Ad industry to see more transparent programmatic ecosystem in 2024: Madison’s Vikram Sakhuja

“From Mad Men to Math Men, in 2024 the advertising industry will have…a Method to the Madness,” opines Vikram Sakhuja, partner and group CEO, Madison Media and OOH, one of India’s leading independent agencies. According to Sakhuja, in 2023 while AI truly entered the consumer mindspace, the metaverse as a trend petered out. “The dynamics between TV and online video were keenly watched, and it is quite clear that both have a key role to play,” he adds.

In 2024, he thinks marketers’ expectations will be skewed towards understanding the media mix and getting to the root of understanding the effectiveness of their efforts. From understanding consumer attention to being prepared for a cookie-less world, if at all it rolls out next year, 2024 will keep marketers and their agency partners busy.

Here’s what more he has to say about 2023’s report card and the year ahead.

From a business point of view, what are the key achievements of the agency this year?

I’m happy with the business growth momentum we have had this year primarily on the back of our existing clients firing and our OOH business moving from strength to strength by not only winning Maruti, Aditya Birla Capital and BCCI IPL Fan Parks, among others.

This year we have also seen a lot of interest and growth in creative with our unit Loop growing aggressively. The digital juggernaut continues and our efforts at driving an integrated planning offering has made satisfactory progress. And not the least, we were excited to onboard the world’s pre-eminent digital guru—Rob Norman—into the Madison family as a consultant.

What according to you are the key marketing trends that stood out in 2023?

While it has been around for a while, AI truly entered the mindspace in 2023 with the advent of ChatGPT and other generative AI engines. This will continue. Equally, metaverse as a trend petered out. The dynamics between TV and online video were keenly watched, and it is quite clear that both have a key role to play. The freeze in the startup economy led to the slowing down of a major growth sector of AdEx and this trend too looks like continuing.

What are the key tasks that you have listed on your to-do list for 2024?

Learning and development of the Madison team to master the integrated marketing ecosystem is a big item on the agenda. We definitely need to upskill to add value to our clients.

Automation and adoption of new tools to reduce turnaround time, improve insight generation and overall improve our performance in allocation, optimisation and attribution. Being able to harness the power of first-party data. Wearing my industry hat, I would love to be able to bring back the IRS (Indian Readership Survey), help ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation) get more currency status and bring in cross-media measurement.

What advertising trends will take the spotlight in 2024?

We will see a more transparent programmatic ecosystem next year. There are a lot of bad practices that have crept into the existing open web programmatic ecosystem. There is a need and desire to address this. The ISA (Indian Society of Advertisers) media charter is a step in the right direction. Another self-correcting mechanism is the long-overdue cookie deprecation (third-party tracking codes). If it happens, it could be a watershed year.

I see marketers asking for attention over impressions and plain-vanilla views. There has always been a feeling that some impressions have more impact than others. I see that being quantified. And as a result, we will look for equivalence between, say, a TV spot, a print insert, a cinema spot, a music streaming spot, or an online view of an ad on YouTube/OTT or a social media feed. More applications of Gen AI in the marketing world. With a strengthening economy, I expect advertisers to again put faith in long-term brand building over short-term promotional performance marketing.

2024 for the advertising industry will be…

From Mad Men to Math Men, in 2024 the advertising industry will have…a Method to the Madness.

Read more: Why advertising veteran Rob Norman is cautious about AI