Viewability is the base unit of brand building force: Vivek Malhotra, India Today

Vivek Malhotra, Group CMO & COO (Consumer Revenue & Enterprise Strategy), India Today Group, on Wednesday highlighted that viewability is the base unit of a brand building force and if the base unit is not seen, then the brand is losing on something important. The base unit, said Malhotra, can convert into share of mind and then share of wallet. Malhotra was speaking at the Pitch Madison Advertising Report (PMAR) launch event in Mumbai.

Throwing a question at the CMOs, Vivek asked, "If you didn't have a bottom of the funnel would you take viewability as easy or not, would you not be playing on imagery, would you not be playing on top funnel things, would you not keep viewability at the heart of everything you do? Now you can squeeze the bottom of the funnel and say you've done a good marketing job, but have you done justice to the top of the funnel?"

He asserted, even on one single platform it is impossible to get 100% viewability, the question is not about maximising viewability, it is about optimising viewability, but even that will happen after viewability is standardised.

Bringing attention to brand lift based on viewability and adding some numbers to the theory, Vivek said, "Assume you have a brand lift of 120 and you've paid for 100 impressions, which means 1.2 is your brand uplift per user, and if you were to take away the rough estimate that 54% of your ads were not viewed, so if you divide it just by this 46, then imagine you go from a brand lift of 1.2 to a brand lift of more than 2 times — 2.6. So, if I have viewability I can go and aspire for a 2.6 return."

He wondered if, in the race for numbers, we have lost the essence of humanizing brands. Yet, most brands already function like humans and are perceived as such. The key to increasing viewability lies in identifying and leveraging the right spaces where this perception thrives.

Adding further to it with an example, Vivek said, "Look at a luxury product, would a luxury product say 'buy now'? I haven't seen anything like that. But there are brands like Indri which are doing really well and they are working on imagery, their imagery depends on whether the emotions get transferred or not, not just the 'buy'
message."

"After you have opened the doors to viewability, you get into likes, comments and shares," he added.

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