Tag: Sanjeev Handa

By A Correspondent

YouTube hosted the fourth edition of Brandcast India in Mumbai recently. Held in Mumbai, the event brought together leading advertisers, agencies, and partners from all across the country to discuss and celebrate YouTube – the destination where Indians choose to watch video. Talking about the growing appetite among Indian consumers to watch videos online, YouTube shared that as per App Annie, over 180 million Indians are watching YouTube every month on mobile. Further, ‘watchtime’ in India has grown 400 per cent year on year and 80per cent of watch time in India comes from mobile. From entertainment to education, from news to beauty – Indians are turning to YouTube for every aspect of their lives.

Improved connectivity, affordable data plans and huge variety of content available has led to over 400 million Indians online and 300m smartphone users today. In the mobile video era, viewers can watch what they want, where they want and when they want – and this greater choice for viewers also means greater opportunities for marketers. In today’s media environment, while there is plentiful reach, it’s harder to attract viewers’ attention.

Elaborating on how attentive reach has become the new currency for the advertisers, Sapna Chadha, Head of Marketing, Google India and South-East Asia said, “According to asurvey we conducted with Majestic Research, using eye-tracking technology we discovered, the first ad in an TV ad break is watched actively by 50% of people while the last one is watched actively by only 13% of viewers. Attention has always been inherent to advertising. But, capturing and keeping attention has never been harder for advertisers.”

Addressing the audience, she asked them to change how they buy and plan media for attentive reach. She also shared that over the years, YouTube captures audience attention by delivering 95per cent audibility and 93per cent viewability.

Speaking on how to make advertising more effective online, Jonah Goodhart, CEO, MOAT said, “Everywhere in the world, consumption patterns are changing, making ‘attentive reach’ the foundation of any digital campaign. Measurability is the key to understand the efficacy of any brand engagement and we are thrilled to be the first company to independently measure viewability on YouTube.”

Sanjeev Handa, VP and Head of Marketing, Maruti Suzuki also addressed the audience and said, “When you combine a format like video and you want to reach out to a billion+ Indians, the answer comes naturally and that is YouTube. YouTube allows us to tell the right brand stories to the right audiences helping us capture their attention. Case in point, is the launch of the IGNIS which was done simultaneously through the physical as well as digital medium to engage with the millennials and, the results were astounding. On YouTube, the launch was viewed over 10 million times, and 20% pre-launch bookings came from digital in the first 10 days,” adding: “For advertisers to leverage digital effectively, one needs to have deep insights into your consumers, look to target their interests and effectively measure the viewability of the ad.”

Elaborating on his experience of working with brands, Kurt Hugo Schneider who has over 8 million subscribers on YouTube and has collaborated with over 40 global brands said, “Concept integration and not product integration, is key to making a brand video authentic and earning people’s attention. With technological innovation, brands today have the opportunity to interact more closely with their audience and get a feel of their preferences.”