When Tejinder Gill joined The Trade Desk as India CEO last year, he did a quick market recce with some CMOs to better understand their service needs as well as how the company could best deliver the optimal business end resources.

Expositing on digital India's marketing requirements, in an era dominated by conversations on the open internet and within walled gardens, Gill says there is a need for transparency across ad buying domains so that every player has a clear unobstructed view on what's working and what isn't.

“One of the first things they said was, “let’s be honest, Tej, there’s no choice in the market (when it comes to walled garden systems). We also want a partner who is very open, transparent, given that these platforms are very opaque when it comes to numbers and the metrics they use.” And thirdly, of course, they were looking at an agency that can provide them the ROI that works for them,” says Gill.

“The fact is that the most recent studies show that people are spending 70-80% of their time online on the open internet, while the spending on digital AdEx is the polar opposite, with 70-80% of budgets being spent on these walled garden systems,” says Gill, noting that since those initial conversations he’s been using data to dispelling myths around digital ad buying, before delving deep into the technical minutiae of programmatic.

For instance, “People say ‘search and social’ gives you the best reach, so you should invest heavily on that. The counter argument is that people only spend 30% of their time on ‘search and social’, with 70% of their time on the open internet. So people need to realize that “search and social” spends are a part of a budget, and shouldn’t be the focus of it,” says Gill, even as he discussed, among other things, the misapprehensions around conversion campaigns versus brand campaigns (contrary to popular parlance, the latter are actually more impactful).

As Gill demonstrates, there’s much need for a lot more clarity and domain knowledge for brands, and even agencies newly venturing into the programmatic space.

“There are all the buzz words and trends (NFTs, AR/VR, Meta-everything) that companies want to hop on, because everyone else seems to be doing it. We have to come in and say, “This might not work for your particular product and service,” and help them figure out other tools and resources they can spend on instead to get a better ROI,” he says.

Indeed, it is this that US-headquartered The Trade Desk, which completed its first year of operations in India earlier this year, is committed to with its cloud-based, data-driven platform to help clients reach their customers with targeted display, video, Connected TV, audio, native, and social ads across every device. Gill adds that the company’s in-house Enterprise APIs lets advertisers customize their software to meet their needs.

“One of my key strategic goals is to educate people and get the market ready for Programmatic 2.0, and that is largely based around Decisioning. The western market is now 90 per cent based on Decisioning, while India is the only major market left that still has 90-odd per cent Programmatic Guaranteed,” says Gill, noting that there were more than a few people who thought programmatic just meant automating the updating of and deriving from market data.

Decisioning is a process that brings together data, analytics, and other predictive parameters to make the “right decisions” about what to talk to customers about and where and when to do it. This means it is ever evolving and doesn’t depend on static deliverables or cookie-cutter deals.

“The beauty of Decisioning is that it gives the marketer more control over the ecosystem. If I want to target mothers or auto lovers, then I can go and bid accordingly depending on the data points of that impression available. Impressions can have hundreds of variables and depend on individuals and their reactions to or requirements from a product or service,” says Gill, saying he’s becoming extremely passionate about the subject.

“Some of the biggest conversations I’m having now have clients saying, “Thank you for bringing this freedom of choice to India,”. When the internet first came out, some 30-odd years ago, it was supposed to be open and free, and not be in these walled gardens. That’s what “www, world wide web” is supposed to mean,” he adds.

Indeed, The Trade Desk seems poised to provide that flexibility and performance, with the company worldwide posting a revenue increase of 35% for the second quarter of 2022, as compared to 2021, and looking at “at least USD 385 million” (over 3,000 crore) in earnings for the third quarter of this year.

“The one disadvantage to the open internet is that it is fragmentary, and in different pieces all over the place. With our technology and tools, we aim to be the glue that brings them all together, and become the marketplace for those customized needs for advertisers and other stakeholders,” says Gill.