ad:tech New Delhi 2012: Day 2 at a glance

The second day of ad:tech opened with a key note presentation by Pete Blackshaw, Nestle's global head of digital marketing and social media. The presentation was focused around the growing world of personalized and smaller screen size especially in countries like India, and called for rethinking the digital strategy.

Satyan Gajwani, Director - New Media, BCCL, presented his views on the evolution of content, commerce, and entertainment in the digital world. He said, "The industry today is evolving around three words: content, commerce and entertainment. The word entertainment can be further divided to store, discover and consumption." He believes that now is the time when all the companies should think less about CPCs etc rather think about engagement. Also offline brands should be enabled to come online as it would attract amazing numbers. Lastly he talked about content creation and consumption. He said, "News consumption paradigm has totally changed from last five years. People have started reading news on phones, tablets, laptops etc. It's a whole cycle: one reads some important news on his/her phone while on the way, then may be check some updates on his laptops, then when back home cold switch or to television and then at night may be on laptop." He also believes that news consumption as an idea is really moving across mediums and platforms and many media organizations do not realize the fact that content can have a great impact on their decision making.

The next panel session; Match Made in Heaven focused on the importance of angels for developing strong businesses that make great Venture Capital investments. The session was moderated by Alok Mittal, Managing Director, Canaan India and panelists were Samir Kumar, Managing Director, Inventus, Sarbvir Singh, Managing Director, Capital18, Vinay Sanghi, Promoter & CEO, MXC Solutions and Sateesh Andra, Venture Partner, DFJ who shared their thoughts on the importance of a strong person who helps in developing strong and effective business and investments.

Richard Dunmall, Vice President, Global Accounts & Agencies, Microsoft Advertising shared a glimpse of futuristic technologies being adopted by advertisers and publishers in connecting with their audiences and telling their brand stories. In his presentation he talked about some of the trends in digital and also chalked out some of the areas that help brand building. He said, "Today the technology has taken a centre-stage. Whatever consumer wants technology delivers: from self expressions to employment to new forms.

Rammohan Sundaram, Event Chairman and Founder, CEO & Managing Director, Networkplay Media Pvt Ltd., said, "Gian's keynote was an eye opener as well as an alarm bell for CMOs. With US no longer remaining the centre of the online world, and with Asia Pacific commanding almost half the world's online population, marketers who do not have digital as a core component of their brand strategy yet are bound to lose out in the race. So many of the exhibitors at ad:tech New Delhi this year are already showcasing technologies that we were only talking about at last year's conference. These technologies are no longer in the sandbox, but are proven successfully, and early adopters will stand to get much ahead in the race for customer engagement." We heard PepsiCo's global digital head, Shiv Singh, talk about the real-time marketing imperative, while others like Anurag Mehrotra of Ford India shared examples of how they engaging customers with rich-content apps and other digital experiences, added Ram.