Digital is moving from being niche to point driver: Sam Singh, Google

India is uniquely positioned when it comes to programmatic, with around 400 million internet users and approximately three-fourth of them using smartphones, which is increasing in a static pace being the centre most driver of visionary boundaries. This was stated by Sam Singh, Director of Agencies, Google India, at the flagship Think Platform event held last week. 

Singh further share that of the people who are searching online, almost two-third of them use smartphone devices to search online, which clearly shows the important of mobile phones in the ecosystem. “By 2020, we expect the internet users in India to reach 650 million, and these numbers were put in place before the Jio exposure,” he added. 

He further said, “Today, around 280 million users are using YouTube and video has become the most consumed data format, where users can watch it on their desktop and tabs.” 

“We are seeing 4x times YOY increase in watch time on YouTube and it’s a myth that digital usage and video consumption are a largely urban phenomenon; the reality is that digitalisation is mainstream in India,” Singh affirmed. 

Talking about the programmatic benefits, Singh said, One can see large consumer bases with the huge consumption of online information and success from the advertisers’ side. As a result of all these forces coming together, the overall advertising expenditure is close to 10 million and the contribution of digital is close to 30 per cent. Digital is moving from being niche to almost point driver.” 

Further speaking about the fundamentals of programmatic, he explained that reaching the right users with the right message in a most effective way. 

“With the advent of technology, we have lost the art of one on one communication. Today, we have around 40 per cent of programmatic display media, which is expected to increase close to 60 per cent. As time has passed we have moved from desktop to the world of mobility in a very short time, which has become convenient and linear,” he pointed out. 

Talking about the journey of programmatic across the globe as well in India, Singh stated, “It all started with reservation byte in the 90’s, where ads were sold via direct transaction with the advertisers, agencies, and publishers meeting each other. This later moved to ad exchanges, which cover the financial or commodity market, where instead of having face to face deals we started secret digital table and started transacting. Then we move to the world of DSP’s. The world comes around the fourth circle because today programmatic direct offers the best of DSP to combine with reservation byte from where it all started.”