MVP - THE MASTERS' VOICE PODCAST - MEDIABRIEF
MVP, The Master's Voice Podcast features expert conversations with the Most Valuable Players / Professionals / People from media, marketing and other areas of industry, in conversation with Pavan R Chawla, Founder Editor of MediaBrief.com. These are MVP conversations with actionable insights and learnings.
MVP - THE MASTERS' VOICE PODCAST - MEDIABRIEF
Nachiket Deole, India Sales Head, DoubleVerify, on building trust in digital advertisingisode
Nachiket Deole, the Head of Sales for India at DoubleVerify, a digital media measurement company that offers transparency and security in the advertising industry, speaks with series host Pavan R Chawla, who is Founder-Editor of MediaBrief.com.
DoubleVerify is known for powering performance for the world’s largest brands, marketplaces and publishers and brands to make advertising better and effective by ensuring ads are seen by real people in the intended geographies in brand-safe environments helping protect brand-reputations online and authenticating media quality on every screen.
Nachiket shares how his company stands out from others by providing effective solutions and more industry accreditations. He discusses DoubleVerify's offerings and highlights the importance of uniformity and apples-to-apples comparisons across platforms and matrices, especially in a fragmented digital ecosystem.
Nachiket also talks about four fundamental shifts in the advertising industry and suggests potential solutions to privacy-friendly technologies and solutions. The conversation also touches on privacy compliance, challenges during the pandemic, educating customers, and the importance of measuring campaigns to gain customers' trust.
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Music. Hello and welcome to MVP, the Master's Voice podcast from mediabrief.com. I'm, your host and friend Pavan R Chawla and I am truly delighted that today a person who is an amazing professional and is empowering the entire digital measurement in India from a company that's doing it across the world is my very distinguished guest on this episode. He's as accomplished as he is young so, Please join me in welcoming Nachiket Deole, Head of Sales, India Double Verify, which as I said, is one of the global leaders in digital measurement. Nachiket, welcome to the episode. Thank you so much Pavan, pleasure to be here and excited to have this podcast with you. Thank you Nachiket, it's really nice to be in your office with you today recording this and by your leave may I also call you what all your friends do, which is Nachi. Absolutely. Great, great, great. And Nachi, allow me also to say my thanks to Suyash Thakur and Spriha Singh of Ruder Finn. Amazing people who actually made this interaction possible. So Nachi, before I start our conversation, let me just give my listeners a very quick download on who is this amazing guy on my show today. So while you all leave, here goes. Nachiket Deole leads Double Verify's business operations in India. He is a seasoned professional in the integrated digital marketing solutions, building business relationships and c-suite engagement spaces. Based in Mumbai, Deole has previously worked at LinkedIn where he was the agency relationship lead for about 5 or 6 years and in a career spanning 15 years, Deole has also worked with Mindshare and Linters Media Group. And Nachi, let's now begin our conversation. Absolutely. So Nachi, in the beginning, I want my audience to know about DoubleVerify, what it does and its purpose, you know, enlighten my listeners about it. Tell me first about the offerings of DoubleVerify, list them out and then we'll go on to the next question. Absolutely. So, Pavan, Double Verify is, I would say, a part of ad tech ecosystem, all right? Advertising technology. Yeah. Which means advertisers can use the tools and solutions to tap into plan and analyze their digital campaigns. Okay. And in DV's case, based on different measurements. Right. DoubleVerify is a digital media measurement and analytics leader within the ad tech ecosystem. And we partner with Fortune 500 advertisers, brands, marketplaces, platforms and publishers globally for a stronger and more secure digital advertising ecosystem. Now how do we do that? So there are four ways in which we partner with brands, marketers, in order to provide more transparent and secure environment. First and foremost, give you authentic ad. It's a proprietary MRC accredited metric that ensures media quality. And when I say media quality, it comprises of four things. One is brand safety, second is viability, third is fraud and fourth is NGO delivery. So we help marketers measure that. Excellent. So double verify, one, it powers performance for the world's largest brands, marketers and publishers. Two, it ensures ads are seen by a real person and not bots, and in a brand safe environment and in the intended geography. Three, it authenticates media quality on every screen. And four, I think it protects brand reputation online, all crucial. So in today's day and age, these are essential non-negotiables for you know, every marketer and brand. Nachi to express in your words what sets DoubleVerify apart from other ad verification and measurement companies in India and how do you differentiate yourselves from the competition that would also explain the need for a DoubleVerify and why it's crucial for brands to use such solutions and you can explain the same with some examples maybe? Absolutely I wouldn't comment on how we're better than the competition but I will talk about what we do which, That sets us apart. Right. And I think two fundamental things, which is technology and people and servicing, right? So DoubleVerify are the first to market solutions across attention and emerging channels like CTV and are continuously expanding with privacy compliant industry first solutions. Okay. DoubleVerify leads this space because we at DoubleVerify offer one of the most effective solutions and also have more industry accreditations than any other provider. Accreditations such as that by the Media Rating Council or MRC popularly known as REDD is, important because it is an external validation of our measurement controls and processes that provides advertisers with confidence that DoubleVerify is fulfilling our role consistently. That we meet the industry standards set by the industry. So, for example, we spoke about DV authentic ad, right, which is our MRC accredited metric. Now, what it does is it measures every single impression across four quality parameters, which is brand safety, ad fraud, viewability, and NGO. Okay. And what it means is every single impression to be measured as a quality impression needs to qualify all these four parameters. Absolutely. Right? Then it becomes a quality north point for any marketer. And that's how marketers are using this matrix to build more efficiencies in their planning and buying strategies. And to avoid and completely stay clear of the massive losses, the dangers from ad fraud. Absolutely. Absolutely. And just to add to it, right? It's not only ad fraud. It's brand safety also, no? Yeah, if an impression is, for example, not fraudulent, but if it's not viewable, then it's a waste of dollar, right? So it needs to be fraud free, it needs to be viewable, it needs to be brand safe, and it needs to be NGO delivered. So not fraudulent, but not viewable. How does that come about? Yeah, so IAB defines viewability as a creative or communication to be having 50% on screen occupancy. Okay. And 2 seconds time spent in case of video and 1 second time spent in case of display. Hmm. Now, hypothetically speaking, your communication is coming in the second scroll. Hmm. Right? Which you have never scrolled down. But it still is an impression. Right? So, it gets counted as an impression, but nobody has seen it. So, you have paid whatever dollars that you had to. But eventually, nobody has seen that communication. Can you also give impression versus views? You know? So that you know that If I'm a digital marketer, I know that whether through programmatic or through direct placements, I know which publication or which site or which publisher actually promises me lots of impressions, but they don't always convert into views. So do you also give that as a separate behind the scenes feedback to your investors, to your marketers, subscribers? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's something which comes in our DB pinnacle, which we spoke about, which is the dashboard, which advertisers have access to. So they get every piece of information from impressions to views, to view through rate, how many seconds the creative has been seen and so on and so forth, right? Okay. And Nachi, you also recently launched the DV Campaign Automator, a name that you've trademarked, that is DoubleVerify has trademarked. And what it does is, and I'm reading from your website, okay, it streamlines the entire trafficking workflow in Google Campaign Manager 360. How does it do that and how does that benefit marketers seeking the best genuine verified ROI? Excellent question Pavan. I think you pointed out really nicely. This is the latest amongst our launches. Okay. And what it really does is it helps improve operational efficiencies. And devote more time and resources to campaign strategy and performance. It takes away the time that was required for say routine, trafficking, like tagging, etc. And helps you think more about campaign strategy and performance. How it does is, but for that we need to understand the problem statement first, right? Please, please, please. The problem statement was if you need to take a campaign live, one has to generate tags, then wrap the creative on with those tags and then circulate those tags to the publishers that question, which used to take its own sweet time because there are multiple stakeholders involved. And we used to consume a lot of bandwidth from multiple people. Now to create a solution for that, we launched this campaign automator where we enhanced our partnership with Google and created a seamless workflow within the Google ecosystem itself. So now no longer an agency or a client of ours have to generate tags and pass it along to the creative and then send it to the publishers. We have killed that entire workflow. Now it's all automated. You just have to select double verify as a partner. And then all this process is automatically taken care by the system itself, right? It's just a click of button and all the creatives, all the communication that you want to be tracked will be wrapped automatically, Giving you more bandwidth and time to focus more on strategical inputs and not the operational efforts that you used to do earlier. Okay, that's very interesting and how has it been helping the brand marketers? A. Saving on time and B. Actually giving them the best bird's eye view of the best performance spaces. And I am sure it also does as you said Nachi, provide marketers with inputs into future campaign planning. What kind of inputs does it provide, you know, loopholes or opportunity spaces etc. in the, campaigns? So there are multiple ways to look at it, right? So we provide Pavan more than 200 reporting parameters. Wow, okay. They can go as granular as the player size to the placement or the fraud type across multiple variables. But essentially, if you look at four or five things that we provide solution for. So, A, how do you optimize your campaign delivery on non-fraudulent inventory, right? Before you partnering with DoubleVerify, you did not know how much of your monies are going on fraudulent inventory, right? Now you know where the fraud is happening, what type of fraud is happening, so you can start optimizing your campaigns accordingly, right? If you see a particular placement or a particular publisher is high on fraud, Then you can start deploying that money on better performing publisher, right? Similarly, on video campaigns, which which is almost every single advertiser in the country is doing, can start optimizing their campaign on high viewable impressions, and not really the impressions that are not giving them the desired viewability. Because if you're running a video creative, all that you want is people to watch it, right? You just don't want to send a communication, deliver an impression, and feel happy about it. That's no longer the case. Similarly, in case of brand safety, right, you don't want to be present on publishers who are pushing your ads on placements or content, which is not desirable for your brand, right? Absolutely. And that way, you are now cutting down on all these incident rates, and hence building more efficiencies in your planning and buying. Excellent, excellent. Now, let's move to the overall and growing ad tech space. Tell me about it briefly from the global and then at some length about the India perspective. And within ad tech, let us also talk about programmatic, about ad fraud. Why does DoubleVerify consider India as an important market and what its acceptance has been like in India so far? Can you also discuss any recent partnerships or collaborations that Double Verify has established, with Indian media companies or ad tech providers? Netflix's A-Ward services are a huge bag for you, right? It's the world's biggest and most popular OTT service and it launched A-Ward and then betting upon Integral Ad Science and Double Verify, that's really big. And you two are really the big daddies globally. And along with Comscore which rubs shoulders with you all over the world, so I'm not here saying one is bigger or better than the other, I'm here to bring out from you and elicit from and through you the strengths, the USPs, the uniqueness and all the facilitation and empowerment of digital marketers that Double Verify does. So what is Double Verify doing in India? Why is it important? What's the size of the space in the market? And then specifically, Double Verify and Netflix. Long question. Take it away. Yeah. Long question requires long answer. Please, please. But Pavan, if you look at the overall digital ecosystem globally, so I think digital advertising will hit about $400 billion globally, right? More than that, $500 billion. is about 62% of overall digital or overall advertising budgets, right, which is massive. And in India, if you look at we're talking about six odd billion dollars, five, six billion dollars, which is about 30,000 crores in digital billings, which is roughly about about 35 to 40% of overall budgets, right, which is massive. I remember, you know, and you will remember back days where where we're struggling for 5% of the overall budgets. Now we're inching 40%. We have almost close to TV budgets, right? And we're expecting that to surpass very soon, right? So the space is growing. The growth rate is phenomenal. But the fundamental question still is there, which was there since ages, right? Where are my ads running? Where are my ads running? How do I measure my ads? I think that's where, you know, a player like DoubleVerify comes in, right? And that's where we make the difference. We are now in a position to answer or help, somewhere to decode the black box right and it's not only limited to a one channel so digital is super fragmented right it's not only a one publisher one format right correct there are new publishers coming up every day right there are different formats that are popping up every day there are display ads there are text there is video there are short form videos long form videos videos, there are native videos, out stream, in stream. And there are these platforms who are democratizing content creation, right? Now, with such a fragmented ecosystem, right, how do marketers start measuring it, right? How do they compare each platform in a fair manner, right? Because every platform brings their own measurement, which not necessarily will be compatible with the other platform, right? So we bring in that uniformity, wherein Apple to Apple comparison can be made possible, and hence helping advertisers to further bring in more efficiencies in their planning budget. And that's where partnerships also, which is another point in your question was, right, how do we partner with the brands? And yes, Netflix is a massive partnership for all of us. And I really give credit to these global platforms who are partnering with somebody like DoubleVerify, because we bring in that credibility from third party measurement perspective, absolutely, right, which is extremely critical, right? As a platform, you can't grade your own homework, right? You need to have third-party measurement partners who are helping making unbiased decision and reporting for brands to start evaluating each and every platform on, right? On the matrices that they care about. Correct. And from the most critical and questioning kind of evaluator and media standards measurement setter like MRC in the US you double verifies verified by MRC and then you are extending that kind of quality, verification yeah for the Netflix's of the world and there's only one Netflix in the world I don't think there's anything like them in the OTT space but, still yeah I'm sorry I interrupted you but go ahead no and you're absolutely right it's it's extremely critical to have these validations even for us right because and we do it every year right we don't just rely on on certification that's been done once in a while but we do it every year so how do you measure a Netflix feed for instance there is me and there is 50 million people I'm just taking a random odd number who are viewing something or who hopefully sooner rather than later will be viewing Netflix's A-Ward in numbers like those or multiples of that number even, why ever not, right? So, does DoubleVerify actually enter the Netflix stream before it gets into the device of the user with some tag, something or the other? How? How do you measure that each and every person or every device that is viewing it is actually, a human in the right geography, in the right location and is actually consuming that element to be viewed in the manner and in the time as it was desired to? How do you measure that? So Pavan, when it comes to partnerships like this, we don't get into user-level data, right? We are a privacy-compliant company. And that's where we stay away from collecting any PII. But what we do is we work with our publisher partners to understand what our level of access of data that we can get from them and how do we help measure that against it, right? Okay, long story short, whatever is the exact number of people who have viewed people in the right geographies, consumed it properly, humans, not bots, etc., okay. I don't see bots viewing Netflix, of course, but still. There might be. Okay, so what I'm asking you is, you guarantee that you measure and you account for each and every view or consumed view on AWOD on Netflix. So, we don't measure the number of people. We measure the impressions. Okay. Which is totally different from... Exposure. Yeah. The OTS. Yeah. But the S is what's more important. Yeah. But the technology is such where we don't, as we don't collect the personal information, so we don't measure the reach or we don't measure the number of people that would have seen it. But what we've started doing is, as part of the partnership, we have started measuring the viewability of the communication, right? So you buy inventory on Netflix, how much of it was viewable, how much of it was not viewable, and to what extent it was viewable so that you can start comparing, you know, with other video channels. Excellent. So it's a combination of two things. One, what Netflix or the OTT platform will give out into the marketplace as these were the number of viewers or views that we had. And And you will also give them the supporting of the percentage of viewable impressions. Yeah. And that's a very good metric. Because, and it's a first in India on A-Ward. Excellent, excellent. And essentially for videos, right, it's the basic metric. How much of my video has been seen. Lovely, lovely. So right now I see you as a B2B, primarily B2B entity and your TGs are B2B, we'll come to how you market yourselves. You For me, for my information, which platforms, what kind of platforms does Double Verify measure? Do you also include social media influencers and the measurement of their engagements? Because today a social media influencer, a young 19 year old kid charges say 10 lakh rupees to, whatever, you know, a major beauty brand and then their marketing heads will also want to know what, what kind of ROI they are receiving. So are you purely in the B2B space? Will you also go into the B2C where the C is the person at the end of the social media and the other self UGC kind of people? It's a big opportunity, but tell me your priorities. Tell me which platforms you measure and do you also measure social media influences? That's a very interesting take Pavan. I think I was just reading yesterday that even some government of India is thinking about releasing some guidelines for especially the influencers in financial and health space because today everybody is an influencer, right? So yes, it's a big problem. But right now, we are not into that space entirely. But one of our products, which is called YouTube pre screen, what it does is it qualifies all, the channels that are there on YouTube, including the the influencer channels, right? In terms of the quality of that channel, right? So we look at the frequency of uploading the videos, we look at how many videos you have uploaded in total, right? We look at how many views how many subscribers that you have, we look at the engagement on the channel, And then we score those channels of the influencers, which is called DB quality score, right? And then we recommend our customers saying that, Hey, if the score of these channels are less than so and so, then don't go for it because they're not the quality channels. So in a limited way, we are tackling this problem, but not the entirety because we're not perhaps doing it on other platforms. But yeah, largely we are still in B2B space. Yeah. And how do you market yourself there? I mean, you've been with Mindshare, you've been with LinkedIn, you've been with lintas digital. What do you bring from those spaces? And how do you deploy that in how you are empowering double verify? So two parts of the question, how do you market yourself to be to be and what you're bringing in from your past experience, how you're deploying that for DV in India. So power one, when it comes to marketing, I would say we don't want to market double verify per se, right? We want to educate the marketers about the need of measuring quality. And we do it in multiple ways. One is using our own insights and data right which we. Release in in form of couple of reports. Yeah yeah I'm going to come to you about the four fundamental shifts and reports like the global insights report. Okay tell me about that first. I understand it's a direct thing, it's about educating, it's about creating awareness amongst the marketers minds and the brand custodians and owners that this is a need okay. Yeah. So before you get on to that, express the need in numbers, ad fraud, the extent in India, and then tell me how you go about and then tell me about the reports that you were talking about, ad fraud extent in India. Ah, so numbers vary, you're putting me in this spot. No, it's just a guesstimate. I mean, there's nobody who really has all the numbers, but they are huge. And if you listen to Bob Hoffman, whom I admire, because he just calls a spade a spade, you know. What is your awareness or what is your belief in what is the kind of numbers? So generally, if you look at a standard statement, it says that one third of your investment Thank you. Can be exposed towards fraud. It is the broadest statement. Which means about 6-7 billion dollars, of digital marketing in India could well be going down the ad fraud drain. Having said that, we have seen frauds in the range of say 1% to 5% to 7% to 9% depending on your plans, the way you buy, platforms that are in the plans and so forth. So when you say we have seen, you are talking Talking about the Indian digital marketing space. Yeah. So Pavan, from DoubleVerify's perspective, what we have seen, fraud ranges from say 1% to 5% to 10%. But it really depends on the kind of media that you're buying, right? At that point of time. So for example, XYZ publisher today is reporting 5% fraud, not necessarily they will be end, up delivering 5% fraud every now and then. See, when it comes to buying media, I would say that no publisher is intentionally doing fraud, right? But there are elements who are doing this. And even intentionally or unintentionally, marketers are paying for that, right? So it's important for them to understand where it is coming from, how it's been done, and how we can neutralize that. But how does a publisher's back-end, tech back-end, permit this fraud and still keep the publisher innocent, out of ignorance? I mean, it's a little bit of a dichotomy, isn't it? Are you being politically correct when you say no publisher does it intentionally? I'm just wondering, really. I just want to know. I'm not questioning what you're saying. No, see, now the technology is so evolved that everybody knows that they are being tracked somewhere on the line. Hmm. Right? So for some dollar, if they're looking at a short term business gain, then maybe they might be doing it. But I doubt that's the case. Yeah. Why will they throw the baby with the bathwater? You're right. But, but at the same time, you know, the largest of the banks are getting prey to the cyber frauds, right? So whenever there is a technology, there are loopholes. And there are smarter folks, you know, who are always planning to get a pie of the share, right? That's, that's how, that's how it is. Right. Right. Right. So when you notice and detect fraud, you can also identify obviously the publishers on, whose sites it's happening. So then that is the important along with other matrices and other pieces of advice, which is data backed and analysis backed, which goes to the subscriber. Absolutely. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. So, now tell me about the reports that you bring out and you publish annually some very significant reports like the 4 fundamental shifts and global insights reports. So highlight the main focus of these reports and what they are trying to achieve. I know awareness and empowerment of marketers and they are through helping double verify. But these two reports for instance that I mentioned, tell me about those and we at media, we would like to do a deep brief on those reports also so that marketers know what was in the last one and can look forward to the next one. Absolutely next month in fact we are launching global insights report so largely the aim is to provide insights and analysis on two things one is on the current trends and second is challenges in the digital advertising and media ecosystem per say. Ok. So, I will talk about four fundamental shifts first. Please. Right. So it focuses on four major shifts happening in the industry. Now what we've seen this year is, A, the rise of CTV or connected TV. And we know the reason, post pandemic, everybody's on the mobile. Everybody's on OTTs. Everybody wants to consume content on CTV. And when we did this report, I think India had the highest growth rate from consumption perspective compared to all of the markets including the states right which is which is really really great the increased adoption of programmatic advertising is the second one right. And of course it has its implication uh from brand safety and ad fraud perspective, because when you buy programmatically a lot of times you don't know where your ads are going, right you have very limited control over the inventory that you buy And of course, as I said earlier in one of the statements is, mera ad chal kaha raha hai. This is the biggest problem when it comes to programmatic. But the adoption is going to increase. That's the second thing. Third thing that we observed is the changing nature of consumer privacy regulations, right? It's evident that consumers are extremely concerned about the data and privacy, right? Know data is the new oil. So how marketers can ensure data privacy is the next big thing. And the fourth thing is the evolving role of measurement and attribution. Attribution is a pain point forever. And marketers are increasingly demanding for transparency and attribution across the media and audio and digital. So this report really aims to help advertisers and publishers understand and navigate these shifts. Right. On the other hand, the global insights report is based on data which is extracted from the campaigns that we have run or double verify have run. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, so those are the kind of reports that we publish and basically through knowledge and sharing and meeting and interaction and direct reach that we market ourselves in the Indian market space. So from Global Insights perspective. Over one trillion impressions that are delivered across 2000 plus brands is something that we measure and then generate a report on. So we cover all geographies, all devices, all formats. You know, in this report, and then release it for the customers and for the market to absorb and really understand what's happening. Does it also highlight the proportion of ad fraud and and different kinds of markets with the highest incidence of ad frauds, the ad fraud footprint, globally, the impact footprint globally, the genders, the kind of people. Would you have that internal access to that kind of specific information or it's just the devices and the correct verified impressions? Not at a personal level. So no gender or no age, no demographics will be covered. Got it. That's really wonderful. So Nashi, tell me first now about the cookie-less world. What should brands do? Pavan cookies, whether they remain or they go, marketers have to think about privacy-friendly technologies and solutions, right? Because data privacy is a thing of now, And it will be a matter of concern for generations to come, right? Nobody today is ready to give their phone numbers or even an email ID, because we know how sensitive that data is, right? And how it can be used or misused, not only by the people that will give that info to, but otherwise also it can get in wrong hands and can be used in an adverse manner, right? With major browsers blocking third-party cookies sometime in future, right which is on the pipeline. Business and marketers must adopt their digital strategies to reach their target audience, effectively. But then how do they ensure that they have a decent number or mass of opted-in people? So, brands have to implement privacy-friendly solutions and there are multiple ways to do that. that. Right? Everybody is talking about first party data. Right? So, is collecting first party data is the only challenge? Not necessarily. Right? Because collection is just one part. How do you use that data? And how do you effectively build in more efficiencies and effectiveness with that data, which requires skill and resources, right, which is perhaps not easily available at this point of time. So, additionally, what you can do, right, you have pseudo solutions like contextual targeting, right, which is highly privacy compliant, but at the same time helps you reach the in market audience, right? Okay. Now, how does that work? For example, if you're a car brand, right, you don't just go on keyword like a car, right? It can be talking about car accident also. Correct. Right? So contextual not necessarily means keyword targeting. It means understanding the meaning of the content there. Okay. Right? So it's literally contextual, understanding the context, and then placing your ad next to it. And then, you know, of course, you know, measuring attention, which DV does with the Double Verify Authentic Attention, right? So that is again another privacy compliant solution to measure your campaign effectiveness. Correct. Plus, uh, Personalization is the next big thing with the first party data that marketers will have. They'll need to start establishing a one-on-one relationship with their customers, right? And that needs to happen at a scale, right? And it needs to have been happening for quite some time now. Absolutely. You know, because eventually it might just see... I'm exaggerating to make a point and you might laugh because you're the expert here. But I just fear that it will take people back to the days of trust your gut, spray and pray kind of digital marketing. Which is really not what's required today. Yeah. But I think with so much of data available at this point of time, It's not going to come to that. Yeah. It won't perhaps come to that. It will start with that, Pavan. I agree with you. It will start somewhere in that range. Because not everybody is sitting on such a rich data, right? Correct. Or has the money to actually deploy such massive data. Yeah, absolutely. So it has to start from spray and pray. Yeah, and it has to be organic. It has to be your own. Yeah. Absolutely. Because everywhere, the first thing that you said, the most important thing that I take from here is it has to be privacy compliant. Absolutely. So, what are a few market factors concerning the ad-tech industry that come to your mind? What challenges did you face when you got into double verify in India? I mean, I don't think I would have had any challenges except ignorant marketers who didn't know much about the need and the importance of verification. And I don't mean ignorant in a bad way, but then these things come gradually. And I think what you are doing here in India, along with Integral Ad Science, along with Comscore, Nachiket, you and DoubleVerify, is you are actually literally creating the category of marketers who are far more evolved and who, unlike a major media buying giant of a man who when I asked him about ad fraud and in programmatic he says that is to be expected you know 20-30% will go and I just thought that it was nonchalance of the most irresponsible kind right. So what you are doing with double verifier is really really good and the services the the sweets, the offerings, et cetera. I just hope that you were able to really... Get a lot of people, a lot of marketers, brands, owners, media, platforms, publishers and businesses and marketers to come together and use your services and your insights. What has the growth been like ever since you got into DoubleVerify? I think you've completed three years, right, Nachi? Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So just walk me through that. Whatever is shareable, whether it's in percentages or absolutes, I leave that to you. Yeah. So, the challenges are unique, right? I mean, my first challenge was how do I work from home, because I joined in May 2020 at the peak of pandemic, the first wave. So WFIFI entered in India at the beginning of pandemic, which is May 2020, which is when I joined them, right? Okay. A lot of companies were contemplating what to do at that point of time, whether to cut down on workspace, the workforce, or should you just hold on to your business plans? But I really admired Double Verify stance because we saw it as an opportunity to help brands navigate this uncertain scenario and situation, right? Because there were so much of undesirable content that was going out. Everybody was clueless. The brands did not know what to do. And I think that's where, you know, we started educating our customers and the market about how you can navigate through this situation, right? Of course, we were also learning on the way. But we are glad that we took that thought leadership at that point of time. A lot of our customers as well as a lot of brands were asking why we need to do this at that point of time. Now the conversation has evolved over a period of time and they're asking how we can do it. Right? shift is what I see. We help brands navigating the ever-evolving news cycle, right? We know the situation globally, the socio-political situation globally as well as, you know, in every single market, every single country, right? So how do you kind of, you know, safeguard yourself from being present on very politically sensitive content? Right? Unsafe sites. or user generated content where everybody has their right to express their views. And a lot of fake views and fake news and everything else goes there. Yeah. There are armies deployed, right? I like that. Armies deployed. How do we kind of navigate that? So how did you grow? How have you grown over the past three years? I think the first couple of years must have gone in actually educating and learning at the same time. Yeah. And it's an organic process. It is. Eventually brands found the budgets and the inclination to bring in money is perhaps just towards the end of the pandemic, if I'm not mistaken, from my understanding. Yeah. So I think it's, it's, it's education, education, education power, right. You know, you can't grow if you can't help your, customers, right. We believe in demonstrating value. And that's where we don't only talk about media quality. We don't only talk about ad verification. We help them map their entire, you know, digital strategy and the measurement, right, what the KPIs should be and how do you measure those KPIs. Right from that to optimization. And then again, you know, building that chain and building that cycle so that it's ever evolving process for them. Yeah. But, uh, one major tent pole, one Mount Everest brand that you have now, uh, which looks to you for measurement, uh, is Netflix. So that's an amazing endorsement and I'm sure that it's just a big, decent climb all the way up the success charts. I hope. And I'm sure. And I think with you leading the space along with the other two global brands that are here in India together empowering the category of digital marketing which is, like which encompasses everything that wants to sell itself in India legally yeah that's an amazing opportunity so yeah. But one question you haven't answered Nachi is what have you brought to the double verify table from all your insights and learnings from the experience with Mindshare, with LinkedIn, and with Lintas Digital. Interesting. Hug back. I, I look at it from, from, from two perspectives, right? One is the challenges that the brands faced, right? Which is what, you know, I learned at my stint with the agencies, right? And how to solve those problems? How to solve those problems and how do we, how do we strategically partner with the brands, right? And not only just provide them with, how to make use of the data, right? That was, that's extremely critical. And second thing I would say is, how do you work closely to grow organically, right? Nice. Because if you don't help your customers grow, you're not going to grow. And you've been there, done that to a great extent in terms of digital, in terms of objectives, and plans and targets and you know, all of that, not only for yourself, but I mean at, LinkedIn, but then in LinkedIn also you were doing something similar for brands and individuals who wanted to reach out to their TGs, their cohorts in the shortest time with the least expense and the highest ROI. I'm oversimplifying to a massive extent. But I think, and then Mindshare, my God, that's another giant. And that experience also, and Lintas Digital was one of the frontrunners then and has always been a market enabler ever since throughout its history. One thing if you ask me, what I've learned over the years is being customer-obsessed across all my stints, which is what makes a lot of difference, right? If you understand your customer needs, if you understand your customer challenges and problems, I think if you help solve for them, then I think it's a win-win situation. And that's really important Nachi because the customer might come and say, you know what, I want this. But then if you have it in you to be able to tell the customer, yes, you want this, but I think you need this, yeah, that's where you sort of make a big difference. Absolutely. Wonderful. Shiket, Teole, Nachi, I have enjoyed this conversation. I really found a lot of insights and a lot of, you know, tangential ways of looking at things and how the digital marketing space and the deployment of, you know, campaigns across multiple pipelines of digital connect with different TGs is not only crucial, but even more crucial than that actually, equally is measuring them and getting the trust pilot brand of double verify on their claims. So wonderful. I enjoyed my conversation. Thank you for the insights. What did you think of your chat with me so far on MVP, the master's voice podcast from mediabrief.com. Thanks for having me, Pavan, on this podcast. absolutely loved. Every bit of it. And I thoroughly enjoyed the questions. Honestly, a lot of questions came to me for the first time. But I... But... I must appreciate the groundwork that has gone behind this. I think you knew a lot more than I expected. Oh God! I don't know whether to take it as a compliment. But I will take it as a compliment. No, I thoroughly enjoyed it, Pavan. I think somebody like you doing this and considering this. A serious space, which makes us a little proud in the work that we're doing. And thanks for supporting. Thanks for talking about it. I hope your listeners will find value in this. And marketers at large will really relate to what we're saying. I'm sure they will. I'm sure they will. I myself have derived a lot of benefit and I'm sure they will too. So, thank you. Thank you ever so much, Nachi. And I would also like to mention, Pavan, the work that Media Brief and MVP podcast is doing. It's phenomenal. I reckon you have already done 80, 85 plus podcasts, which is like everybody in the industry, every leader in the industry. And the kind of content that's been made available for industry as a whole is phenomenal. If one has to create a playlist out of it, I think easily it's like two years worth of knowledge that one can sit on. So, thank you so much for helping industry grow, Pavan. I think it's a very noble cause. And I hope everybody in the industry follows and listens to every single podcast and all the content that you have generated by taking so much of effort. Thank you so much for doing this on behalf of the whole industry. I would say. Oh my God, you're very gracious, extremely kind and your words are very precious. My team on I will be really we are enthused. And I can say this on behalf of my team also. And thank you ever, ever so much for having been on the show. And thanks very much to Suyash Thakur and Spriha Singh and Sreyoshi Haldar, who has been with us, Sreyoshi Haldar, during this recording also. All of Ruder Finn, the excellent agency that really has helped us make this podcast possible. Nachiket Deole, Head of Sales India, Double Verify, one of the global leaders in digital measurement, was my distinguished guest on this episode of MVP, the Master's Voice podcast on on mediabrief.com. I found this conversation extremely insightful and I hope that you did too. Till we meet again in the next episode of MVP, the master's voice podcast from mediabrief.com, this is your host and friend Pavan R Chawla saying, take care, stay safe, stay measured. Bye-bye. Music.