Internationally, organisations spend around $140 billion on digital advertising ( 2014 ). Ad tech firms contribute a great deal to generate these dollars. Ad tech firms basically help the targeting — targeting the ads to the right consumers. It is a major shift — marketing is becoming personal once more. Facebook and Google are the lead players who are known to do the targeting with precision and metrics to measure. The other ad tech firms compete with theses two lead firms. However, there are opportunities to collaborate with them too.

Ad tech firms, whether small or big, have started changing the rules of the advertising profession. The online canpaigns are created and priced differently. The goals set are precise. To illustrate, an advertiser may want to target a Japanese youth between the ages 15 –35 with a taste for Indian food. The budget can be specified, say $ 50,000. Once the campaign is run, the ad tech firm submits the measurable results and any remaining dollars.

Search targeting is the simplest, say track what a customer searches. The ads correspond to the searches being made. However, a person searching hamburgers in Pune may not be interested in the hamburgers being delivered in Chicago. Here the geographical targeting comes in. Demographic targeting is based on demographic data such as your age, sex, education etc. These are conventional methods of targeting. But today a combined multi-level targeting is possible — all possible data signals are factored in.

If against ad spending of Rs. 5000, you want 50 pizza to be delivered, these results can be obtained by ad tech firm by targeting the ads to the suitable audience.

Ad buyers such as eBay put several million of such ad bids, and all these cannot be handled manually. They use a bid management system. The ad impression and the appropriate ad are dynamically put together, and it takes 100-150 milliseconds. The tools enabling this are provided by the ad tech firm.

Ad tech firms are evolving in sophistication. Some of them are targeting the ads on cell phones and desk top.They are doing proprietary data work. There are so many different types of ad tech firms. The key is optimisation of the various parts of the business.

E – commerce sites have the data of the shopping behaviour of millions of people. They have billions of page views. They require the context of some level such as Facebook and Google.They also need teams to build their own ad propositions to the customers.

In the final analysis, there are two types of ad tech firms — those which capture the intent of the user, e.g. Google and those who can present ads after knowing the users e.g. Facebook. There are many possibilites in-between. Smaller firms build capabilities in which these larger firms are interested. The cell phone is the next avenue of advertising, since the user location and behaviour can be predicted. The prediction could identify the anatomical position of the consumer — whether siting or standing. It is a complex thing, but full of opportunities. Wearable technology could take ad tech firms to an altogther now level.

InMobi connects the space sellers such as content sites, apps and game developers with the advertisers wishing to use the mobile platform. Technologically they serve the right ad to the right people. InMobi can do apprographic targeting — targeting based on users’ app preferences.

When the user engages with the ad by clicking on it, InMobi gets paid. There are metrics such as cost per click (CTC) or cost per mille (CPM). The other payment metrics are — number of downloas for a game, queries of test drive for a car.

InMobi improves engagement by innovating on how the ad is delivered. The ad could just look like the content.It is an example of one such innovation.

Komli Media and Media.net are the other ad tech firms operating here.

The largest marketers in the US are cutting their ad bugets as they shift a larger portion of their spending to digital platforms. In digital, there are cost efficiencies and one can buy more for less.A large portion goes to segments such as video and mobile.Online display ads had the same flat spending. TV and cable TV ad spend increased, and has suffered on the margins.In print the ad expenditure continued to plunge. Radio ad spending declined.