“Brand safety goes beyond advertising. It’s all about protecting the customer relationship and brand equity. Both programmatic and publisher buying in the mobile ecosystem face the problem of transparency. To solve this issue, top management need to take the responsibility and hold agencies and media buyers accountable. The brand representatives must have more control over the buying partners and demand a greater transparency.” Said Moneka Khurana, Country Head, MMA India
In an interview with MediAvataar India, Moneka exchanged her thoughts and threw open the can of facts about the mobile marketing trends in India and how marketers are shifting focus to leverage from this dynamic medium.
Here is the complete Q&A…..
MediAvataar: How important is accountability in mobile advertising?
Moneka: Mobile advertising has become one of the most powerful mediums of marketing and advertising. At the same time, issue of accountability has risen tremendously with several challenges such as brand safety, viewability, ad fraud, inconsistent measurement plaguing the industry. In context of attribution, omnichannel integration, incrementality and real traffic accountability it has become essential that mobile marketing delivers on business outcomes, bring trust to a marketer and become the primary driver of digital advertising.
MediAvataar: What should marketers be aware of?
Moneka: Marketers should be aware of exercising their right of transparency and blacklist rogue sites. They can also learn and follow guidelines from brand safety policy which MMA as an authority on mobile is happy to enable. This would ensure transparency, weeding of rogue sites, elimination of misrepresentation and bot traffic. At the same time, a marketer should work with anti-ad fraud solution providers to enable a safety net through the value chain with the customer.
MediAvataar: Tell us about the efforts put by The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), towards this.
Moneka: MMA is a mobile marketing trade body with a marketer first approach to engage, empower and enlighten marketers with mobile marketing and its challenges. Ad fraud is one of the biggest challenges faced by marketers today hence, the 3-city ad fraud roadshow series is an attempt to educate and empower all key stakeholders involved. The inaugural chapter was held in Delhi, followed by Bangalore and third series would be held in Mumbai on 25th April taking forward the mission to ‘ACT’ on Ad fraud today i.e. Assess, combat and track Ad fraud – MMA’s ad fraud mission is a part of its brand-safety charter. E-commerce, gaming, finance, travel and food are the top 5 sectors which were most impacted by ad fraud and bearing maximum losses on account of it.
MMA has recently launched a global ad fraud council in conjunction with local councils across markets. The launch of MMA ad fraud local council is a next step to the roadshow to enable marketers with standards, best practices and guidelines through the life stages of ad fraud.
MediAvataar: What is the state of Ad Fraud in India?
Moneka: As per a report by TechArc titled ‘India digital ad-fraud market report’ – At $1.63 Billion, India’s share in global digital ad-fraud stood at 8.7% in 2018. Traffic, misrepresentation and attribution frauds feature as the top 3 frauds committed. App fraud comprises 85% of the frauds done online.
MMA recently conducted an annual survey to understand the state of ad fraud in India amongst 100 marketers and agencies. Following are the key takeaways:
• An average of 22% of the mobile ad spends are subject to ad fraud
• Ad fraud is slated to grow by 40% whilst marketers who are working with experts report a decrease in Ad fraud by 34%
• As per the survey, 50% of the marketers are using 3rd party solutions to fight Ad fraud and most others intend to do so
• Third party solutions, blacklisting and transparency were rated as top 3 measures being taken to combat Ad fraud
MediAvataar: Can a fraud be self-diagnosed?
Moneka: With the help of in-house brand safety experts, it can be diagnosed. However, there is a need to have a comprehensive online to offline strategy to deal with ad fraud in omni-channel customer engagement. Effective ad fraud solutions will enable marketers to contain the malicious activity and ensure a cleaner customer contact program.
MediAvataar: How the MMA Ad fraud Council will be able to help marketers?
Moneka: MMA globally focuses on ad fraud and with local council, it strives to stimulate the growth of mobile marketing and its associated technologies in the country. Through the council we aim to help marketers by creating standard guidelines and best practices for performance marketing, brand marketing and incrementality.
MediAvataar: What are the challenges of programmatic, publisher buying in the mobile ecosystem?
Moneka: Brand safety goes beyond advertising. It’s all about protecting the customer relationship and brand equity. Both programmatic and publisher buying in the mobile ecosystem face the problem of transparency. To solve this issue, top management need to take the responsibility and hold agencies and media buyers accountable. The brand representatives must have more control over the buying partners and demand a greater transparency.
It is critical to distinguish between a genuine and a rogue website. Advertising on rogue platforms can undermine consumer confidence and pose a threat to the brand.
Bot click is another and new type of fraud that concerns the advertisers and marketers in a huge way. It is a challenge that requires human intervention and fact checking; the top management must take stringent measures to blacklist such sites and avoid fraudulent activities.
MediAvataar: Is Mobile marketing an upward trend?
Moneka: According to InMobi State of Mobile Video advertising 2018 report, 31 per cent of advertisers are eyeing this format. And by 2020, India is expected to become the second largest video viewing audience globally.
Mobile has rapidly become the most preferred consumer screen and with OTT/video becoming the leading content format the time spent is diverting more and more spends to mobile marketing.
MediAvataar: How do you think marketers who haven’t delved into it should start?
Moneka: Brand Safety has become a necessity and marketers who haven’t delved into it ad fraud need to empower themselves with knowhow and types of frauds that exist. MMA has a knowledge series comprising videos and whitepapers to assist marketers and empower them. Alongside, they can also collaborate with brand safety experts to put right measures in place to deter ad fraud.
MediAvataar: What makes mobile marketing an exciting pursuit, especially today?
Moneka: OTT/video/India has bypassed desktop and a user first internet experience is happening via mobile with social media and video being key drivers to bring new users into the fold. This is the most exciting time for a marketing to reach consumers at scale using the mobile.