Co-viewing strategies need to be created: Rajiv Rajagopal

At the GroupM Finecast Addressable TV and Beyond summit, Rajiv Rajagopal, head of client development, Finecast, shared how the company is providing solutions to clients to ensure they are targeting consumers with relevant marketing strategies and messaging. 

 

Rajagopal opened his talk by sharing how India remains largely a single-household market and hence, it is important to create strategies for a co-viewing environment. 

 

According to Rajagopal, the two fundamentals that need to be on top of any marketing strategy for today’s TV viewing audience are broadcast quality and a brand-safe environment. 

 

To cash in on audience retention, he suggested that data segmentation should be sacrosanct. “At the core, data synchronisations from various third-party providers, geospatial mapping and partnering with publishes to understand the audience insights is important for us at Finecast. We have partnered with Salesforce for this attempt”, Rajagopal remarked. 

 

He also shared how Finecast aims to provide household data at a pin code level. “With various audience insights from a pin code level, we can identify viewers’ socio-economic data, purchasing propensity and financial data. With this, we can allow clients to see if they can target a particular brand.” 

 

With pin code data, Rajagopal pointed out that it helps provide relevant audience segments to clients basis their requirements and activate those areas that fit the bill instead of targeting the entire city. 

 

Rajagopal then went on to share how they have added the relevancy factor for brands. 

 

“Zomato has been a classic example of creative versions. The brand wanted to bring out communication in two aspects. One for the HSM (Hindi-speaking market) and one for the southern audience. They had two different brand ambassadors as well that catered to the different market segments. We helped them out by splitting the campaign into two. For the HSM, we had Hrithik Roshan, and for the south market, we had Allu Arjun. This gave the brand a multi-level and state-level targeting”, said Rajagopal. 

Finecast, going forward, wants to go further and break down audience segments into geo granularity apart from pin codes to dive into per square metre data to understand audiences at a very small segment area. 

 

Giving his closing remarks, Rajagopal, concluded by saying, “At the end, we need to bring in linear accessibility for the TV viewing audience. Our efforts should go into bringing the entire TV ecosystem of broadcasters, distributors and technology partners together to build a linear accessibility environment.”