young segment of the population. The report reveals trends of platforms of choice as well as a growing subscriber base and supports our investments into our recently launched OTT Planner – DMC Video+ as well as the world’s first gaming DSP – Dentsu Play to support advertisers navigate their investments in this ecosystem.”

     

    The report has been unveiled under the unit’s specialist research wing – Dentsu Marketing Cloud (DMC) Insights. The DMC Insights offers an expertise-led model to assist Dentsu Data Sciences’ research & insights, consulting and practice teams in delivering differentiated values to our clients.

     

    Abhinay Bhasin

    Added Abhinay Bhasin, Vice President (South Asia) – Data Sciences and Head of DMC Insights, Dentsu Aegis Network: “With online video and gaming seeing the maximum growth of time spent during the lockdown, we recognize the need for an industry level research report to give a direction towards which this segment of the economy is moving. Moreover, with or sans crisis, understanding Gen Z and millennials will form a cornerstone of new age marketing given their growing spending power coupled by their ability to influence older generations. This report is but the first step from DMC Insights to deliver industry level insights on this audience covering their impact on various aspects of consumption and growth.”

     

    Link to the report: https://dentsumarketing.cloud/dmcinsights.php

     

  • It’s billed as the world's first gaming DSP for programmatic advertising across APAC

    DAN India’s data sciences division launches ‘Dentsu Play’

    By A Correspondent

     

    DAN India’s data sciences division has launched ‘Dentsu Play’, billed as the world’s first gaming DSP for programmatic advertising across APAC.

     

    Gautam Mehra

    Commenting on the launch, Gautam Mehra, CEO, DAN Programmatic & Chief Data Officer, DAN – South Asia said: “With the growing frictionless payment facilities, mobile phone prices, data rates and promotion of localized content, there has been a surge in the gaming ecosystem within the country that has only propelled further in the lockdown era. The increasing demand from clients to understand more about these audiences to build strong consumer-brand relationships has been a long-standing pain point. The absence of a single ecosystem to understand and buy these audiences in a seamless manner has been a key challenge for advertisers that we are now able to resolve with Dentsu Play. Dentsu Play will overlay complex machine learning algorithms to better segment audiences and identify opportunities that yield maximum value for brands as well as gaming partners integrated with the ecosystem. It will also be capable of serving completely playable ads that have known to have high engagement rates and are a capability of only a handful of DSPs that exist today. Dentsu Play will bring to the forefront better control over performance and insights, whilst ensuring the best of technology deployed to ensure brand safety and transparency.”

     

    Sunil Naryani

    Added Sunil Naryani, Vice President Commercials & Partnerships, Amplifi, Dentsu Aegis Network Asia Pacific: “The pace at which gaming and e-sports in the Asia Pacific region is growing is absolutely phenomenal. New startups are mushrooming the space every month. The industry has already attracted some of the biggest names in the global ecosystem such as Youzu, Nazara, Unity Tencent and Alibaba investing in it and has over 500 game development companies actively invested. Forging a unique and one of a kind partnership with Unity Technologies, Dentsu Play will expand the network’s capabilities in programmatic gaming with the ability to deploy engaging creatives at scale across the APAC region.”

     

     

  • The tool has been launched under the umbrella of DMC Explore

    DAN launches Dentsu Marketing Cloud Video+ for OTT

    By A Correspondent

     

    The data sciences division of the Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN) India has announced the launch of ‘DMC Video+ [Dentsu Marketing Cloud Video+]’, a tool that provides an agnostic approach towards planning and buying on over-the-top TV (OTT) platforms.

     

    Shamsuddin Jasani

    Commenting on the launch, Shamsuddin Jasani, Group MD, Isobar- South Asia said: “The Indian OTT ecosystem is hyper competitive and has attracted varying types of players, each of whom offer varied value propositions to consumers. This has created a somewhat fragmented ecosystem with no accurate measure of how brands should engage and activate these audiences. With rapid increase in consumption of online content – primarily fueled by OTT Video, audio and gaming, the ecosystem suffers from the absence of a single source of truth when it comes to buying inventory from these platforms. The Dentsu Marketing Cloud Video+ presents a unique solution to this problem by creating a single ecosystem to understand and buy these audiences in a seamless manner, limiting the rise of another walled garden ecosystem.”

     

    Gautam Mehra

    Added Gautam Mehra, CEO, DAN Programmatic & Chief Data Officer, DAN – South Asia: “In an environment that is now heavily focused on reducing wastage, brands know they need to move budgets from linear TV and traditional advertising towards digital advertising driven by OTT. They however, tend to play it conservatively when they aren’t sure exactly how much of shift will achieve the best ROI. In the absence of transparency, unified insights and audience buying system for OTT consumers, there exist several inefficiencies within the ecosystem. The promise of the Dentsu Marketing Cloud Video+ product is to plug this gap, thereby guiding brands on their journey of capitalizing on audiences who are increasingly mobile and engaged in consuming high quality production content on OTT rather than traditional video consumption of user generated content.”

     

    The tool has been launched under the umbrella of DMC Explore through which clients are not only enabled to gain deep insights into the content consumption of audiences in the OTT ecosystem, but can also activate selected segments for their campaigns.

     

     

  • It is a proprietary brand-audience perception analysis engine

    DAN Data Sciences launches ‘Dentsu BrandSense’

    By A Correspondent

     

    In an effort to offer clients data driven solutions, the Data Sciences division of Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN) India, has announced the launch of ‘Dentsu BrandSense’ – a proprietary brand-audience perception analysis engine.

     

    Commenting on the launch, Rajiv Dingra, CEO & Founder, WATConsult said: “Targeting people based not just on their explicitly stated preferences or past behavioral trends, but on their underlying psychological make-up has been a long-needed solution for brands to connect with their audiences. With the Dentsu BrandSense tool from the DAN Data Lab factory, this is a leap forward in a true data driven way for brands to understand the make-up of their audiences in much more depth to generate content that better resonates with a brand audience.”

     

    Notes a communique: “This proprietary brand-audience analysis engine will be housed under the audience insights engine of Dentsu Aegis Network – DAN Explore. It will have two key components – first, analyzing a brand’s communication on social media and marketing channels (Dentsu BrandSense), and second, analyzing how audiences respond to those brand communication channels (Dentsu AudienceSense).”

     

    Added Gautam Mehra, CEO, DAN Programmatic & Chief Data Officer, DAN – South Asia: “With Dentsu BrandSense, we aim to bring Behavioural Sciences and Personality Science to the forefront of marketing efforts. Equipped with not just proprietary machine learning models, this engine will be equipped with intelligence from industry leading personality algorithms such as the likes of IBM Watson, Google NLU and Azure Text Analytics APIs. The idea is to go beyond finding correlations between behaviour and audience preferences to now adding a personality dimension to improve marketing effectiveness and enhance audience motivation,”

     

     

  • The Dentsu Marketing Cloud Platform will operate as a marketing intelligence platform

    DAN Programmatic launches Dentsu Marketing Cloud Platform

    By A Correspondent

     

    DAN Programmatic has announced the launch of Dentsu Marketing Cloud Platform to power the network’s advanced analytics capabilities.

     

    Shamsuddin Jasani

    Commenting on the launch, Shamsuddin Jasani, Group MD, Isobar – South Asia said: “In our recent conversations with marketers, there is a growing pain point of limited data control due to the black boxes in which various ecosystems operate in. We are constantly hearing that clients are looking to gain deeper insights into their audiences and their journeys and to turn those insights into better brand and audience experiences. To address this concern, we have invested in developing from ground up the Dentsu Marketing Cloud Platform to present clients with greater insights to enhance marketing effectiveness and increase their control over their data.”

     

    The Dentsu Marketing Cloud Platform will operate as a marketing intelligence platform, which will house intelligence from the globally acclaimed DAN Data Labs ecosystem, first, second- and third-party data. It brings together advertising and analytics to help surface deeper insights, establish enriched customer connections and drive better marketing results.

     

    Gautam Mehra

    Added Gautam Mehra, CEO, DAN Programmatic & Chief Data Officer, DAN – South Asia: “Under the Dentsu Marketing Cloud Platform, clients will be able to better segment their audience cohorts using advanced analytics. With the integration of client owned or DAN owned pixels governing the flow of data, clients will be able to run proprietary multi-touch attribution models, market mix models and a whole gamut of services to not only provide better insights, but to deliver high touched consumer experiences through sharper targeting,”

     

     

  • It is a machine learning- and neuroscience-based engine that promises new insights into the predicted performance of a creative

    DAN Programmatic launches ‘DAN Vision for Creative’

    By A Correspondent

     

    DAN Programmatic along with Amnet has announced the launch of DAN Vision for Creative, a machine learning- and neuroscience-based engine that delivers new insights into the predicted performance of a creative even before the creative has actually run.

     

    Commenting on the launch, Sidharth Rao, CEO and Co-Founder of Dentsu Webchutney said: “One of the biggest gamechangers in modern marketing is the use of data to better the decision making capabilities of professionals to yield better outcomes. Creativity without data is a shot in the dark. Even when a creative professional claims to follow his gut, he or she is in reality analysing data generated through experiences for a particular outcome. Having co-founded an agency that deploys new age solutions to solve common problems, ‘DAN Vision for Creative’ is just the right weapon to solve the age old creative problem of “Why are certain creatives performing better than the others?.” It is creating for us a unique differentiator by providing a justification or even starting points for our creative approach to deliver brand success.”

     

    Added Gautam Mehra, CEO of DAN Programmatic and Chief Data Officer (South Asia) at Dentsu Aegis Network: “Today, creative testing is about determining which creative is performing better for which audiences. This involves testing 100s of creatives. The byproduct of this is, lots of budgets invested into creative production, time spent to create them, marketing budget spent towards testing them and the time involved to get a confident decision. All of this deters most marketers from doing comprehensive creative testing. To top it all, even after this, all we get is which creative is performing better, and no clue on which element is influencing it to perform better or worse. By combining advanced AI techniques such as RNNs (recurrent neural networks), Computer Vision and NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), we are now able to provide predictive intelligence for the creative even before it goes live. This shortens the creative testing cycle and saves on time and money for our clients. Additionally, DAN Vision for Creative provides clues to the “Why” of the creative; making the future creative cycle even more sharper and focussed,”.

     

     

  • It is an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based insights engine for programmatic audience performance

    DAN Programmatic launches ‘DAN Explore for Programmatic’

    By A Correspondent

     

    DAN Programmatic has collaborated with Amnet, the network’s programmatic arm, to launch DAN Explore for Programmatic. It is an Artificial Intelligence-based insights engine for programmatic audience performance, which merges with their flagship insights engine – DAN Explore.

     

    Salil Shankar

    Commenting on the launch, Salil Shankar, Vice President – Amnet India said: “Despite the obvious benefits of the ecosystem, when it comes to programmatic advertising, the environment is mainly opaque. With the tech still being very much of a black-box, the lack of transparency still remains a major point of concern for publishers, brands and marketers. With its unique ability to provide more understanding to audience cohort performance, DAN Explore for Programmatic will be one step closer to our vision of making this ecosystem more transparent as well as providing us with the insight to sharpen our audience buys and set new performance benchmarks.”

     

    Added Gautam Mehra, CEO- DAN Programmatic & Chief Data Officer- South Asia, Dentsu Aegis Network: “Armed with the right algorithms, DAN Explore for Programmatic aims to become a translator in conversations by bringing trust between industry stakeholders in the programmatic space. With its unique access to data and proprietary logic frameworks, DAN Explore for Programmatic will help classify programmatic audiences accurately and reliably to analyse the performance of audience cohorts in line with marketing objectives based on thousands of real-time data points – forming a base for future planning and real time optimization of programmatic campaigns.”