In Conversation with Vaibhav Odhekar, POKKT
Vaibhav Odhekar is COO & Co-Founder at POKKT, a mobile video advertising platform in India, South East Asia & MENA with a strong focus on rewarded Video Ads within Mobile Games.
Agency Reporter – How do you see the contemporary trends in consumer experience management influencing the adoption of mobile video platforms?
There are a lot of factors that are making this adoption of mobile video platforms grow at a rapid pace. With the ease of use and availability, consumers prefer mobile video platforms over other mediums. In the lockdown, consumption has augmented with the need for personal entertainment like never before. Apart from this, the proactive push towards adoption by offers and schemes by the players and the depth of the services provided also contributes to consumer consumption. All these factors altogether are enhancing consumer experience management.
AR – Having taken the pulse of marketers regarding the growing presence of mobile video advertising platforms, what are some insights both pro and con that you’ve gained on how they feel about it?
Online video platforms Market was valued approximately billions in 2019 & is anticipated to grow with a healthy growth rate by 2021. The key factors which give growth to the Online video platforms market are demand for online advertising among the organizations. Over the last few years, companies have increased their expense on online video advertisement to attract consumers, which fuels the market growth. Furthermore, growth in demand and penetration of mobile devices drive the demand for online advertisement. However, the presence of open-source platforms is expected to hinder the growth of the market.
AR – What are some current trends in the ad world that are influencing your business model and how are you addressing them? What are the major monetizing challenges faced by game publishers globally today?
From an overall advertising perspective, we believe digital share of pie has been increasing and the current situation has given an extra boost. While overall dollar spends have come back, the mix of advertisers has shifted. Certain categories have stopped all together for obvious reasons, but a new set has come on-board.
AR – What are the most important trends in advanced ad tracking analytics that you could recall from the last 12 months? How do you think POKKT could enhance these analytic standards for customers?
IAB has done some remarkable work in the last 12 months and the focus has been on increasing the trust in the “supply chain of inventory” specially in RTB and programmatic buying.
We use Open Measurement SDK (OM SDK) as a measurement standard for Apps which offers a common code and libraries for facilitating third-party access to measurement data. Leveraging sellers.json also enables buyers to verify the entities who are either direct sellers of, or intermediaries in the selected digital advertising opportunity for purchase. Adaptation of ads.txt and app.ads.txt is another tool to enhance analytics standards for customers. On the other hand, the Seller jason mechanism allows buyers to verify the entities who are either direct sellers of, or intermediaries in the selected digital advertising opportunity for purchase.
AR – In 2020, what would be the biggest expectations from mobile video advertising technologies?
We don’t really see any big changes in mobile video advertising, but rather considerable adoption of existing technologies and guidelines as asked by IAB or other such independent bodies. We see that mobile & Video ads will cross 50% of the marketing dollars pie in this period. The growth will lead to increased measurement guidelines to be followed across a variety of spectrum.
AR – COVID-19 is a global wrecker. Has it impacted your business? How do you cope with it?
Month of March and almost Mid-April, was an uncertain time for everyone and so marketing spends obviously were affected. By May we saw things stabilizing and recovery in the economy. Moderate growth is happening and we anticipate the advertising sector to soon start operating as it was earlier. We’ve not just crossed our planned numbers but probably had the best month so far this year. We are highly optimistic for the remaining 6 months. We are quite optimistic about what will happen in June. Post pandemic, we can see things growing fast and digital advertising to have the lions share from the marketing dollars pie.