Brands
How Google views India’s internet landscape
MUMBAI: After having worked with three tech giants of today – Google, Microsoft and Samsung – Guneet Singh is not hesitant to speak of the power of digital. The Google head of marketing solutions for India and SEA was speaking at the Zee Melt 2018 conference.
At Google since the time digital market was a minuscule fraction in the country, he believes that digital empowers people to market their products providing equal chance. As the industry transformed from TV to digital, creative ecosystem needs to change to understand how the consumption is happening.
“Internet market is led by two things. It’s led by the smart device which has to process and the good network. Both of those were struggling. The first big shift came between 2012-15 when prices were going down and quality of data improved. The next shift came after Jio entered the market,” he revealed in an interaction with Indiantelevision.com.
Owing to the large population, even when only 10 per cent of Indians were on the internet, India was a priority market for Google. Though India’s vast cultural and linguistic diversity makes it a challenging market, Singh thinks every company has to be ready to able to be flexible and appeal to users across the country. According to him, the best way to look at India is not as a country but as a region which has eight to nine geo-clusters or small countries.
India being a priority market, Google has a large marketing team in India. It likes to keep a multi-cultural team in every office. Along with a high number of local population, it also encourages people from other parts of the world to come and work in different countries paving the way to knowledge-sharing.
One of the major areas Google focuses on India is always having more people on the internet, to really get the value of the internet which is beyond funny videos. It is also working with manufacturers to look at ways to get great performance at affordable prices on Android devices. In 2016, Google launched, in collaboration with Indian Railways, its free high-speed public wi-fi service at five railway stations which has now reached around 400 stations.
“The second part is that as you grow beyond the first 100 million users, we have so many different languages, cultures, there’s an effort on trying to build a vernacularity. The focus is on the content on the internet which is primarily in English and then goes to Hindi, Punjabi, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali, whatever India needs and next generation of Indian users comes up from that effort. That’s another big initiative we are taking,” Singh said.
While with the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal, GDPR roll out in Europe, protection of consumer data has become a burning issue worldwide, Singh also considers the issue very important. “The internet empowers people. Therefore the way data can be used should be a choice of that individual,” he said. However, he thinks it should not become a rightist movement. People should be given a choice if they are okay with sharing data for getting something better.
With an experience of more than 15 years in the industry, he thinks digital advertising needs to evolve to grab the eyeballs of an audience which has a very short attention span. Six-second videos aren’t always the goal but the right engagement. The optimistic man, however, firmly believes creativity is not dead.
Brands
Amazon appoints Menka Asrani as lead studio
To drive branded content for Prime Video within Amazon Ads ecosystem
MUMBAI: Amazon has appointed Menka Asrani as lead studio, strengthening its branded content ambitions within the Amazon Ads ecosystem for its OTT platform.
Asrani announced the move, saying she will lead branded content initiatives that bring together storytelling, brand partnerships and audience-first thinking. “This role brings together storytelling, brand partnerships and audience-first thinking—areas I’ve been deeply passionate about throughout my career,” she shared, adding that she looks forward to building content solutions that forge stronger connections between brands and audiences in the premium digital entertainment space.
She also expressed gratitude to Gulshan Verma for the opportunity and said she is eager to collaborate with the team to shape brand storytelling at scale.
Asrani joins Amazon after a year at Collective Artists Network, where she served as head brand solutions – BigBang.Social. Prior to that, she spent over three years at Viacom18 Media Private Limited, leading branded content creative for digital ventures at JioCinema’s entertainment vertical.
Her earlier stint as head of sales strategy and brand solutions at Zee5 saw her drive data-led content solutions and revenue strategies across digital and tv+. She has also held brand solutions roles at The Walt Disney Company, Bloomberg TV India and DB Corp Ltd., building intellectual properties and multi-platform brand partnerships.
Across her career, Asrani has produced and shaped high-impact branded properties and original formats. These include the L’Oréal Professional Indian Hairdressing Awards, an original hairstyling reality series featuring filmmaker Karan Johar as a judge, the anthology Saath By Chance on JioCinema, and Royal Stag Barrel Select Large Short Films’ Select Films Select Conversations.
With over a decade of experience spanning print, television and digital, Asrani brings a rare mix of creative instinct and commercial acumen. At Amazon, that blend is expected to power branded storytelling that feels less like advertising and more like entertainment audiences choose to watch.
