'Digital provides the opportunity to identify audience on the basis of intent': Tushar Vyas, GroupM

The India Chapter of the International Advertising Association (IAA) organised an industry-specific knowledge seminar on digital media in Mumbai. The event hosted on 2 August was for the realty sector. 

Among speakers was Tushar Vyas, managing partner, GroupM. He spoke on ‘Digital marketing: Getting ready for the digital era’. Vyas began by comparing the data consumed by Indians across media.

He said, “People spend more time on data devices as compared to other mediums like TV and print. Today, the data consumed by Indians is in gigabytes and ziga bytes. And the biggest game changer is the presence of smart phone devices - there are around 60 million devices being used in India today.”

According to him, an important trend was that of content consumption moving from single to multiple screens. For instance, Facebook was being accessed not only on the personal computer but on mobiles and tablets as well, he said. And when people are accessing Facebook, they are watching television as well, noted Vyas.

Getting social, driven by content

Pointing to another trend, Vyas said ‘digital has given a different meaning to what an individual perceives as news’. He spoke of how people are using social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to source news even before they read a newspaper or watch TV. Another ramification according to him, was that geographical boundaries have dissolved with information and content available to everyone irrespective of location.  

Using these trends, Vyas laid down guidelines that a marketer should adhere to while advertising in the digital age.

He stressed on content being key to reaching out to consumers, and said, “What content you create is extremely important as advertising has become content-driven. Brands are the publishers of the content while marketers are storytellers and consumers are the participants.”

He urged the audience to adopt ‘multi-screen’ thinking while creating content so as to ensure that it is accessible ‘not only a five-inch mobile but also on a 10-inch tablet.

Segmenting by intent

He urged the audience to segregate their audience and create clusters so as to drive better efficiency, but not by the old segmentation driven by socio-economics.

He said, “The way of defining audiences is changing. It is no longer the SEC A / B parameter. Instead, the audience is ‘intent-driven’. Identify and then segregate people who visit your websites once and those who are repeat visitors. Accordingly, then target these people the same way you would if they were one time visitors to your office or repeat visitors. Digital provides the opportunity to identify the audience on the basis of their intent.”

As regards social media, he encouraged marketers to monitor conversations happening around their brands and competition amongst the target group. Social listening ‘is not a ‘one time process’, he said, before touching upon the need to use data from multiple sources effectively.