‘DIGITAL ADEX WILL HELP BRANDS ANALYSE COMPETITIVE ADS’

TAM has partnered with BI Science to launch Digital AdEx, a service that monitors and provides information on advertisements across over 3,000 digital publishers. LV Krishnan, CEO, TAM Media Research tells us how advertisers can make the most out of it

TAM Media Research has recently partnered with Israelbased business intelligence solution provider BI Science and launched the Digital AdEx, that will help advertisers monitor not just their own campaigns but also competing brands’ digital advertising creatives. The service monitors close to 3,000 digital publishers and will offer multimedia insights across Digital, TV, Print and Radio.

The service that was soft-launched last year in AugustSeptember provides a comprehensive coverage of advertising on all four digital platforms – mobile, tablets, desktop and laptop for all types of ads, including display banner, video and HTML.
Talking about the reception to the service so far, LV Krishnan, CEO, TAM Media Research, says, “Since the soft launch about six months back, our clients have been using the service and have been coming back to us with positive feedback. For the first time, we will be able to provide advertisers with comprehensive comparative, competitive advertising data across categories on the digital platform.”

The Digital AdEx data will be available to its user-base on a weekly basis through the MAP software. TAM has been working with BI Science for the past one year now where the data from the latter was re-classified based on the requirements of Indian advertisers. Krishnan explains, “BI Science is present in markets like the UK, US, South America, South Africa, Asia Pacific, Australia and Japan which are intensive digital markets. But the data that we received wasn’t really classified in the way that Indian brands are used to, i.e., classified by brands, categories, variants, theme of the campaign or information around when the campaign was released, which server it was released from, which portal was it seen on, etc. Once the raw data came to us, we started work on it, and built that entire database into our way of classifications, finally integrating that data into the MAP data.”

Krishnan points out that advertisers can draw multiple benefits out of the services. He explains, “The biggest advantage is that advertisers will have a clear picture of competitive advertising; they will now be able to analyse a competitor’s performance on digital platforms in conjunction with TV, Print and Radio. They can get data on whether the market synchronized between Digital and Television, whether a brand is putting up the same communication on every platform or changing it, the kind of views that the videos get, the scheduling strategy, etc. Secondly, along with the data, we also process the creative being used on the tool’s dashboard. You can actually look at the creative used for a reachbased platform vis-à-vis a unique, niche content digital platforms, thereby making it easier to compare and differentiate. And the third bit is largely about the kind of mix being used by brands - how much of it is programmatic and direct buying, and the impression coming out of both. We understand that clients need a 360-degree monitoring of advertisements from across platforms and our aim, therefore, is to ensure that they get that from both traditional and non-traditional media.”

Currently, TAM already has advertisers on board from different sectors including BFSI, Automobile, Broadcasting and FMCG. Also, while the service currently monitors close to 3,000 digital publishers, Krishnan is confident that the number will grow significantly, in the near future. “We expect to monitor close to 5,000 publishers by the end of the year,” he says.