Excerpts from the conversation with Joshua Spanier, Senior Marketing Director,Global Media Google

Is digital advertising as effective as it is stated to be in terms of Brand Building?

I believe good advertising in any medium can be very effective. One of the benefits of digital media has been the metrics and data that can give you clear learnings and account for what is working, far more so than traditional television or print channels or out-of-home. Having said that, they all play a role in the marketing mix.

The industry was promised or seemed to believe that digital could solve all problems and that there would be data to prove everything. But what has been forgotten is that as much as you can use data and insights, if your original creative or message is not effective then it doesn’t matter how well you are measuring because you won’t find good results. What I see a lot around the world is that teams are not focusing enough on making smart, clever digital creatives. They take their TV or print ads and run it online. They don’t take advantage of what digital platforms can do.

I believe that digital can drive real business results but it will not solve every business problem.

What about Programmatic Advertising, does it help solve some of the problems?

At Google we are giant proponents of programmatic and we have invested heavily in it. Programmatic will help get your ad to the right audience but again, It is about what content is being shown to the audience. A generic advert will not resonate.

As an industry where we let ourselves down is not thinking intelligently about what ad we are going to serve in a programmatic world. The opportunity to show intelligent, interesting, dynamic and relevant advertising is present and we have not taken it. In ten years every medium will be connected to the internet, it is imperative that we improve from a creative measurement and attribution standpoint.

Communication is becoming an ‘always on’ phenomenon- how much is too much?

Customers are buying every day, they are making decisions every day, we should engage with them continuously. Therefore, ‘always-on’ marketing makes a lot of sense. The critical thing is that there are different tactics, channels and opportunities for ‘always on’ marketing, a marketer must be aware of these and use the right one for his brand.

At times you need TV commercials and a big brand push, and very visible advertising. At times you may not have a lot to say but there is content marketing which you can do, you could put up a video of how to use your product. How much is too much? The way I think about it is – is it useful, is it relevant, is it entertaining, is it good experience for the consumer?

What kind of opportunities and challenges do you see in the Indian market as far as digital adex is concerned?

What I’m struck by about India, is how the cell phone has become central to everyone’s life. I recently visited a family here and everyone said -my cell phone is my TV and I get my entertainment from it. So there are opportunities and challenges for all the media publishers. I see incredible opportunities for both TV networks and for other online video producers on YouTube and other sites to create interesting, engaging content, which people can access either on the big screen TV or on their phones and there is going to be valuable opportunity for everyone.