Smriti Kesarwani

Hi. My name is. I did my Bachelor of Commerce from National PG College in Lucknow. Continuing my studies, I did a PGDM in Bangalore, specializing in marketing. Then, I decided to make my career in digital marketing. Hence, I started my career with GroupM as an executive media, wherein I got to handle big clients like cement, health insurance, and others. These were the three major clients that I handled end to end from planning to implementing to executing the campaigns to optimizing the campaigns and reporting of the campaigns as well. Continuing my career, I switched to another role, wherein I was exposed to platforms like DV 360 and other OTT channels like Hotstar, Amazon Prime, etc. I was involved in end-to-end campaign management from planning to implementation, to executing, to optimizing, and reporting of the campaign. Continuing my career at Brainlabs, I worked for the international client called Walmart, wherein I handled programmatic media buying, which gave me exposure to search ads 360, CM 360, and DV 360 as well. Currently, I'm working as an online marketing manager at Cover, where I oversee the whole media marketing for Cover from end to end, from planning to implementing to executing to optimizing to reporting.

I would like to adjust the bidding strategy in real time based on performance data by seeing how my ads and campaigns are performing. So, based on the campaign analysis, I would like to change my bidding strategy. For example, if in one campaign I'm achieving a CTR of 2%, and in another campaign I'm achieving a CTR of 1%, I would like to see the performance of the CTR and the rewards that I'm getting at what cost. And after observing this, I would like to change my bidding strategy.

So, yes. There was time. There was, like, in my current organization, I have to see. There are a lot of conflicts between my company and the platform that I'm using. I'm currently advertising the ads on Facebook for extra coverage. While they want to use Google, which is not working for them as of now, they wanted me to retarget the audience. They wanted me to create a similar audience based on the keywords, but the platform is limited because we cannot have keyword-based targeting on it. I have to explain then why Facebook is different from Google. And why can't we use those features on Facebook? And why can we use them only on Google? So that the conflict does not escalate. So, that is how, like, after explaining the platform's benefits, disadvantages, and limitations, and how it compares to other platforms, this would resolve my conflicts as well.

So, I used to work in GroupM, where I was involved in weekly, monthly, and quarterly reporting of ongoing campaigns. I used to analyze the weekly, monthly, and quarterly data by analyzing the campaign on a weekly basis. So, how is my campaign performing in the current week compared to the last week? Is my campaign's CTR improving? Is my campaign's CPC improving? Is my campaign better than the last week, or is it declining from the last week? And if it is better, that's well and good. If it is not better and is declining from the last week, why is it declining from the last week? Is it that my ads have become fatigued? Is it because the audiences I'm targeting are not right, and are currently not working? I should focus more on the audiences that are working. Or is it because of something else, like the keywords I'm targeting, or the money that's going on. The keywords that are highly spending but not giving us the results. So, these are some of the major scenarios, and the same goes for the monthly and quarterly data. How is my campaign performing compared to last month to current month and last quarter to last quarter? And how can I make those campaigns better for the next quarter to gain even better results? So, this is how I analyze the data.

So AB testing within a programmatic campaign. What I used to do is create 4 to 6 creatives for a particular campaign and product or service we're providing to consumers. I would give the brief to the creative team, asking them to design and format the creatives differently. Then I would upload those creatives into the V3 60 platform to AB test them and see the insights from the platform, which creative is currently performing better and which one is not.

So, they'll provide continuously learning and skill development in the field of programmatic advertising. I generally read posts on LinkedIn, and I follow Skillshop. I also follow other YouTube channels where I get weekly or monthly updates on what's happening in the field.

So my optimization strategy is, first, I see the bidding strategy based on the objective, if it is correct or if we need to change to gain better results. Then I come to the audience targeting. I see the audience report, which audience is performing well for me and which audience is not, and based on the performances of the audiences, I can put more money into the ones that are performing well. I also test the creators, to see which creative is performing well for me and which creative is not. I decide whether to go with both creatives or to focus on one at a time. If I have multiple campaigns, I compare which campaign is performing better and which campaign is not, and I put more money into the campaigns that are performing better to get the best results. These are some of the optimization strategies that I follow in the programmatic.

So there was one campaign of the L'Oreal that I worked on, which was a programmatic campaign for L'Oreal in Walmart. So, basically, it was a complex programmatic campaign for me. The impressions that we needed to achieve in those campaigns were one million. Now, were in gross. And so, to keep on optimizing these campaigns and to keep seeing how many impressions were sub. Are we going to reach my impression target? It was very difficult to calculate. And more than the calculation, it was very difficult to keep up with the pace of the numbers. So every third or fourth day, I had to look after those campaigns and see like, manage those numbers very accurately so that we didn't over absorb the impressions. And we were also able to achieve the goal.

So I would like to develop a full programmatic strategy that includes multiple DSP vendor collaborations by achieving the client brief first. And based on the client brief, I would like to define the objective of the campaign. And based on the objective of the campaign, I will make a plan to see where the campaigns can be executed, how they can be executed, and how we can achieve the numbers from those campaigns.