Bengaluru-based mobile-focussed platform OneDigitalAd helps brands reach their target audience
OneDigitalAd, a cross-medium and cross-device, audience-centric advertising technology platform, was born in October 2013 with the aim of meeting the need of a single-marketing platform covering audiences across devices and providing brand experience continuity.
The digital marketing technology platform (DSP, demand side platform in the digital marketing landscape) is integrated with the world’s top ad exchanges such as Google, Rubicon, InMobi and PubMatic.
One of the founders, Prashant Kunal, says “Our proprietary real-time bidding (RTB) technology evaluates digital inventory from ad exchanges, impression-by-impression, and matches real-time the right inventory for the advertisers”.
He, along with cofounders Sudarsan Parida, Rajesh Gaikwad and Karthik Pattabhiraman, who were colleagues in Bangalore as well as studied together at NIT Warangal, have resolved what they call ‘the core problem’: how to better identify the target audience in the display world without collecting any personal information of the user.
“Our audience profiling engine connects various dots to build the audience profile,” Prashant says.
The Bengaluru-based company uses massive data and technology to profile audiences and help advertisers reach the right audience with the right message on the right device, and caters mainly to digital marketers looking to increase brand awareness and engagement in the marketing funnel.
“The target customers are brands and agencies looking to optimise their digital marketing efforts and spend by reaching only the audience that matters most. We work with brands from almost all verticals, such as auto, BFSI, retail, e-commerce and travel,” explains Sudarsan , Co-founder, OneDigitalAd.
Current customers include leading e-commerce players, shopping comparison portals, travel portals, brands from the FMCG sector, retail, fashion, home décor and food tech.
The bootstrapped company had the four founders pooling in savings to fund the capital and operating expenses. The spending was mostly on office rent and purchase of software services. The company started realising revenue towards the end of the first year of operation and has been profitable since.
“We are growing at a rate of 50 per cent month-on-month currently. As we scale up and also expand to other countries, we are expecting higher month-on-month growth,” Sudarsan adds.
What is different?
On what OneDigitalAd has added to this segment, and what particular issue it has addressed that others had failed to deliver, Rajesh says, “Most of the current ad-tech platforms have focused on re-marketing and customer acquisition, thus increasing the bottomline for brands and advertisers. Our focus is to increase topline by solving the awareness and engagement problem.”
According to him, OneDigitalAd is solving this problem with specific audience profiling and segmentation so that brands and advertisers reach the right audience.
He also believes their venture has a competitive advantage - with its unique blend of mobile-first approach, audience-centric profile and the first party-mobile SDK - even though there are other players solving specific problems around mobile advertising.
“Advertisers end up targeting devices instead of consumers. This results in lower consumer engagement, conversions and returns. OneDigitalAd being a mobile-focussed platform, helps brands understand their audience better in terms of app-engagement metrics,” says Karthik, another Co-founder.
The founders maintain they are in the segment for the long haul. “Our competitors range from ad-tech companies to ad networks and ad agencies to ad-centric services companies. But we are confident about our product and the plan, and are here for the long term. However, in the short term, the exit options could be merging or partnering with large ad-tech companies or large global agency networks where our technology would complement their offering,” says Karthik, adding that the company should be growing at four-five times quarter-on-quarter in medium to long term.
Anticipating challenges
There is no dearth of players in digital advertising, which is currently pegged at 10 per cent of the total advertising spend and is growing at a healthy rate of 40 per cent year-on-year.
Numerous ad tech companies in India are engaged in solving different problems and vying for the advertising spend pie.
Prashant says that India being a mobile-first country has seen exponential growth in mobile internet penetration. Due to technology limitations on mobile and new audience getting added everyday, this throws unique challenges of identifying the target audience and reaching them. “With the cofounders having significant expertise on mobile and cloud technologies, we are solving the problem by better identification of target audience and optimised ad delivery. We would like to apply this learning to other markets as well. Hence, we are planning to scale beyond India,” he adds. Prashant says they would be looking at funding avenues in the near future.
