Rubi Das

Hi. Myself. I have more than 7 years of experience in digital marketing and dedicated 6 years experience in programmatic advertisement. I have started my journey from Google, which was an outsourced project to Accenture, And I was working as a subject matter expert for DV 360 ad exchange. At the same time, I was also collaborating into, um, other digital solutions, the Google Marketing Solutions. I was partnering with Centimeters 360 and other solutions to troubleshoot campaigns across agencies and brands and collaborating with the Google account managers in terms of helping and sharing resolutions, uh, supporting in bringing new content for the help center articles. And, uh, uh, I also had a team of 5 members where I was sharing our learnings on, uh, different cases and teaching them about the GDPR process. So, hence, I was leading into, uh, I was dealing into a lot of marketing solutions in the Google marketing portfolio. From there, I switched to Pomatic. Pomatic is a SSP platform. Uh, in SSP platform, it ideally brings publishers inventory onboard, and, uh, it allows many demand partners to access those inventory. I was managing, uh, for business for the demand side. I was, uh, into agency account manager, and I was looking after top holding groups and agencies like, uh, Mindshare, Publicis, Havas. And I was helping them to buy efficiently through PubMatic SSP platform in a programmatic fashion. And, uh, then I moved to Trade Desk. Trade Desk is a DSP platform, demand side platform. I was the 1st account manager at Trade Desk India, and I was managing a portfolio of accounts, uh, typically top holding groups, wherein idea was to pitch and help them with different strategies that might help and deliver best out of their marketing objective. And to meet their marketing goals, device strategies across platform, and help them in end to end execution, um, and also allow them to have a seamless experience across the, uh, solution, the

So to ensure, um, exact pacing of a programmatic campaign, we need we need to have a clearer understanding what exactly pacing is about. Pacing is the it has to be said it is a fashion how you want to spend your budget in a particular period. So let's say if one wishes to spend a budget equally among the total flight days when the even pacing has been set up, Then there is ahead pace up and there is ASAP. Now to ensure that there is a accurate pacing, we need to understand that what is the goal of the client's, uh, marketing campaign. The accurate pacing for a campaign budget would be even or else, uh, ahead. And, uh, even the budget will be distributed evenly among the days. And in ahead, the idea or the algorithm will be set in a fashion that it ensures to spend more than 100% for a particular day. So if we distribute our total campaign budget for a day and see in daily, it will only ensure to keep the bracket or, uh, benchmark up to 100% consumption for that day. But then in to do little bit more serving or more buying for the client for the day so that at and at the end of the campaign, you don't, uh, have a deficit of majority, and you still have smaller portion which you can spend at the last day of the campaign. Hence, these are the ways how you can accurately do a pro a pacing check. Of course, nevertheless, you have to do a lot of reporting to understand how the pacing has been done, what are the optimization steps needs to be taken to ensure the pacing is up to the

Uh, in terms of a in terms of a complex programmatic campaign, I would like to highlight one campaign which had multiple platforms where it was required to be served. It was a campaign of both video and display, uh, creative assets for a client to G and J. And idea was to do a full funnel programmatic campaign wherein the 1st batch of the 1st phase level of the campaign was to bring brand awareness. And there we had display creatives as well as video creatives. So very effectively, we have to manage that budget. What is the display budget we need to keep and what is the video budget so that my brand awareness is very accurate, and I'm able to get a bigger chunk of audiences which are quite relevant to the brand. And then the next leg of the campaign was, um, creating a user pool or the audience pool and them. So it was a branding then consideration and conversion. In consideration, the idea was to retarget those sharp audiences which we collected in our 1st leg of the campaign during awareness and then retarget them with a shorter edit. While the messaging was different in the branding, we wanted to to bring it a different messaging for the clients who have already been exposed to the branding campaign and, uh, bring more likeliness towards the product. So the consideration campaign was been set up and then followed by your conversion where we had pixels placed. And, uh, there were products which were brought for the brand. And the most complexity is was that it was not just for a mobile platform. It was across desktop in app environment. It was also on the CTV platform and the OTT's platform. So the whole media mix was a multidimensional, and it had a lot of components where we had, um, unified reach to be brought for the client, total number of users to be dedicated, and then bringing a conversion for the campaign.

To maintain effective communication and coordination among the remote ad operations team, is very important to have a regular checks. Communicate and have a strong relationship build with those teams irrespective of in internal stakeholders or external stakeholders. Have a regular check. Understand where is the pain points. And then try to, uh, coordinate and help them in a solutions which can effectively result in a better, uh, outcome. So for us, um, we had a team who was been sitting out of Singapore, and there was a operations team. So to manage that very, um, have a great coordination, we we ensure that we are over communicating at times so that there is no miscommunication happening. There are regular connects with the client or the internal stakeholders where we are able to share what is the current progress and where are we heading for the next project. And then, um, streamlining it. Basically, the idea should be to stream it as much possible so that there are no loopholes. There are there are no delays in the execution of the project, and, uh, the the outcome is best. So, um, a weekly check or maybe a regular check would be very essential. Communicate as much possible and have a very, uh, smooth conversation window so that the person can also reach out to you and coordinate what are the status and keep the people in loop so that they are also aware what is the current status of the project going

So whenever we we need to do a test to evaluate a new bidding strategy, Um, firstly, the test budget has to be allocated and, uh, then test out the creative. So if that is a set of creative which which is display or video, allocate that. Check your markets, what you want to test it up, and, uh, and set up a bidding bidding which you have been doing for the past campaigns. For example, this test needs to be and, also, ensure that you have a defined timeline within that you have to produce a test. A test cannot be done in a day or two time to conclude a result. A test is something you need to, uh, have a define or, like, a substantial time period because the bidding strategy keeps on changing based on the historical experiences. So to understand how the bidding strategy in d v three sixty is working, we need to understand what are the inputs and the targetings we have feeded in. And over a period, how it is, uh, reacting or learning from those, uh, inputs which has been feeded. So while setting up, ensure that the tags are in line. Ensure that the creatives are appropriate. Ensure your budgeting and pacing have been set appropriately. Um, check on the, uh, other targetings which has been set up in terms of geolocation, in terms of any demographic, in terms of any audience segmentation. And then try out that building strategy for a over a 7 days maybe a time. And then evaluate and test the results.

Um, these kind of scenarios do come where there might be a conflict, uh, between the client's marketing objective and the limitation of the platform specific capabilities. One classic example is a client wanted to have a in DV three sixty, uh, and other platform which I have worked. Client wanted to have a very unified reach across platform. And, uh, so the user should be mapped across your CTV, across mobile, and desktop, and any other digital uh, devices which the user is using and have a unified reach across them. Unfortunately, at that point in time, the mapping was not feasible to make it a unified reach across many platforms like CTV. And, uh, and then also the client asked was to bring unified reach when I'm doing into d v three sixty and YouTube and then other platforms integrating all in a one one panel, um, which at times becomes very tricky. And we need to keep educating the client, Um, and to actually tackle such situations, the best way or the best approach would be to let the client know what exactly the capability is all about. Is I believe it's just a matter of, uh, learning which client might not be able to have because they are coming from a different dedicatedly working on a platform. So you know the nitty gritties of the platform. So in that situation, let the client understand, give them the learning how the platform works, show them a walk through, and, uh, then help them understand this is what the platform capabilities and this is how we can do it. To meet that marketing objective, we can have a we can devise a different strategy altogether. That could be another solution that, okay, if this strategy or this is a platform limitation, we can try out a different strategy, which can also support or complement the marketing goal. But, um, in such conflict where client is unable to understand, uh, the limitation, we should definitely take some sessions with the client and let them understand this is what the capabilities say. These are the case studies, how we can, um, run those campaign and how we can actually bring the client's objective, um, successful. So I believe the the education session and connecting with the client should be most effective way so that you keep the client in loop what exactly the platforms are dealing you are dealing into will be able to deliver to the

In terms of a b testing, uh, creatives, uh, we were actually doing a display creative check with the different content. And we were also doing a check across how display creative works with with respect to the video creative, uh, with the same messaging across exchanges. So while doing and targeting different audience segment. So while doing a e b testing with the creative, within a programmatic ecosystem, we had, like, different set of different set of creatives in in terms of measuring the capabilities. Um, but the idea was to see how it works across the exchanges and what is the best efficiency in terms of bringing or using that creative for the campaign. For example, if we have to use, uh, if we have, uh, pixels placed in the creatives and we have the same pixels for this same set of creatives, but then, uh, the messaging was different. Although the brand was sent, the messaging was different, and we had different pixels. In that case, we need to understand how my approach would be, how we want to segment the audiences to see which creative works best. And, uh, hence, in that way, you can actually conclude some of the creatives are able to bring more CTR. Some of the are not having a sufficient content which can attract user, and, hence, it's not able to deliver a better CTRs. Um, some of the creatives are are not quite viewable. Not, uh, showing the content was not viewable enough for the client where the page has been where you are delivering it. Um, so these are the parameters where you are doing the e v testing with creatives, which is performing best, and see how it is it has worked with different geographies and then conclude that, um, around which are the creatives, what are the attributes which are helping them to deliver the best.

Every time a new inventory partner is onboarded, uh, either on SSP platform or DSP platform, the effectiveness of a new inventory is evaluated on the base of what is the pricing they're able to deliver, what are the key performance attributes we are able to achieve through those inventory. For example, if there is a inventory which on which we are able to get great CTRs on display campaigns, so that is that is one way to understand if my inventory is effective as per the advertiser. If I'm able to get the required KPIs fulfilled, if the pricing is good enough, and if my messaging has been getting delivered to the right segment of audiences. So these will be the primary KPIs to understand if my new inventory partner is effective. And the last point is very crucial that how much is the inventory available. That is very small enough. Although there is, relevant audiences available as per your brand. But if the inventory itself is very low, it might not deliver the purpose. So having the, uh, inventory availability, how easy it is available, in how much volume it is available, how the how the audiences are on the inventory, and what is the performance I'm able to get while delivering on those inventory. These are the parameters on which one should evaluate the effectiveness of new inventory partners.

Um, in terms of advanced optimization techniques, not just in d v three sixty, but in, um, marketing platform Google marketing platform, um, I would say building up a first party data solution is also one of the key factor which one can use through Google marketing solution. So many people play, um, have a very limited understanding how they can use the pixels and collect data pool of their first party audiences. Now since we know that the cookies might get duplicated in upcoming future, the idea should be to build a first party database. And leveraging the Google marketing solutions, you can actually paste pixels and, uh, collect data and understand your user, who are your fine user, who are coming to your page, and are being honest to the brand. And then targeting and retargeting them would be one very advanced optimization technique. One can use it. Um, doing audience segmentation is very important. So not just in, uh, the readily available Google audiences, you can also access a lot of third party audiences which are very reliable at times. And they have a very, uh, beautifully defined signals through which they actually collect those audiences. So that could be one way to reach out to a very defined but targeted audiences. Um, and other optimization technique would do a diversification of the campaign. When a brand has been, um, delivering on a particular platform through a certain format, the best way to get a result is nowadays to diversify. Do a, a in maybe a mobile and CTV and a desktop targeting, which one help you to give a more um, perspective into your unified reach. So that is one optimization. Check regularly the reports. What are the inventories you are able to deliver? What are the segments you are able to, uh, deliver most? What are the markets we're able to do best and do? So that is 1, uh, optimization one should be able to, like, deploy while working in Google marketing solutions. Keyword marketing is also a very great optimization that what are the competitors to which you want to show your ads? What are the keywords where, um, you wish to, uh, deliver your ads? What are the set of audiences? And, um, the final would be doing a site level targeting. So doing a site level targeting can always help that, you know, these are the sites where a certain set of audiences are coming. And I want to ensure that my messages are reaching to that set of audiences. So that would be 1. And, uh, brand safety, definitely, doing a brand safety through multiple platforms is very, uh, in like, essential. And for some complex campaigns, I would say that brand safety is a must.