1. 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 $100B1
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.
Digital Advertising and Accelerated Customer Service Strategies
perspective
Source:
1
“Online Ad Spending Tops $100 Billion in 2012”, www.forbes.com
Karthik Ramachandran, Madhula Sathyamoorthy
2.
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.
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.
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 multi-
channel 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 smartphone4
.
Source:
2
“Mobile Gains Greater Share of Search, Display Spending”; www.emarketer.com
3
Forester Research“Interactive Marketing Forecasts, 2011 to 2016 (US)”as cited in Advertising Age, Aug 24, 2011
4
“Online Marketing: Top Trends for 2013”, www.adexchanger.com
5
International Communications Market Report 2012 (ICMR-2012)
4. 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 multi-
channel 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.
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.
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:
• Requirement of robust ad campaign
management techniques to obtain
consistent performance
• Market volatility and introduction
of new products makes competitive
analysis of keywords difficult. Real time
market knowledge becomes highly
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
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.
Business Value Creation through benchmarking from similar engagements
Value Map creation and focus on specific KPI’s
Unified / Centrailzed Work Force Management solution for ad support operations at
different locations
Proprietary tools: Service Now (ticketing tool) and Re TEM (chat tool)
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
Customizing client’s training requirement and content to resources at different levels
Domain support through certified professionals
Benchmarking
Technology Led Differentiation
Thought Leadership
Domain Training
1
2
3
4
Focus on
improving
campaign
management
skills for inbound
agents
Features of world
class Digital Ads
helpdesk
Proactive
up sell / cross sell
capabilities
improvement for
outbound agents
Continuous
training focused
on specific areas
or products with
more issues and
queries
IncreasedROIforadsupport
CustomerValueCreation
6. 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.
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.
