Ramya Parashar, Chief Operating Officer at MiQ, the programmatic media partner has a lot on her hands, as she and her industry peers strive to find a universal panacea for digital media, and the multitude of issues that need addressing in a medium that has been running before it really figured out where to.

“Right now, what we are looking at is building a unified data model, which is very agnostic. When you look at the amount of data, the number of DSPs publishers, and other players, we're looking at how we drive the best results for our customers through this unified platform. And which is where our technology model enables us to access all of the industry programmatic capabilities under one layer of technology,” she says.

MiQ’s other focus area have been developing advanced technology in the TV space by combining linear and connected TV data sets.

“We're also looking at how we measure beyond awareness of just including things like online performance, incremental footfall, and all of those. Apart from that, from a performance standpoint, we are building contextual keyless-based targeting. We're also looking at various customer segments and how we can bring in more predictive retargeting in the way we are able to influence the right set of value audiences, how to bring incrementality in measurement and optimize some of our campaigns to ultimately drive transparency for our customers,” she said.

This of course is driven by the issue of measurements and the need for a level playing field, something MiQ and other programmatic platforms and technology issues have been looking at.

“Measurement has been an area that we have debated a lot. And today if you look at some of the industry trends as to how we have this concept of walled gardens coming up and walled gardens kind of breaking in the context of advertising and closed platforms. That is changing the game of programmatic for us as measurement and attribution are typically when we look at launching some of the campaigns or even building some of our algorithms for retargeting and retargeting,” elaborates Parashar.

This naturally brings the talk around to the so-called cookieless future, which much like fusion energy, is just around the corner. Latest reports say that Google will finally be letting that particular piece of merchandise crumble by end of 2024, but Parashar says much of the industry has doom prepped for that, and MiQ plans to eliminate third party cookies “by end of December this year, which will be a game changer for us and our clients.”

Of course, even if we finally wash down the cookies for good, bakeries aren’t going anywhere.

“Walled gardens are going nowhere, which is the universal truth. For us as well, we talk a lot about walled gardens, and it comes down to how do you build audience reach and scale? How do you build a granular level of targeting and personalization and insights on it? Ease of use also comes with walled gardens, with their interfaces and tools that set up and manage campaigns better,” says Parashar.