Three Ex-Amazonians Are Rewriting Rules of Digital Advertising
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Transcript of Three Ex-Amazonians Are Rewriting Rules of Digital Advertising
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Preethi Chamikutty | December 03, 2013 at 12:19 pm
Three ex-Amazonians rewrite rules of digitaladvertising with Sokrati
Ashish Mehta
If online advertising is all about effectiveness, then how do you measure it? There are click through rates, time
spent on the page, shares and ‘likes’ — methods that are already in practice. So when we heard of Sokrati we
thought it was just another digital advertising agency. But some of the tools that Sokrati has developed make its
value proposition interesting and different from the rest. It puts the online user customer at the centre rather than
the product.
Innovative products
One of the products that Sokrati has to offer is called Persona
ads. Persona ads puts the user at the centre of everything – be it
search, social media or display ads. The tool analyses the user
behavior pattern online and uses that information to decide the
target ad to be served. This user information is collected from
what the user is browsing on social networking sites and what he
searches online. This information is then collated to draw a
profile of the user and enable psychographic targeting.
By using these profiles, different advertising messaging is
created for different groups. “So if you are trying to sell a kurti
to a very brand conscious person, you will have to mention a
brand name in your ad. Whereas for someone who likes floral
kurtis, brand names may not be enticing, but floral patterns
would be,” explains Rahul Kulkarni, chief product officer at
Sokarti. Rahul worked with Google earlier, where he was a key
product manager involved with Google Maps, navigation, Google
Local, cloud computing, Orkut and Google Finance.
Sokrati creates different types of ads for all the products that a client has with different kind of messaging and by
using different templates. The ‘ad factory’ that Sokrati has, makes it possible to churn out large number of ads. “The
ad factory helps reduce the client’s experimentation cost by 80 per cent. So if it’s a change of headline, colour, font,
visual – we can do it with a single ad rather than spend $10 to $ 20 per creative. We use statistically designed
experiments to change elements in the ad,” claims Rahul.
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Santosh Gannavarapu
which can use the Sokrati tool for a fee.
Another tool developed by the startup is a tracking system that can track user behavior, clicks, transactions and
leads. All this information can then be integrated with the brand’s offline lead management system.
Suppose Citibank is conducting a credit card campaign. Once an online form is filled by an interested party,
Citibank’s call centre follows the lead. Sokrati’s tracking system can connect the dots from the time a prospect
clicked on the online ad, to the time it was closed by the call-centre. “This is proper offline-online bridging. At the
end of the month, if you look at all the applications you can further figure out who the applicants are – which
company they work for, age group, income bracket and such. Then in the next couple of months we can give the
client good amount of CPRs and conversion rates,” explains Rahul.
What Sokrati is trying to do is humanize big data and while they appreciate the need for creativity in their business,
Rahul says their hiring focus will continue to be on the ability of the new hire to understand data well. “Most of the
team at Sokrati are engineers. We also have people from mass communication and management backgrounds. We
will always be focused on ad tech, as we are keen to add a human touch to what we do. So it is quite possible that we
may hire a psychologist rather than a film maker in the future,” explains Rahul.
Who and when
Sokrati was co-founded by three friends and former
colleagues from Amazon.com. Ashish Mehta is co-founder and
CEO oversees product strategy and business development at
Sokrati. He was earlier part of the paid search marketing
team at Amazon.com where he managed channels like
comparison shopping, search and affiliate networks. He was
also involved in product strategy, P&L for traffic acquired for
various Amazon product categories, and partnership /
negotiations with affiliates like Google, Yahoo, Shopping.com.
Santosh Gannavarapu, co-founder and CTO, looks after tech.
He was involved with powering Amazon’s affiliate marketing
system and built high-end tracking servers and ad servers that
enable a billion transactions a day.
Anubhav Sonthalia, co-founder and COO, is responsible for
formulating digital marketing strategy, managing ad spends and driving transactions for Sokrati’s clients in India and
the US. At Amazon, Anubhav was product and program manager, driving efficiency at scale for Amazon’s
comparison shopping program.
Sokrati, derived from Greek philosopher Socrates, started operations in 2009 and has since worked with over 100
enterprise clients. It claims to have grown revenues by 2006% over the last three years. Today Sokrati is an
80-member team, all based in Pune.
Future focus
Sokrati has worked with brands across different verticals and sectors,
including DTH, telecom, FMCG and banks – 100 in all. YouTube is the
next interesting platform that Sokrati is mining intelligently. Rahul
says YouTube is now starting to behave a lot like TV when it comes to
advertising rates. “They are saying as a brand you can impact every
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Preethi Chamikutty Follow Follow Follow Follow @PCtalks@PCtalks@PCtalks@PCtalks
Preethi Chamikutty is a left-brain thinker, with a very intrusive right-brain. She enjoys many things
typically girly. But mostly keeps her right-brain under wraps to focus on the strengths of her leftbrain. Preethi likes writing on a variety of subjects. Branding, marketing , advertising and personal
technology are her forte. Follow her on Twitter @PCtalks
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interesting,” he says.
If a person who comes to YouTube in search of a Mohammad Rafi song
and sees an FMCG ad it will tell the brand about the customer’s
preferences. Someone who is watching Giant Robot is a different kind
of customer from someone who watches I dream of Jeannie video.
This is the kind of data that Sokrati is mining to make online
advertising more intelligent for its clients.
MySimon,, a CBS interactive property, was the first client Sokrati
worked with and the ROI driven model they used for MySimon set the
tone for Sokrati’s performance oriented approach in all its subsequent
campaigns. While Sokrati has worked with a number of companies,
Rahul says Letsbuy has been the most satisfactory work they have done so far. They have seen Letsbuy grow as a
company through their marketing efforts until it got acquired by Flipkart.
A recent study by Adobe pointed to an increased awareness and adoption of digital advertising by Indian
marketers. As awareness grows, so will the demand and having a differentiated offering will be the key for agencies
offering digital services. Sokrati seems to have an edge in round one.
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TOPICS AMAZON.COM ANUBHAV SONTHALIA ASHISH MEHTA CBS INTERACTIVE CITIBANK DIGITAL ADVERTISING
GOOGLE LETSBUY MYSIMON PERSONA ADS SANTOSH GANNAVARAPU SOKRATI
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Kumari AnshuKumari AnshuKumari AnshuKumari Anshu · · Mumbai, Maharashtra, India · 160 followers
So amazon is the place where Indian starter Takes their Ideas from ,first the Flipkart and now this.......can we have some oneOriginal ...
Reply · Like · · Follow Post · December 3, 2013 at 6:31pm
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Preethi ChamikuttyPreethi ChamikuttyPreethi ChamikuttyPreethi Chamikutty · Top Commenter
I guess thats the power of a place that identifies, nurtures and then gives flight to talent :)
Reply · Like · · December 3, 2013 at 6:33pm2
Gaurav GuptaGaurav GuptaGaurav GuptaGaurav Gupta · · Indian Institute of Technology (BHU),Varanasi
I think its amazon culture which is the differentiator...
Reply · Like · · December 4, 2013 at 12:28pm
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Gaurav JoshiGaurav JoshiGaurav JoshiGaurav Joshi · · Volunteer at Headstart Network Foundation
nice
Reply · Like · · Follow Post · December 3, 2013 at 3:58pm
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Shanker PaiShanker PaiShanker PaiShanker Pai · · University of Mumbai
preeti chamikutty ....sokrati is great but .....
Reply · Like · Follow Post · December 4, 2013 at 8:42pm
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