ConTech.Ed – A Knowledge Series by ZEE5, highlights key trends in entertainment, media and advertising industry. Each topic is addressed by a domain expert who shares insights into the industry and ZEE5.

Getting behind the play button

Advertising plays a very significant role in influencing consumers buying behaviour. Hence understanding consumer behaviour and adjusting your outreach in a way that resonates with them is very crucial for creating an effective brand value. On the other hand, adopting the right technologies will also allow you to optimize ROI and drive brand awareness.

Tushar Vohra, an IIT Kanpur graduate has 19 years of experience in digital consumer products with expertise across Media, FinTech, e-Commerce, Travel and Gamification. Tushar spearheads innovation and development and is currently heading Technology at ZEE5 India. His role includes new development and solutioning, data and service security, infrastructure management, service uptime, automation and innovation.

Tushar discusses how latest technologies in AdTech give OTT platforms the ability to target and serve personalized ads based on demographics, viewing habits, content preferences and other behavioral attributes. To make targeting even more precise, AdTech will help advertisers substantially enhance the data which includes browsing and online shopping history.

“When a request for an advertisement comes, it comes through our ad server. The ad server qualifies the campaign and goes back to the ML and AI engine which optimizes and figures out what is the right campaign to be shown to the customer” says Tushar. This personalization is what differentiates OTT advertising from Linear TV advertising. Tushar also added “The selected campaign, goes back to the ad server and sees if there are any programmatic partners who is giving a better deal and then finalizes through an auction-based mechanism. When the customer engages with the ad, a feedback is given back into the ad server.” Through this, OTT platforms such as ZEE5 are able to offer measurable results to their advertisers through third party tracking tools, which builds transparency and credibility. It also enables the advertiser to closely monitor and optimize the brand campaigns.

Advertisers can get a competitive edge in the increasingly burgeoning OTT market.