Digital Advertising and Accelerated Customer Service Strategies

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1 perspective Digital Advertising and Accelerated Customer Service Strategies Karthik Ramachandran, Madhula Sathyamoorthy Abstract Digital advertising is an essential component of organizations marketing budgets. Within a short span of time the industry has seen various path breaking consumer-reach strategies and products like - integrated multi-channel advertising, innovative ad service offering and performance analytics. With the global digital ad spend crossing the $100B 1 mark, various stakeholders involved in the industry are investing in developing new products to support advertisers. This evolution of the digital advertising industry with diversified channels and personalized ad strategies has created multiple challenges to different groups in the digital ad network. Infosys believes that enterprises of tomorrow must understand the importance of adapting to the evolving environment faster with accelerated customer service strategies to realize the full potential of this thriving industry. Source: 1 Online Ad Spending Tops $100 Billion in 2012,

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3 Diversity through multiple channels Distinctions between online and offline worlds are blurring with consumers looking to access information, service/ product reviews, shop, bank, etc., on the go. The complexity of managing an online campaign is also increasing proportionately with ever-improving access to internet. By 2016, search and display ad spend are expected to increase by 60% while mobile, social and video ad spend are expected to increase by a whopping 200% 2. The surge in smartphone and tablet penetration has increased the target segment for mobile advertising. The mobile ad industry has achieved triple digit year-over-year growth for second time in a row 3. This record-breaking number represents a paradigm shift in marketers approach in utilizing the multichannel approach to reach the modern digital consumer. As multiple devices are getting introduced across various channels, it will become vital to focus on customizing ad campaigns in each of these channels. The fact that retail industry is the highest mobile ad spending industry, serves as a testimony to the understanding of mobile becoming the favorite channel for marketers who want to spend more time and have high reachability with customers. Mobile marketers are getting smarter in using mobile ads as an entrance to their overall sales funnel. Few mobile specific innovative ad campaigns have been rolled out for smart phones & tablets and many more are expected to follow in the future. Also the mobile ad industry is moving from CPC (Cost per Click) to CPA (Cost per Action) pricing model which will help them analyze what happens with the users after they click a mobile ad, thereby improving quality of interactions with potential customers, rather than focus on less quality, high quantity interactions. Research says that by the end of 2013, around 35% of paid clicks could come from a tablet or smartphone 4. Mobile Ads will continue to be cheaper than Display Ads and hence would be a preferred channel for SMB segment 5. Though the preferred channel is different for different segments, none of them can take the risk of ignoring any of these channels as an appropriate combination to bring the expected result. Thus for online advertisers and online ad network owners, educating their customers about the importance of effective cross channel ad management with advanced products will be of utmost importance in improving ad revenue. Source: 2 Mobile Gains Greater Share of Search, Display Spending ; 3 Forester Research Interactive Marketing Forecasts, 2011 to 2016 (US) as cited in Advertising Age, Aug 24, Online Marketing: Top Trends for 2013, 5 International Communications Market Report 2012 (ICMR-2012)

4 Personalization and Granular Marketing Advertisers aim to reach all the consumers with the right message, at the right time, and with the right context. Targeting at a granular level with a cross channel element will let advertisers reach every prospective customer. Examples : Google Shopping has evolved into a paid model where marketers can advertise at a much granular level on different attributes of the product such as color and condition Facebook has moved beyond basic demographic and interest-level targeting with custom audiences. Now advertisers can target a specific set of users with whom they have already established a relationship in Facebook to serve their sponsored stories and ads Google wallet which is expected to be soon used in many Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled retail outlets will have local ads as per locations similar to Groupon To achieve this, advertisers are getting more granular user data like - type of device, location, gender, specific interests etc., through campaign reporting. Analyzing the detailed ad campaign reports for each product and channel has become a highly challenging task. The inability to analyze or use such data means the lower likelihood of showing favorable ROI to the advertisers. Numerous investments through mergers and acquisitions are happening in this industry by the ad network giants. They hope to support their advertisers in a better way than their competitors by increasing advertisers ROI, and in turn, their own ad revenues. Facebook s acquisition of Microsoft s Atlas advertising platform is an example of how Facebook has added strategic capability and advantage over its competitors, in helping its advertisers understand the effectiveness of their digital ad campaigns. But with more traffic getting shifted to mobile channels, we are still not sure if Atlas will be robust enough to support the same. All these capability additions intended to support advertisers have only increased the complexity of managing a multichannel ad campaign. Thus it would be of paramount importance for ad network owners to accelerate their customer service strategies to help advertisers achieve full potential of all their product and technology innovations. There are various implications of this changing landscape for ad support operations.

5 For Ad Network Owners: Account coverage tasks require excellent category and industry knowledge which becomes a challenge due to high diversity in the business Evolving fraud patterns with the advent of new technologies Risk and relevance is highly subjective to the type of service being offered which often creates a conflict with the ad network policies due to which the policies need constant revision Constant monitoring of campaigns become a challenge due to high volumes For Online Advertisers: All these evolutionary complexities have led to the requirement of creating a world class ad center helpdesk with careful understanding of local and operational nuances. Thus, as a part of long term initiative to maintain strong customer relationship and revenue, both ad network owners and online advertisers should upgrade their customer service strategies with specific focus on customer support. This will require investments in the areas of account management, sales and product based coaching. Such a helpdesk should be built with strong domain knowledge and expertise in the online advertising industry and it should solely focus on achieving continuous improvement, excellence and value to its clients and customers. 1 2 Benchmarking Business Value Creation through benchmarking from similar engagements Value Map creation and focus on specific KPI s Technology Led Differentiation Unified / Centrailzed Work Force Management solution for ad support operations at different locations Proprietary tools: Service Now (ticketing tool) and Re TEM (chat tool) Requirement of robust ad campaign Thought Leadership management techniques to obtain consistent performance 3 White paper & blogs on improving engagement and team level effieiency & productivity Internal portal to share knowledge among agents working on different online ad support and analytics products Market volatility and introduction of new products makes competitive Domain Training analysis of keywords difficult. Real time market knowledge becomes highly 4 Customizing client s training requirement and content to resources at different levels Domain support through certified professionals essential With ads getting more personalized, segmentation and analysis of ad performance gets more complex Multiple reports from multiple tools for different segments leads to humongous manual consolidation exercise for each product Customer Value Creation Focus on improving campaign management skills for inbound agents Features of world class Digital Ads helpdesk Increased ROI for ad support Continuous training focused on specific areas or products with more issues and queries Proactive up sell / cross sell capabilities improvement for outbound agents

6 The way forward Online advertising industry is at the peak of evolution with the introduction of diverse channels and personalized products. With rapid growth of multiple channels, effective cross channel ad management with advanced products has become the order of the day in achieving high ad revenue. Also, granular marketing has driven the industry to numerous innovative products to help ad network owners and advertisers reach every single prospective client which has in turn made advertisers job complex with multiple products to manage. Hence, developing a robust support mechanism to help advertisers adapt to the evolutionary changes has become the need of the hour. Also, enterprises in digital advertising should understand the importance of customer support and should work towards adding real value to their clients by supporting them with the right product information at the right time. Thus we suggest that enterprises should transform their customer service strategies and should accelerate helpdesk capability creation to successfully progress with the evolving industry. About the Authors Karthik Ramachandran Senior Consultant, ECS Media Practice, Infosys BPO Karthik has a combined experience of 13 years in Online Media and Publishing industry. His experience with this organization includes handling offshore operations for search and display campaign management, advertising content review and online fraud prevention management. Currently, as a Senior Consultant in the Solution Design team, Karthik is responsible for developing custom solutions for clients in the digital media and internet services space. Karthik is a graduate engineer in Electrical and Electronics from University of Madras. Madhula Sathyamoorthy Senior Associate Consultant, Customer Service Practice, Infosys BPO Madhula has a combined experience of 3 years in Information Technology and Customer Service Industry. She has developed and managed various Layer 2 and 3 networking protocols for a leading telecommunications software company. Madhula is responsible for designing outsourcing solutions and executing short term projects for clients across Customer Service domain. Madhula is a graduate engineer, with BTech - Computer Science from NIT Trichy and an MBA in Operations and Marketing from Indian Institute of Management, Raipur.

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8 About Infosys Infosys is a global leader in business consulting, technology and outsourcing solutions. We enable clients in more than 30 countries to outperform the competition and stay ahead of the innovation curve. With $7.4B in revenues and 155,000+ employees, Infosys transforms enterprises to thrive in a changing world through strategic consulting, operational leadership and co-creation. Visit to see how Infosys (NYSE: INFY) is Building Tomorrow's Enterprise today. Infosys BPO, the business process outsourcing subsidiary of Infosys, provides integrated end-to-end outsourcing and delivers transformational benefits to clients through cost reduction initiatives, ongoing productivity improvements and process reengineering. For more information, contact infosysbpo@infosys.com Infosys Limited, Bangalore, India. All Rights Reserved. Infosys believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date; such information is subject to change without notice. Infosys acknowledges the proprietary rights of other companies to the trademarks, product names and such other intellectual property rights mentioned in this document. Except as expressly permitted, neither this documentation nor any part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, printing, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Infosys Limited and/ or any named intellectual property rights holders under this document.