Guitar and Excel spreadsheet creation mapping the path to fretboard enlightenment part number three So don't fret or get bored because using Excel to learn the fretboard is fun Here we are in Excel if you don't have access to this workbook That's okay because we basically built this from a blank worksheet, but we started in a prior presentation So if you're using a blank worksheet, you may want to begin back there If you do have access to this workbook, we currently have the three tabs down below Example start point and blank example the finished result the end product in essence the answer key The start point are where we're going to list the different starting points as we work through this long practice problem The blank tab where we started with a blank worksheet and are continuing at this point Let's give a quick recap of what we've done thus far The first thing we did was try to visualize where we're going and we did that with the crutch in this case of the Example or answer key. So we're building our fretboard So we started building our fretboard by saying let me just list out the musical alphabet and then number the musical alphabet and then I can combine them together with a letter and a number and Then we built a fretboard just based on the numbers And now we're going to build a fretboard that's going to include both the letters and the numbers the way We're going to do that is used a lookup tool This one has V lookup, but we're going to use X lookup, which is the more modern similar tool in order to to use this information up top and this table We built to pull in this information. So let's see how that will work. Let's go to the blank tab We're getting a little fancy here also just note with this excel on this side We can kind of see where I want to start. I'm not going to start the table right here I'm going to bring it down a little bit. Oh, maybe maybe we'll start it right here, and then I'll move it down Later, so I'll start it right here, but we're going to move it down The reason the table is down here is because it lines up when we start building this part of our worksheet To this area, but we can we can move it later so we can make it a little bit Next to each other might be easier. So we'll start out by just reconstructing The table in terms of the frets. So I'm going to say the fret is going to be equal to The zero so now I can just do that formula. So it'll just pull down the same number I can copy that all the way across to 24 and so now it's just going to always equal the one above it now I could format the exact same way by selecting this entire range and using my format painter Which is a little bit faster than reformatting manually So I could go up here. Maybe I want to center while I'm here home tab Alignment or center. So maybe I want those in the middle now that they're centered home tab clipboard Format painter and then I can just click on this first one and it should format everything Beautifully just a beautifully. Okay. So then what we want to do is is this eight when we built our table over here if I numbered my musical alphabet the eight Corresponds to an E. So I could what I'd like to do is say I want to pull the number from here Look it up in this table and then I could pull into this table Either just the E or I'm going to pull in the E the eight E because I'm going to try to emphasize the concept of learning both the numbers and The note. I really think that's helpful for Numbering the intervals. So we'll talk more about that later But if you don't if you really don't want to do the number thing you could just use the E and pull in the E instead of the eight E Same concept. You can do what whichever one you want now. I constructed a table around this one I think this will be a little bit easier if we do not have a table. So I'm actually going to remove the table so I'm going to select this whole thing and Then up top we inserted a table before and the insert tab I'm going to just right-click on it and you'll see this table area here and I want to Convert to a range. I'm just going to convert it back to a range It's still so then it says do you want to convert table to a normal range? Yes Now it still kind of looks like the format of a table So I'm going to select this whole thing and a lot of times I like to make this light blue for some reason so I'm going to right-click and say that I'm going to format these cells and then I'm going to go into the the Hold on. That's not what I want to do. I was going to go into the bucket up top You can right-click and go into the bucket or you can go into the home tab font group and bucket and Then that blue is what I'll use right there if you don't have it. I go to the more colors standard color wheel and then that blue right there that light blue and Then I'll usually put some borders around it home tab font group and border it So whenever I do data input, that's usually the what I would I use so now it's just a range Okay, so how can we do this V lookup thing? So we do it like this I'm going to say this is going to be equal to an X lookup now if you've used the V lookup This is a set this is like the latest and greatest V look it It basically has more flexibility than V lookup so it replaces V lookup and almost everything at that most uses that you would have for a V lookup you probably will now Be using the X lookup although you could still use the V lookup if you want the problem with the V lookup is One problem is it's a little bit restrictive in terms of having to label the tables And the columns of the tables where you don't have that restriction here. So we have the X lookup So what's the lookup value the lookup value is I want you to find this? 8 I want you to find that number 8 and then comma and then look up array Where do you want to find that number 8 in other words? I want you to find it and this series and this range So we have that range So that's what we have thus far and then comma to get to the next argument. What what do you want to return? Well, when you find this 8 I want you to give me this 8 e So I want you to return whatever's in this column return whatever's in that column and So there's our lookup formula you could close the brackets It'll probably do that for you if you just hit enter and then there we have it So it pulled in that 8 e that's great Now I could try to copy this to the right and it gets messed up Why because we have to use absolute values of some kind so if I double-click on this I can say this Cell right here. I want it to move both to the right and move down When I when I move from cell to cell but these two which are referencing the arrays I don't want these two arrays to move at all Therefore, I'm gonna make them absolute. I'm gonna put my cursor between the a and the to the a a to and say f4 Stop moving stop wobbling around. That's why you're in a a you got to stop like Shifting all the time and like swaying back and forth from anyway So then so now we've got we've got then Dollar signs between each of them the dollar signs, of course not having anything to do with dollars But the code for excel to say don't move those cells when I go to the left or down To the right or down So I'm gonna then copy it if I copied across now testing did that do what we wanted to do 9 is 9 an F Let's check it out in our table if I was to count up in our musical alphabet a a Bcd. No, that's not how it goes. It goes a a sharp or B flat B C C sharp or D flat D D sharp or D flat E F and Then F is 9 F right there it is so see how see how the musical alphabet doesn't really conform to the alphabet song Making it more difficult to memorize Whereas the numbers still conform quite nicely one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve Twelve eleven ten nine eight seven six five four three two one. What if I was going from four to nine? What's the difference? Well, I can do a little math there nine minus four if I just pull my fingers out I got nine fingers minus four fingers. That's like five away instead of being like well F C to F is Like F and then E, but then there's no sharp to D See see how that intervals easier with numbers anyway, I Just think it's way useful to do, but I know that people will think well, yeah, it's cuz you're an accountant You're weird.  It's not just that I'm weird I think this is like a real thing for everyone And so now you can see it's a little squished up here, so I want to widen it out a little bit So I'm gonna select from a all the way to why why because that's just how it lined up That's why you go up to there because that lines up to the 24, but why But why I just said why I just said why that's where we go because I said so that's why Anyways, so then we can copy it down to I can test it out and copy it down this way And that is an a does that line up to number one? That's the first note number one is indeed an a if we were to wisely number them by the way If I just note that I am building this Which again some people might see as backwards because remember that the guitar if you were to take the guitar and Look at it and flip the guitar around and look at the face of the guitar You'd have to flip the neck around and I think that's why they put the small string up top when you're looking at tablature But again, I don't think that's how people envision the guitar just intuitively Because Because you're usually looking over the top of the guitar So I think like we're building it this way So it won't it won't it won't line up to like tablature this way But I think this is the way most people kind of envision it and once you get the fretboard in your mind Then you can kind of flip it around backwards and try to think of it like if it's upside down But I really think that most people think of it This way with the highest or lowest string on The top if you I think that's the easiest way to envision it It's not like the coolest way for like music theory people are gonna might like put their nose up at you and call you a like Uncivilized maybe But whatever it works. I'm telling you with the numbers too. They might be like numbers man numbers That's not that's not in the arts. That's not what the arts We're trying to create You know like whatever the numbers are you math the numbers man? You need the numbers.  So now we've constructed our fretboard Over here and we can see it we can see it either way we want now notice once we do this How much cleaner it is if you were able to just see the numbers, right? Even if I took out the numbers down here, and I just had the letters it would still be kind of convoluted It's a lot if you if you're actually able to see the all the notes as numbers Then it's really a lot easier to to look at this table and kind of start to see what's happening with the patterns and whatnot but You know, I It's you know, it's it's useful to use both ways I think because again, there's pros and cons to both the letters and the numbers.  I'm just saying it's useful to do both There's pros and cons to both sides of that. Alright, so next time what we'll do is we'll then Create from this Table we will then create this table which which will then which will then take our musical alphabet and use Use the pattern of a major of a major in order to then create our table Which will allow us to see the notes in a particular key as well as The chords to play and all that kind of stuff Which will be great and we'll be able to change the key that we're in by changing this one cell so and then we can see this stuff side by side with our fretboard and Really be able to visualize What we want to play over here and then map it out on our fretboard over here And of course we can hide the cells to see them side by side to do to do it very nicely


Hey everybody, welcome back to Magic Orthodoxy. My name is David, and this is a deck review. Hey, today we're going to look at the Icon Playing Cards from Benji Taylor. Benji Taylor, he lives out in the UK. He spent about six months designing and developing his own deck of cards. And he always wanted to do it, always wanted to make a custom deck.  They turned out to be these cute, creative icons. They're all very original. They're weird. They're random. And he thought, well, I'll just combine all of these icons into just a really cool custom deck. And so that's what Icons is. And the Icon deck was a Kickstarter project that Benji initiated and it was successful. The tech case is done in this really cool blue. It's wrapped all the way around and just is very simple, very clean, very elegant design. I like really simple decks. I like clean designs. It's a light bulb on the front hanging from a single wire. And then you can see that it's illuminated there at the bottom. The top just has Benji Taylor's autograph there with no tuxedo, which is nice. And the bottom has ad copy, of course, and a little recycle symbol. The sides are completely blank. And the back design simply says Icon Playing Cards. The tuck flap is blank. The tuck tabs are blank. And that is pretty much it for the tuck case. Let's take a look at these cards. These cards were printed from the United States Playing Card Company and they do come on their retail stock. They do have a modern cut and air cushion finish. And if you'd like to learn more about stock, cut, or finish, you can click the link below in the description. So there you see the back design. It's got a nice thick white border which is traditional, which is classic. And you have that same deep rich blue color there on the field of the back. And then there you can see all of Benji Taylor's little icons. And it is a two way back design, which means it's a mirrored image. It's the same one way as it is the other. And so like I said, all those icons are not very familiar to you. You look at one and you say, oh, that's the piece symbol, but it's not. It's something different. There's a column and an arrow and a moon and it's like a little stack of bricks and a pyramid. So it's a really neat, very visual, very modern approach to card making. With this deck, you're going to get two extras.  And then you're going to get a second kind of blank faced card. It has a little green dot here in the back and a different green backed image. So maybe this is an advertisement for a future deck from Benji Taylor. You'd have to ask him. Again, the Joker's very clean, very elegant design. Carrying the theme of the icon deck, you have the yellow light bulb right there. And since the front of the tuck case, the light bulbs hanging, maybe the Joker's go this way. Maybe. Yeah. It's just bright yellow and it does say Joker in the corners. Again, your ace of spades, carrying the theme. Nice big bold pip in the center with the hanging light bulb there, which is Benji Taylor's icon. Really from there, your cards are all going to be completely standard, whether they're pips, indices, quartz, spades, hearts, diamonds. You name it. The rest of the deck is going to be completely familiar to you, completely traditional. All right. So that is our deck review for the icon playing cards from Benji Taylor and the United States playing card company. We'd like to thank Murphy's Magic for providing these cards for us, and if you'd like to purchase your own, you can find these cards wherever Murphy's Magic or Fine Quality cards are sold. Thanks. Bye.


Live from Las Vegas, Nevada, extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE covering Informatica World 2015, brought to you by Informatica World. Now, here's John Furrier and Jeff Frick. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are live in Las Vegas for theCUBE's Silicon Angles flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the silken noise. I'm John Furrier, the founder of Silicon Angles. I'm Joe McCose, Jeff Frick. Our next guest is Arun Vara Darjan. Assistant Vice President, Business Leader, Enterprise, Information Management, Cognizant. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, John. Thank you. We'd love having Cognizant on. Thanks so much for coming on, great content. Tell us what's going on with you guys right now at the show here. Digital transformations, the hottest trend on the planet, big data, applications, the cloud, all kind of coming together. So what's your take here at the show? What are you guys doing? I think Informatica has always been pivotal to our strategy. As you know, I represent the Enterprise Analytics Group within Cognizant. We operate in the entire data value chain, helping our clients source different kinds of data. You heard that today, multiple source systems. Basically, I think a lot of our clients are definitely moving beyond transaction data because they see value in the interactions that are happening with their clients, with their suppliers, with their partner ecosystem. So there's a lot of that, I would say, a huge variety of data sources that are being now looked at very, very intently. And customers are starting to see a strong business case in bringing that into the Enterprise data fold, if you will. And we're hearing that it's moving from the bowels of systems, data's moving up and from the plumbing, if you will, to another level. What does that mean? I mean, does that mean it's moving or it's just sitting in two places? I think the data has been there. It's just that the kinds of data and the variety of data and the ability to acquire the different types of data, I think that's simplified significantly. So you're finding clients now realizing that it's not enough to just look at the transaction systems in order to create business insights or to support their decision-making. So I'll give you an instance. I'm working with the CIO and the Chief Analytics Officer of a fairly large multinational that manufactures heavy engineering equipment. And traditionally, if you look at their business, they have issues when the energy prices have fluctuations. They have challenges when there are construction, industry nuances and changes that are going on. Now how do they bring some of that contextual data and information into their planning cycle? That's been a big question for them, right? So traditionally, they've done planning based on looking at past sales history, past sales history by geography and just kind of creating trends and perhaps forecasting what the business would look like. But today, they have the ability to get real-time data. Real-time data, whether it's currency fluctuations, whether it's changes in monetary policies, regulatory changes, and really trying to see how that can influence or improve their planning process. And also their adjustment in their strategies as they move forward. So they're adding non-internal data sources. Yes. Slow processes to now have better insight into actually making forecasting decisions and other business decisions that they just couldn't do before. Exactly, because the ability for you to source that kind of data has become that much more easier. You heard Informatica today, right? There's a lot of focus on going beyond the transaction data. Right, right. A lot of focus. And that's all being driven by the customer because today, customers are realizing that if they have to make prudent investment decisions, whether it's in R&D, whether it's in sales dollars, whether it's in just operational efficiency, if they can get some of that data, then they can forecast and have foresight into how these are going to have implications across their value chain.  It's very interesting that a lot of this ambient data is critical to really making these better decisions. So Cognizant, in fact, we've been very bullish about this whole digital world. It's reflected in our SMAC strategy where we talk about social media, cloud analytics. We have that as a concept and it's been in play for the last three years. We had, again, an interesting notion around defining an entity and its persona in the digital world, right? Which we call as Code Halo. So Code Halo to us is a kind of a definition of an entity, be it a product, be it a brand, be it an enterprise, be it a customer, be it a device in the whole digital world. And we've been working on a lot of the technologies that you've heard today which are getting commercialized and productionized. We've been using some of those concepts in helping our customers really create that persona or definition of that entity in the digital world. So that's been a big play for us. So that brings up a great point. First of all, we love that because we have our CrowdChat application, which is all about real time data and engagement. But you're talking about something that's about new data. Not old email addresses or this guy came and filled out a form, came to our site, did some stuff, bought something. You're talking about giving something an identity in the engagement data space. If I hear you correctly, that's what Halo is, right? And it could be an entity, it could be a person. That is engagement. That's the engagement holy grail. Isn't it? You talk about that dynamic. Is that your onto something there? I think it's really powerful. When you're out within the engagement space, there's data there too. And that's what we're hearing here at this show, engagement. Expand on that concept of engagement data. Absolutely. I think you heard that again during the course of the conference. There's the whole notion of what is mastering and what is master data or authoritative data is changing over time. At one point in time, I would refresh my master data strategy or definition once every few years. And today, in a dynamic world, I have the option of doing probably a refresh a week. I'm thinking that all of this is going to change in warp speed. So when you talk about a customer, I don't know if you were in one of the breakout sessions, when people are looking at segmentation of a customer and really looking at attributes that define a customer.  It was very difficult for me to do that before. I would still use bureau data to do some historical analysis, maybe get some trending, do some better segmentation. All of that was the thing of the past. So to your point, John, today, I don't need to just rely on bureau data which is 60 days old or 100 days old. I can actually go out there and listen to what my customers are doing, whether it's social interactions, whether it's just interactions with my product. So if I'm a cable operator and I've got set up boxes out there, they're no longer dumb terminals, right? They hold a lot of data on what my customer's doing with my products and services. What kind of shows is he or she watching at what times of the day? So what I'm basically trying to say is that because of today's technology, customers are able to do things a lot faster, what they could take, what they would take months to do, they're getting done in weeks.  They're not even hitting the real nerd which is engagement cloud in my mind. But you're talking about real time in the moment. So I got to ask you, what's your take on the real time piece? Because if you can connect the dots there, the growth opportunities for your customers are significant and that sounds like what you're working on. Customers want to grow and have happy customers and sell stuff. So their growth is going to be dependent upon tapping into this new ability to connect on the data. Can you stand on that? How customers are growing around that? Sure. I think real time for a long period was a cool project in the engineering world or a cool project in academia. What I think a lot of our clients are realizing is that there's a real use case now for real time. Because if I can really provide you contextual information as a client or as a partner in my ecosystem for you to engage with me better, why would you not do that, right? So I think the notion of real time has changed significantly because one, you're going to have competitive pressures in the marketplace. Either you do it or somebody else is going to do it. So like in the, I would say, when I was in Oracle many years ago, there was a big push for everybody to have an ERP system, right? And a lot of them still didn't know the value of why you needed an ERP system. And it was quite honestly, pure pressure that got them to adopt ERP systems. But I can see that it's changing today, right? The customers are demanding more. And because the customers are demanding more and they have multiple options, our clients are seeing real time no longer as a project or an engineering job in the academia world that it's really applicable today. And it can improve, like I'll give you a classic case. My customers are able to do dynamic program management in the media space because of their ability to crunch clickstream data. They can make changes to even the ad spots management to maximize their ad sales revenue. You know, a lot of the broadcasters, 80% of their revenue comes from advertising revenue. So there's a huge impact. If I can make these adjustments and sell spot rates to my advertisers in near real time and say, hey, you got this opportunity. Do you want to take advantage of it? We're seeing everybody now gravitating from one program to another program. I know you had spent your money advertising within this program and this channel. If you divert your dollars here, you're likely to get a much better hit because of this segment of customers or the demographic of customers that you are targeting. Why wouldn't an advertiser want to do that? So I think to your question specifically, I do believe that real time is going to become the norm. It's probably going to be the right time for you to get things done. And technology is obviously there for you to do it. Give me an example of some customer examples you guys always have great engagements with. You've gone out, they're on the journey, digital transformation, they see all the data and they just want to get started. And then give me an example of someone who's kind of been down that road that you're accelerating more efforts with for digital transformation. So once it's getting started, you've helped them in what they've done and then someone who's in the middle of the path that wanted to pour the gas on, go faster. So let me give you, let me take the same customer example and maybe walk you through that journey. And I'll take a very simple example. This is a banking customer and they would take anywhere between 12 to 16 weeks from campaign idea to execution, right? 16 weeks. So you had a new product offering, you wanted- And these are like new credit card offerings or new mortgage, whatever, just regular financial products. Just sort of a financial project. A financial product. Okay. And they would take, as I said- You just want to give it away. Yeah. It's financial services. Financial services. 14 to 16 weeks from thinking of the product, coming up to the campaign and executing the campaign. And the client was, and the customer felt that this was really delaying product launches for them. Because by the time they would execute this campaign, somebody else would come up with a variant of that product. Now guess what? I got to start again all over again. So they wanted that adaptability. And if you looked at their infrastructure, they obviously ran a state of the art CRM system. They had a certain level of mastering already in place. But if you looked at their mastering, it was very static, right? They would get these refreshers, as I said, every three months and four months to recalibrate their customer profile. So customer profiling was not dynamic at all. Right. And then we went back, and I think they realized that if they bring in, as I said, other contextual data where they could listen, whether it's social data, whether it's other interaction data, just interaction with their call centers, in web logs that showed how the customers were engaging with them, they felt they could get a better sense of what their customers are wanting and buying. So all we did at that point in time was to enhance their customer profiling system to bring in these new data sets, right? And that changed. So if you looked at their cycle time of security, even their own internal data sets, you said their own call centers, it's not even external data sources. It's not even external as yet, right? It's just external in what they've been using, not external from outside the organization. Exactly. So what we found was that a significant portion of that campaign to execution cycle was all around defining, coming up with the set of customers you want to target. So that took the most, that was the big, what do I say, the day it chewed, right? The effort bandwidth was all spent there. So if we attacked just that part of the value chain, our ability to cut down campaign cycle time came down significantly lower. So we brought in this data sets and we were able to bring down their campaign execution cycle down to eight weeks, right? So it was not significant, but it was down to eight weeks, there were 12 to eight. That's 30%, that's pretty good. But our clients are not happy with that kind of change, right? They want quantum leap. So then we said, why don't we bring in social data? So social data gave us, again, another sense of who are the naysayers, how many people are promoters, how many are the influencers. So you don't necessarily want to waste your campaign dollars on customers who are not necessarily positively inclined towards your brand. So just bringing in that sentiment data again gave us the next level of improvement. But now they want hyper personalization, right? So when we talk about hyper personalization, they're saying, I want to be able to, I don't want to be wasting my time building these long drawn campaign cycles. As in when I build products, I must have the ability to offer that product to a customer based on how I see that one individual customer is being relevant to my ecosystem. So when you're talking about hyper personalization, you're talking about reducing the compute cycle significantly, right? You're now saying that I must be able to run this across zillions and gazillions of customer records. And at that point in time be able to say, I'm going to make these offers dynamically right now as these customers are engaging with me. So now I need to bring in, I need to integrate the engagement infrastructure that they have, which could be their social media infrastructure, their whole CRM infrastructure, their CTI infrastructure. So all of that, what you heard today in terms of ability to integrate a lot of these diverse applications that are probably on-premise in the cloud and have a compute platform that has got that distributed ability to acquire data, compute the data and then also not just provide the data but help you execute a business cycle. So you're talking about a smart process, being able to execute on its own without any human intervention. So that's what the clients are now saying, that same client is saying they want to get to. So have you delivered that yet or that's on the road now? That's on the road now, right? So that's when you start using things like Spark, you're looking at, and very interesting concepts, right? So if you look at some of the high compute, I would say high compute techniques or the fast compute techniques today, a lot of them are based on really getting these real-time streaming type of data and being able to kind of compute on the fly and deliver fast data. And now if you kind of commingle that with vast amounts of enterprise data that you're collecting, right? Because you're now going to have a lot of this data that's going to exist in the systems. One is the real-time feeds, next is you've got a lot of these historical feeds that you have collected over time, where also there are some- Bring them together as a key. Bring them together as a key. So today I think there are some challenges that we're going to face as a, I would say as an industry, where we're going to try and combine your ability to take these compute methodologies that are predominantly designed for real-time computing and combine it and mash it with data on rest, right? Because data at rest is very different versus data that's getting streamed in. So I think these are some of the interesting challenges that we're going to face. Yeah, it's an architectural dream for someone who's going to be an disruptor because if you can come in there, take advantage of these new dynamics by taking the at rest data in motion data, bring them together, then you're going to start getting into some very interesting things.  And there's also security issues too around all this. But at the same time, that's an opportunity. How far are your customers getting that picture?  Because that's the nirvana, that's the endpoint. We see you got to get to this real-time compute, automation, orchestration, a lot of the cloud concepts. That's the evolution of the cloud. Are they seeing the picture? Are they understand that that's a road? They got to go down. I mean, how many of your customers see that big picture? So I think there are two dimensions that we should look at here, right? One is the customer's preparedness and their own thinking. The second is I think a lot of the service providers today still operate, I would say, in kind of silos in addressing this problem. So what we've done at Cognizant is we've realized that this is not, this is a multi-dimensional issue. It's not just about the data. It's about the application. It's about the infrastructure. It's about that entire ecosystem that needs to go through change. So we've created a new organizational construct called digital works, right? And what digital works is trying to really look at this problem in a more holistic fashion, because we believe there are going to be changes across the layers that are required, whether it's your infrastructure layer, your application layer, your integration layer, your data layer, and even your presentation layer, right? And how you engage with your clients. So we've realized that in order to help our clients really go through this transformation, we need to be able to provide that kind of advisory that addresses all these issues. So part of it, in my opinion, I think customers are ready. A lot of them are concerned that they are grappling with a lot of their legacy systems, and how do they coexist with legacy? Because legacy also has a role to play, right? It runs their business. And they want to do change the business, right? So they run the business and change the business. How do I get to that little balancing act to make sure that I don't disrupt what I've got, but really also transform as I'm going through? And that's what digital works is all about, right? What we're saying is we will look at how do we continue to run and optimize what you have today, and create a path for you to really get that transformation going. So let's look at impactful use cases, and that's a great place to start, right? What can we do to impact your customers and improve customer experience? What can we do to improve revenue assurance? What can we do for you to improve your ability to capitalize on every opportunity to be more profitable, right? So if you look at those kind of use cases and deliver to those use cases, then we find the change being a lot easier, and also our clients are able to get buy-in internally, because there's a lot of change management on the business side, on technology side. It's not, you know, you don't just switch on the button and all of this works, right? So I think that is where I think our customers are, where they're a little unsure, how do they balance the act? And that's the advisory and consulting that we are providing. Well, you guys do a great job. Really appreciate you taking the time to come on theCUBE and give you the final word here, and the segment is Uninformatica World here. What's the vibe here? A lot of folks who aren't here, here at the Cosmopolitan, what's the show like? What's been some of the hallway conversation? What's the vibe share to the audience remotely? What's happening? I think the vibe has been that it's going to be a hybrid environment for some time now. I think all clients are wanting to move to that Nirvana and Holy Grail, where everything is a kind of a seamless structure that can operate and deliver to this, the new ass of the digital world. It is going to be hybrid for a while. There's going to be coexistence of legacy and new technology. I think, as you saw in every one of the keynote addresses and also the breakout sessions, there's a lot of focus around how do I build those integrations and make that easy, low cost, because clients want, I can tell you what my client was willing to accept as a deliverable in six months as a project. He or she wants it in two months. It's all accelerating cycles. So I think a lot of focus, as I said, on faster deployment, easy integration, and how do we get this coexistence that's going to be a reality for some time going, while still not compromising on their ability to move ahead on the whole digital transformation path. I think that's the general vibe that I'm getting out of conversations with people. Arun, Vera, Dara, John, thank you very much for joining us on theCUBE here from Cognizant. We are live in Las Vegas for Informatica World 2015. We'll be right back after this short break.


Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the session, Unlocking Audio Potential. My name is Rita Sahej Paul, and I head up Product and Marketing Science for Zaxis in India. Audio is new. In fact, traditional radio has been one of the oldest and most trusted ways of community. We've made a lot of strides with digital audio, streaming, and so on and so forth. But I still feel that somewhere it's still an underutilized media. Zaxis very recently released a playbook where we're looking at audio, and some of the facts that came out from that was, you know, the advertisers are actually spending less, you know, budgets out of their media spends on audio. I think 70% of the advertisers who actually participated in the survey reported that they spent less than 10% of their media budget on audio. 50% of the publishers actually spent less than, you know, they got zero revenue from audio. So I feel like there's definitely a huge potential for us as an industry to grow from an advertising perspective. The playbook also covers things like, you know, the barriers to adoption as well as the benefits around programmatic audio as well. I wanted to actually delve a little bit deeper on this topic. So today I'm joined with a panel of experts from the industry who will be sharing their views on audio advertising, why it matters, and what branch should actually be thinking about in planning around audio. So without further ado, I'm just going to take you into this quick one. Virginia Sharma, Vice President, Brand Solutions at Gino Savil. Hi, Vishal Kamat, Director, Digital South Asia at Milsim, and Ravi Sharma, VP Revenue Head at Ghana. Unfortunately, could not join us today. I'll take him and, you know, great to have all of you here today. Vishal, I'm going to start with you. You know, we know Nilsim conducts a lot of panel based, you know, research to understand consumer behavior. Could you maybe help us understand what do you see from consumer lens when it comes to audio as a part of it? And maybe also talk about, you know, where does audio play a part in the marketing funnel for a brand? Sure. So Rita, let me start by saying that these are interesting times for all of us. And we have experienced in a way what I call as the demonetization moment for the entire digital media in India. In fact, if you look at, you know, what happened between, let's say, March to June, which was the pre, you know, the lockdown period per se, we have, for obvious reasons, seen a lot of eyeballs of consumers shift from traditional media to digital media. And this has obviously led to a spike in engagement and time spent across most of the categories that you can think of. In fact, we as Nilsim have been monitoring digital media very closely and more so, I would say, behavior of users of smartphones. So I'll just quickly highlight some of the, you know, data points and insights which we have observed on our panel. And to start with, you know, if I look at the month of March pre lockdown, what we saw is that the average time spent by a user on his smartphone per day was about three hours and 22 minutes. This actually increased by 32 minutes to reach three hours and 54 minutes by end of April. So as you can imagine, in a very short span of time, there was a huge expansion when it comes to time spent on digital. This was obviously led by, you know, most of the digital categories, but there are certain categories which, you know, obviously shine the likes of education, which have, you know, apps which are certainly emerged, gaming apps, for example, video conferencing apps, what we are using today, unlike doing, you know, offline conferences, they have all found new level of relevance and hence the reach and time spent for these categories have definitely increased. Now when I look at audio as a category and instead of looking at, let's say, last four months, I would go back to 2015 and see how the journey has been till date. So back in 2015, you know, what I recall is from our own same smartphone panel, we used to see a reach of audio streaming as a category of about 15% back then. Last year, beginning of last year, we saw that this reach had increased to 38%. So just in about four years, the reach of this category increased by more than 2x. And as per our latest data coming from the same panel, we see that the reach stands at 49%. So as you can imagine, in a span of just five years, the reach of audio streaming apps and platform and category has expanded by, you know, more than 3x. So that's one. The other interesting bit, which we also observe when it comes to audio category is back in 2015, when we look at audio streamers within a month for the number of days that they used to listen to music. If I was to compare that with today, we have already seen a 2x growth. The bottom line is in the last five years, not only has the reach of this category expanded by 3x, the engagement and frequency of usage of different audio streaming apps has actually also increased. The other interesting bit again, which comes from our panelists, typically when we looked at audio usage during a day pre-lockdown, we see a peak early in the morning. So somewhere between 7 a.m. to 10 a.m., what we call as the transit time or commute time is when a lot of content consumption on audio streaming apps used to happen. Right now, when we look at it, where we are still in the unlock phase, that peak has in a way disappeared. And what we see is a fairly consistent usage of audio throughout the day. Advertiser perspective, I would say that earlier, if I was to, you know, as an advertiser think of planning my spends around a particular time band during the day, now I believe there are enough and more opportunities throughout the day of a consumer where I can now reach out to my relevant eG through different platforms, which are available. The last data point I would call out is, again, it's an interesting one. Beginning of 2019, what we saw is that, you know, amongst audio streamers, about 80% of users were accessing only one streaming app back then. From then till now, I would say there is a huge behavioral change that we have seen amongst consumers, where as per our latest data, right now on our smartphone panel, only 31% of users are actually accessing only one app within a month. We believe there are three reasons for this huge behavioral change that we have seen. The first is, obviously, there have been a lot of new audio platforms which have got launched in the market. Some of them are being aggressive. So what it means is consumers are today also flirting and trying out some of the audio apps to see what is this one giving versus that one. Hence, maybe using more apps. The second thing that we are seeing is most of the audio platforms are also pushing curated playlist with their users. And then, you know, from a user perspective, I would have my preferences. So maybe for a Bollywood curated playlist, I may prefer platform one versus, let's say, Hollywood. I may prefer platform two versus, let's say, you know, for workout a playlist, I may prefer three. But the biggest reason what we believe, you know, why we have seen this behavioral change could be podcast because when you look at audio and when you look at music streaming or radio, for that matter, the content on most of the platforms are fairly similar. Unlike that, when you look at podcast, it is very unique. And hence, from an individual perspective, I may have my own taste and preferences in terms of what kind of podcasts I may want to listen to and these content and this kind of content could be available on multiple platforms. That's why we believe that users today have also started using more than one, you know, audio streaming app. Some of the top lines and learning symptoms of, you know, what we as Nielsen have been observing in the industry thus far. Interesting. Thank you. Thank you, Vishal, for that very extensive sort of understanding about the consumers and their preferences, how they've evolved from, you know, 10, 5, 10 years ago to what it is now. And as you rightly pointed, yes, of course, there is now a lot more variety of streaming apps, you know, for audio that are available as well. Rami, it's been a decade of Ghana streaming app that, you know, it's been launched and yourself have been part of the audio industry for such a long time. Would love to actually hear your perspective of how you see the audio, you know, landscape that has evolved, you know, from an app perspective, from a publishing perspective, you know, how that has changed on your platform. Thanks, thanks, Rita. And I kind of concur with Vishal.   You know, there's an increasing demand for more personalized content and me time where we see, you know, a lot of consumption happening. Plus also, one of the factors that's really changed is this whole massive, you know, depth of content that's available. You know, just think about it.  It migrated to cassettes, to CDs, to MP3 players and iPods. And now suddenly at the touch of a button, you have access to millions of pieces of content, whether it is music or now with podcasts and, you know, long form audio content as well. So I think technology has played a massive role, you know, in this adoption as well. I would, I mean, our estimates, I would beg this whole genre or the kind of users that are currently upwards of about 350 million across all platforms. And we have largely A-Bot platforms and a few S-Bot as well. Our estimates actually, in the next three to four years, we are seeing this number grow to maybe 500 to 600 million users, you know, across audio streaming platforms. So that's like a massive, you know, growth in reach and consumption and the reach and the growth is happening. I mean, obviously in urban metros is saturated, but we're seeing tremendous growth happening in tier three, tier four, with this larger adoption happening. That's one point, the sheer reach. The other part is what Vishal also mentioned is usage time. And what's encouraging for us is I think Indian consumers really love their music. Our average consumption time in India is higher than the global average. And that's a very interesting and encouraging sign. That means audio not only reaches out to the large swaths of audiences, but it also engages them for a longer duration. And I feel for brands, what it means essentially is, you know, really getting access to a listener's time and attention, you know, when they're engaged with a piece of content in a native brand safe environment. You know, and that's, that's, it's a fantastic to see, you know, this adoption happening over the years. And even from brands perspective, I've seen a few years back, you know, brands will talk about audio as an experimental kind of, you know, media spends and now we see more and more brands coming to our platforms, which is again a healthy sign. Interesting, yeah. What are the thoughts for the experimental piece? Because that's very interesting. We'll come back to that. Virginia, I think you guys have just released the festival predictions. Maybe yesterday or something, so hot off the press. Could you maybe just talk a little bit about that? And also, especially, you know, with the current prices that we are in, I want to see, like, you know, what are the kind of changes in the consumption patterns and maybe the nature of the content that has been consumed as well. Also alluded to the fact by, you know, Vishal, like you mentioned that, you know, we're able to create curated content on different platforms. So have you also seen certain changes that have happened on your platform specifically? Yeah, I think there have been. And interestingly, you know, Vishal and Ravi played a really strong sort of what is, are the broader macro trends and overall you're seeing they're all in the positive direction. But it's very interesting this year. We sort of dipstick checked, obviously we check every day, we're a digital platform, but we took out a COVID playbook and then we just took out the festive playbook yesterday. So a couple of things in the COVID playbook that I would say had persisted because it's become the new normal is, you know, Vishal alluded to podcasts, right? So one of the big things that we seeing as persistent growth is, you know, the pandemic really did increase. It was about 18 percent. We saw that in the early days of the pandemic. And that sort of persisted in terms of growth as people have sort of become more comfortable with this idea of being screen free and listening to content while they're doing other things. So this idea that your life can't live and revolve around video, right? You have other things to get done. Otherwise, your family is going to give you grief that you're not cooking, cleaning and doing the other thing you have to actually keep life going as you're consuming content. Now, the one thing that from a content genre perspective, right? When you look at playlists, we saw kids content increase one hundred and fifty five percent during the pandemic. And when you look now, there's a lot more content that's been curated stories and podcasts and things like that. There are people are really paying attention to kids content as a genre, right? So Nani Kikahania and this and that, you can see, I got a message from a dad over the weekend to say, thank God for that, because while I'm working, I can keep my kids kind of occupied with these things where I don't have them stuck to a screen. We also have been cooking and working out and cleaning playlists. And that's persisted. The one change that happened from covid is during covid, while spiritual went up like 18 percent and dance music went down about, I think it was about 21 percent, spiritual went up 16 percent and dance and E.D.M. went down, you know, 21 percent. When we married that with the early signals of Navrat, of what we saw with Ganesha Chathur the just last month is that we saw 69 percent increase in Marathi streams during the beginning of festive, right? And these are the dance numbers. So people are actually moving the party indoors. So what we're predicting in, you know, last year when we typically see a surge during festive of certain types of genres. So we actually think that the dip that happened in in dance music while maybe E.D.M. may not be coming back sort of vernacular festival sort of dance music, a wedding mixes is going to go back up. So, you know, what's really interesting just within that genre of vernacular music during festive is that you think that, you know, yeah, Hindi music would go up. Yeah, we, you know, what we saw last year is 12 percent, it goes up. But what we saw is like Assamese went up like 53 percent, right? Gujarati went up 31 percent, Telugu went up 21 percent, Bengali went up 39 percent. So what's very exciting about this time is India loves to celebrate, but it's very unique celebrations around the country. So building on that, what we anticipate is there will be e-gifting of music. We've seen a big increase of birthday anthems being done on social media. You must have seen that if you haven't already gotten a birthday cheer done as an e-gift digital. You'll see a lot more people gifting playlists in their local languages to celebrate, to send to friends and family. So I think vernacular is going to make it big, e-gifting music is going to make it big. The other thing that we're finding is that there's going to be a lot more focus. We looked at sort of also how they're thinking about purchase behavior, right? Usually this is the time people are out and shopping. What we're finding is that, you know, music is a great companion and tends to sort of trigger purchases, right?  When a florist played romantic music, the average bouquet size grew, right? When a French wine shop sold French wine, when they played French music, they sold more French wine. So there is a connection between versus when they played Spanish music in this book, it's been more Spanish one. So the idea is, can music that's playing in the background while you're doing online shopping, can it actually, if I hear something, will it influence my basket size, will it put me in the mood? And so we're actually seeing how does that retail experience of in-store music and that ambiance, how does it translate to when you're actually shopping from the safety of your home? And then the last thing that I would say is that, you know, when we look at, you know, GeoSauven listeners, we actually pulled over 2,000 GeoSauven listeners on how do they plan to bring in the festive season? You know, what do you plan to do? And 61% of them said, you know, the most essential element is friends and family. And 61% is the most essential element is music. So these two things seem to be the things that are making people feel safe, comfortable, warm, connected. And so as an industry, I'm very excited to be part of an industry that provides that comfort at a time that people are looking for and enjoy. Right? So I think my advice to marketers is think about how do you integrate your message into vernacular, into shopping experiences, into moods that create better shopping experiences and, you know, think about how are you going to make the connection between friends and family and music? Right, absolutely. You know, I agree with you 100% because, you know, like you mentioned already, right, music creates that nostalgia, right? It brings that safety factor. And every time I need to feel, you know, I need to go back to a certain good time or good memories, it's more or less, you know, often related with music, right? So that's definitely there. That's the comfort factor that we've always grown with and Indians love music, right? And music and food, if they can go together, I think that's perfect. But I think the fact that also that, you know, we as platforms, right, also understand the audiences and their preferences really well. I think that's also quite important because, you know, when we look at a media from a brand's perspective, right, while there's reach, there's time spent, there's engagement. The fact that we're also able to understand the nuances of the preferences, the moods, that kind of, you know, the genre that people are actually engaged in, that also brings that value to the advertiser, to the brand, onto the table as to, you know, where they need to be looking at and how do they need to actually plan for media, right? And I think Ravi mentioned already that, you know, it's a brand safe environment, right? We've got premium licensed content that's coming in. And when we looked at, you know, the paybook, you know, some of the advertisers who opted for audio, right, specifically and also for problematic, that some of the factors that they were looking at, what audio should be giving to them is one, obviously raising awareness, right? That's the brand objective. But they were also looking to reach very specific audiences, right? So that reach, the targeting, the insights that we were able to generate that adds a lot of value. And we know that our platforms are very capable of surfacing these insights, which make planning better for the advertisers, right? So I think that's definitely a great, you know, sort of value and the perspective that you bring in. One other thing that, you know, I always, it is always there on the back of my mind, right? That, you know, while we talk about all the benefits of problematic audio, you know, a similar sort of, you know, parallel can be drawn for video as well, right? You know, is there, and we know India is also a very heavy video market, right? And on the back of, you know, the data and the, you know, the broadcasts that are now made available at a very low cost. Do you, do you see that debate that happens from a brand's perspective? Like, do you, as publishers, do you feel that there is a bit of a competitiveness between audio versus video? Or like, is that one of the factors why audio is probably a bit underutilized? Is that something that you feel that's there? I mean, I don't think it's an audio versus video thing. I mean, smart marketers will use whatever combination of medium that will get the message across and think about all of us as consumers, right? We haven't chosen.  Nobody's going to say, oh, I only listen to music or I only watch videos or I only watch, you know, it doesn't work like that. What's interesting, though, is that I think about it more in terms of maturity, right? When, you know, when, if you think about, I'll use the analogy of electric cars, right? Electric cars will become more popular when there is more electric outlets to fuel them. So if you think of that video in the last eight years, six, eight years has enough of an ecosystem building video content, you know, to feed the video ecosystem, right? But like, let me give an example. We know from the trends that I just mentioned that there's a lot more interest in kids content searches. But how many kids programs are really popular on audio? Have we really invested in building the pipes that feed the demand? So as content creators get more active and, you know, all of these platforms, you can actually post your songs, you know, as, you know, emerging artists, independent artists, podcasters, you know, as we make it easier for creators to come onto this platform and generate quality content. Remember, video went through this period that there was very crappy content also, right? And then what's going to happen is there'll be a critical mass of content for more people to come right now. If you have one kids podcast and you have two of these, so let me give you an example. If you want to do for the Diwali, people have these do-it-yourself projects, right? Like decorating your house and putting flowers and stuff. If you type that in into a video platform, do-it-yourself decorations, we get a thousand videos, right? How many do-it-yourself creativity shows are on any of the audio platforms, right? Sharing tips on how to decorate your home for Diwali and make candles from Scotch. Hardly any. So what we have to do is we as an industry have to invest in the ecosystem, the agencies and the creators to give them confidence that, you know, if you aren't scared of creating videos, right? Audio is even simpler than that. But we need to actually encourage people to take the leap. I know so many people that have web series and videos and, you know, they're happy to do all these social videos, but you tell them to do an audio clip and it takes them three days to turn around for the audio clip. So I think we have to encourage people to create the content and then the demand will come. Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I think like with the current crisis that we've seen, right, with the production houses, you know, shutting down. I've seen in other markets and also in our markets, right, it's much easier to churn out a podcast from, you know, your home office versus, you know, getting the entire production team together to get the video content to be created. And I think I agree with you that definitely from a content perspective, it is more that we need to be able to give the tools to the content creators to be able to be comfortable creating the right kind of content that we're looking for. Also from a brand's perspective, right, like when we look at, you know, the activations that we do and we also kind of always profess the similar sort of thought that, you know, it doesn't have to be either or in the media mix. It has to be, you know, something which is holistic enough where we're bringing audio and video together. They need to be treated as media, which is complementary to each other, right? And when we've seen, you know, activations where we've added audio to a media mix, we've seen that there's always a positive incremental uplift, right? Because we know inherently audio as a media is very engaging, right? We know there is a higher attention span. You know, people are more engaged. They're more attentive to audio content. And when we're actually using that as a media to complement other media, there's going to be bound to be an increase in the uplift that we see in, you know, various brand metrics. So absolutely, I feel like, you know, that's kind of where, you know, we need to be educating the industry and the marketers as well to kind of bring them together and embrace them together versus, you know, having to choose between the two. And with the content creation, hopefully, you know, there is enough and more, you know, inventory that's available out there as well.  But then, you know, the other factors that the advertisers have also sort of, you know, voiced out in the paybook that we explored was mainly just coming back to the pure play understanding of audio as a media, right? The awareness, the education, like how do we plan about it, the different formats? Is it display? Can we use display? Can we use audio as well together? Like how does that work? From a planning perspective, from a targeting perspective and also maybe from a measurement perspective, not really having the clarity on the impact that it drives. And that's something that I often hear as a feedback from the marketers to say, you know, what is the impact that audio drives? Can we measure it? Right? So and I feel like we've done enough and more as an industry ecosystem to bring that measurement up to speed.  So just, you know, have good luck to hear your thoughts on this. So, so let me start by calling out some of the findings which come out from your report itself and at the cost of reporting, you know, repeating some of them, but they are important ones. What you mentioned earlier, you know, where, you know, about 71 percent of the advertisers and agencies today allocate less than 10 percent of their media spends on audio. And I think that number increases to 89 percent to invest less than 10 percent on programmatic audio. So that's, that's why telling. And in fact, internally when we look at our own data from a scale perspective, these numbers largely collaborate with what you called out in the report. So that's one. The second thing from a measurement perspective, what I at least picked up from your report again is that advertisers feel that lack of campaign measurement and lack of ability to measure impact of audio ads is actually a barrier for decision making, whether to invest more or less on this platform. And the last bit, which I gave something that you spoke about, which is around metrics, you know, the advertisers that you surveyed also said that, you know, there are certain metrics that they believe is critical for evaluating audio ads. Three metrics which, you know, kind of stand out for me from your report. The first one is brand awareness. The second one is audience reach. And third is targeting efficiency. So my message will be, you know, for all the advertisers out there, the good part is, if these are the, you know, critical metrics that you are looking for evaluating audio ads, you know, measurement solutions are available in India to evaluate them. So that's really a good part. To start with what we have seen, at least in the last couple of years is most of the leading audio platforms, you know, Ghana or Geo7, are already integrated with agencies like Nielsen to enable both reach and impact measurement for advertiser clients. And as a result of this openness, apart from other factors, you know, like, Ravi also mentioned about brand safety and all, the fact that, you know, there is an openness that has been demonstrated by some of these audio platforms, what we have seen is when I look at the number of campaigns that we have measured, I would say in the last six months of 2019, and if I was to compare that with the number of campaigns that we have measured in the first six months of 2020, we have already seen a 3x increase, right? So that's, that's, that's quite a, you know, jump that we have at least seen at RM. The second point is, you know, something which, again, Virginia and you spoke about, what we also believe is that audio as a platform, maybe because of a highly personalized usage and, you know, to that, you let's say add programmatic. I think data is possibly getting leveraged well enough to create a good pen portray of what the user looks like. And this is also enabling, you know, better targeting accuracies. So in India, we have a solution called digital aggregatings. It's been in the market for four years, using which we report a lot of metrics to advertisers based on which they take certain trading decisions when it comes to different platforms to invest on two key metrics that they essentially look at more keenly are in target and on target percentage. In target reaches fairly self explanatory when we look at on target percentage, it's nothing but a percentage of impressions within a campaign which are landing on the right TG. Now, in the last four years across some 12,000 campaigns that we have measured in India, what we see is on an average about 70% of the impressions are landing on the right TG. And when I look at all your platforms today, they're already there. So from a reach perspective, on target percentage perspective, you know, if these are the metrics that advertisers are looking at, they can be measured on most of the leading platforms out there and our internal data based on the norms and benchmarks that we have created.  The other bit, you know, I would just add is that, you know, we have been working with a lot of partners in India, you know, with a big ask coming in from advertisers, I don't know what is it that audio gives to me. And that's when we, you know, spoke to a lot of partners and said that, you know, it's important for us to come together and work towards creating certain empirical learnings for the industry so that those empirical learnings can be taken to advertisers, which will enable us to showcase the strength and power of this media. What we have seen couple of top lines, if I may call out this, you know, across multiple campaigns on audio platform for impact measurement or brand studies that we have done two callouts. You know, I have first is when it comes to brand KPIs like, let's say awareness or consideration, there are campaigns where we have seen audio platforms delivered upwards of 25% brand lift. And this is not restricted only to, let's say, established brands. This is a pattern that we have seen even for new age brands, which are getting launched in the market. So that's one. The second thing that we have also seen is that audio ads have been able to capture the consumers' mind space. It could, you know, have to do with the kind of unique creatives which are getting used, it could have to do, let's say innovations as well, which is available on the platform. So when we look at, you know, the numbers essentially we see that over 80% ad record and brand record is what we have seen audio ads actually deliver out there. So be it reach or impact, you know, like I said, there are a lot of campaigns where we have seen audio, you know, being able to successfully deliver on the client's core objectives for the campaign. And those are some of the learnings that I wish to share. Our only guidance would be, you know, audio as a platform itself offers a slew of different ad assets, which advertisers can leverage for both reach as well as their impact objective. So it'd be important for us to leverage on some of the learnings that we have already and continue on the same path to only showcase the power of this media more emphatically to our advertiser friends. Great. Well, I think that's great, Vishal, like all the, you know, the fact that you mentioned, you know, is something that internally and the signals that the fact that publishers are willing to pass back those signals, the DSPs have evolved to read those impressions of the signals that allow us to, you know, do all of this analysis from, you know, beat audience analytics, being doing brand studies or even, you know, where we're at a point where we're able to do, you know, football attributions as well on the back of, you know, the audio impression that's being served, all pointing in the direction that, you know, everybody in the ecosystem really, really is working towards making audio more measurable and we are seeing results of that as you mentioned that, you know, there are, you know, definitely empirical and strong results that brand impact is actually being driven as a format as well. So I think that's very promising and I think exciting for the measurement space from an audio perspective as well. Coming back to the fact that Vishal, that you also mentioned the different creatives, right?  But there are obviously other formats which are available in audio and this particular space is actually buzzing with a lot of innovation as well. So, Rami, maybe if you want to just, you know, talk, you know, purely audio as a format and, you know, how a brand should be thinking as creative storytelling, being a good mechanism to leverage pure audio and maybe also touch base on, you know, some of the creative innovations that are happening in this space. I know you guys are leading a lot of work around voice activation as well.  It depends. You might listen to a different music, form of music when you are, let's say, Jimmy. And what we do and platforms like ours are doing us are kind of perfecting that part of marrying the technology with the right, you know, contextual targeting mechanism that we have put in place and offering these services to advertisers.  So we always encourage our advertisers to design and create very interesting creatives and so much so that I think most of the major platforms offer, you know, creative services to design these ads for brands. We do understand creative agencies haven't noticed, you know, or haven't started doing creatives for audio platforms. So we, you know, GeoSarvan has, we have our own, you know, team of copywriters, script guys in production and we offer these services to advertisers. Coming to new technology. So you know, so you, hey, you have, you have these fantastic cohorts that could be made based on the user's consumption. So choice of artists, choice of the genre, what time of the day they're listening, you can craft very, very different narratives over there. And then you have these technology innovations as well. I mean, we launched something that Dana called Dynamic Ads, which are essentially what I call smart ads, which essentially automatically target users with let's say, predefined triggers, like it could be weather updates, it could be temperature, it could be time of the day, it could be, you know, cricket scores and you could do customized messaging, you know, with these audio ads. So let's say somebody for the same product, somebody sitting in Kanpur might hear a different ad in a different language versus someone sitting in Calcutta. So I think those are variations in dynamic audio. And of course, the something new that we launched a few months back is voice activity ads. And being audio mediums, I think it is, I guess that's one of the most native ad formats that's available. And that kind of, you know, the idea is to solve the whole click through problem with audio, you know, how do you create a click through with just a pure audio ad? And essentially with voice activated ads, a user can actually interact with the continuous dialogue with that particular commercial or an ad and actually go to the landing page or do a user action all by the power of the voice. So imagine that, you know, that technology is available.  So I think those are really interesting innovations that are out there. I mostly believe, you know, over the course of time, these will become more mainstream as well. And we have seen a lot of brands started experimenting with such kind of bad units as well. Right. Yeah, I know I agree. I think like voice is definitely the next frontier for consumers to actually engage with IoT devices and brands, both, right, without any screens or any interfaces which are available. So I know Virginia, when we were discussing this, you had a very interesting take on, you know, how should brands be thinking about innovation, right? And I know audience, I think like leading in terms of all the other, you know, creative innovation that are coming in. Would you want to talk a little bit about, you know, how you think that should be thinking about? I feel like there's like two alter egos of me, right? The first part of my career, the marker and the second part where I'm supposed to say everything Ravi said, but I'll say that whatever Ravi said is true. So thank you, Ravi. So I believe in dynamic ads. I believe in innovations. I believe we need to experiment. But I think that when I think about innovation, you know, especially at a time like this, where, you know, marketing really has to prove its value to the business, especially when the businesses are struggling. You know, I think that when you look at a lot of the broader marketing research that's out there, they say you have to protect your existing customers. You know, the communities that you've built and you have to keep them sticky with you. So to me, innovation is anything a platform that can do to strengthen your communities around your brand is innovation, right? Because it's it's around this time. In fact, when we did our research for festive, we noticed that our listeners are as open about 48% are open to new brands, 52% to existing brands. So, you know, users are not very sticky right now because it's almost like the pandemic forced you to look for other options for whatever's available. You know, it's like, oh, if I can get it, I'll just go with there. So even if you've always bought a certain type of shampoo, you might be open. So creating communities around your brands to say, no, I will not buy this. I will go to another store to find my my brand like that and come back. So I think any innovations around communities and like, let me give you an example of an innovation to strengthen a community. We have something called a brand channel and here's a problem statement of a brand that's executing campaign right now, right? Amazon Prime Video and all of us are OTT watchers. I'm presuming all of you guys watch shows and stuff like I do. And you know that you typically hear about from your friends and family, which is the hottest show and you just go to that OTT player. Sometimes you even forget is that show on Hotstar or Netflix or Amazon Prime, right? But you know what the show name is and you have to go find that show. Now, what's the problem statement? I don't care whether that shows on Netflix and Amazon Prime as long as it's on there. Now that doesn't drive brand stickiness for APV or for Netflix. So how do they use a music like a brand channel to build brand for why Amazon Prime Video gets you, you know, when you're tired at the end of the work, when they understand your mood. So they've created a brand channel around moods, right? That we have a show for every mood. Netflix has done something similar. They're doing this because they're trying to bring stickiness onto their platform. So I think number one is what can brands do for innovation at both stickiness? The second thing that we need to do from an innovation perspective is a give to get, give and get with brands. When brands say I have to show more impact for my innovations or my show more performance. My ask of them is, are you willing to draw, you know, a conversion tracking pixel on your website? Right, so it has to go both ways, right? Like you want a higher performing campaign. I can give you data, you know, Vishal can, Nielsen can give you data. In fact, one of the great data points that Nielsen's given us is like, we have a 96% average audio ad completion rate. That comes from Nielsen. So Nielsen can do their bit, we can do our bit. But until we draw pixels or if you use programmatic, you can get even more insights. The innovations in measurement to me is about the brand allowing us platforms, Nielsen and programmatic platforms, DSPs to connect our data with their first-party data. I think the magic and the innovation is imagine how powerful that cohort is if we can validate the cohorts we have in the DSP with first-party data and imagine we could do lookalike targeting. We could do, you know, custom cohorts. We could do account-based targeting. You know, if you just want everybody from the same set of accounts, you want old family-owned businesses. So I just feel like the innovation has to also be a partnership, right? I can do bells and whistles and do a dance and you like my ad format, but I would say let's innovate together is the thing. And don't do innovations for an award. Do innovations and you wanna look good at the board. Yeah, no, agree absolutely. And I think to your point that, you know, currently user stickiness is more around content and from a marketer perspective as well, what we need to be thinking is, you know, how can programmatic help us reach the audience irrespective of the platform they are out in, right? So that is the whole premise of anyways, bringing programmatic and the targeting efficiencies that we're able to bring it. And to your point, yes, innovation and measurement if it can, you know, bring in the entire heartache world, you know, bringing in the, you know, the data sets that help us actually prove the value and the ROI on the investment which is happening on a media that is absolutely brilliant because that does kind of create that, you know, effectiveness and for a particular brand, right? Versus just like you mentioned, creative formats, but I would still argue the creative formats have a point in, you know, and a place in the way of also solving some of the challenges, right? So for example, as Ravi mentioned, from a click perspective, right? We know voice activated ads are gonna be purely intentional, right? The technologies evolve to a point where we can get rid of any, you know, fraudulent clicks and so on and so forth. So in a way, technology is also helping us solve for some of those issues and challenges that we've seen have potentially been existing in the format of a particular media. But I agree with you that, you know, we definitely need to bring that sort of a paradigm shift essentially, right? Within the industry that, you know, we don't necessarily need to look up to audio for being just an innovation driver, just for award winnings, but also kind of making sure that the measurement is robust enough that it becomes part of our always on strategy as part of a media plan, right? So I think that is where, you know, all of us need to work together in partnership, in conjunction with the brands, with the entire tech, the ecosystem, measurement ecosystem too, so that we're actually working that journey. And I think, Jini, as you mentioned, it's almost like starting from the beginning, right? Like we need to make sure that everybody really understands what is it, you know, what is it about audio, right? How do you plan on audio? What is the reach? What's the targeting capabilities? What's the measurement? What we can and cannot do within the constraints of, you know, the ecosystem, within the constraints of, you know, how many pixels we can actually apply and, you know, what sorts of targeting, what sorts of data we can overlay, and what sorts of measurements that we want to bring in together as well. Before we actually then, you know, start to take them also in those experimental zones, which are really fun to work with, because, you know, it's always fun to kind of being, staying at the edge of the technology to bring something which is new and exciting, but completely agree that we need to kind of work that journey to make it more mainstream. And only then I think we'll probably see that shift that's happening in the industry to bring, you know, audio as part of, you know, this on strategy as well. Yeah, actually, I should qualify. I should have said this earlier, you know, one thing that I want to be careful about, I caught myself using jargon, and I want to apologize for that, because one of the things that we get kind of excited about when we talk about our platforms is we start getting sophisticated. We onboarded a number of new radio clients onto our platformer this summer. This is the first time that they've ever tried digital. Forget digital audio, like any kind of digital. And when I think about the conversations we've had, everything that I just said in the last five minutes, pretend I didn't say it, because digital audio is the innovation. The fact that you have a display unit that runs at the same time as an audio, the fact that you have basic measurement and targeting is innovation for them. And so what we learned is let's not, there's more than enough interest in the market to try digital audio by digital, like very early, like I think we need to do the whole work with traditional outdoors and radio players to help them access digital audio simply by not making it overly complicated. So I've learned more Hindi in the last three months and I haven't in the last six years, because I've also learned how to talk about digital audio and Hindi. That's another thing I learned. Vernacular sales is the new thing I've learned as well. That's actually a great segue, because I wanted to actually, also like final thoughts before we maybe jump into a little bit of the Q&A as well, is what are your thoughts in terms of, what's the outlook? I'm not gonna ask like a five-day outlook because I know that's too far away, but maybe Ravi, what do you think, what are the new trends at the risk of, again talking about innovation and trends, but essentially what are the few things that you think are going to be exciting in the next couple of years for audio? Yeah, sure. I mean, I'm taking you from what Virginia said, while we may talk about innovations at this stage is not important, but the very fact that as audio platforms, we have to rely on a display unit to justify the existence is my biggest problem. And that's where I think the future is when, I mean, all audio platforms can really use the power of voice to drive transactions. I think that's one. But on the lighter note, I think I see a lot more changes in the way the content consumption will change. We have seen the shift from, I mean, a few years back, it was just Bollywood and Hindi, that kind of drove music consumption, but I see the resurgence of more vernacular and original content coming up. A large part of the music artists who are essentially in the indie space, I think platforms like ours give them a massive reach and distribution strength. And I see that changing, I see more consumption. I mean, Bollywood will be there, but overall consumption may be a little less. Indie artists, original music, created by our own artists, I think that I feel is gonna grow up in the coming years, yes. And hopefully advertisers will increase their budgets from 10% to maybe a cent or more. Great, yeah. So localization in the artists love that. Virginia, any insights in terms of how you think contents can evolve vernacular have heard? Yes. So I think if I go off this particular call, the people that take over all digital audio platforms, their last name will be Sharma. They'll be the credentials. So if you wanna monetization for an audio app that room, I think that we have a sample size of two here. So I'm, I think my biggest prediction is that we will actually be able to serve the indie artist community as Ravi said, create those platforms that also give them insights of what people want to consume so that you can actually, like we've created, we launched something called the artist insights dashboard. I think we've always been very focused on listener dashboards, like what are the trends, what's consuming, but a lot of young artists are much more open to adapting their sound, not just based on what they feel like, but looking at the data and say, oh, you know, maybe my track will do well in Bhopal. You know, when we're looking, I was looking at some data last week and say, if you observe what's trending in Bhopal, it usually trends in the rest of the country. And so now young artists can figure out, like before I even spend the time and the effort producing these tracks, can I use data to prove the ROI of the track to a label by saying, I built this track because I believe Telugu rap is really gonna be hot based on early signals. And how fun would it be if the same creativity we've been able to bring into digital agencies of creative and data can be brought into the music artist world, right? Like where they can actually make sounds that actually are informed by insights that we can provide them. So more successful tracks, larger reach, more streams and therefore more monetization opportunities for artists so that they don't have to, like, still live with their parents. So that's my prediction, which is artists are any more successful because we're in the picture now. Right, yeah. So from those two content creators, right? So I think that's the journey definitely wanting to look at. Vishal, any thoughts on how measurements can probably evolve further? Yeah, so, you know, at least from a Nielsen perspective, we believe we are at a cost where cross media measurement in the market becomes critical. And I just talked about a couple of reports that we have reached in the US and tell you why it becomes important for India as well. So in the US, we have a total audience framework using which we measure the total time spent by 18 plus years on both traditional and digital media. What we have seen is, you know, from let's say Q120, 80 into Q120 this year, the total time spent as actually on any kind of media with traditional or digital has actually expanded by 11%. Now interestingly, what our data also shows is that during the same frame, the total time spent on traditional media actually dropped by 10%, right? So what I'm coming from is that the fact that in markets like US, where you have these cross media measurement solutions which are available, it only enables advertisers, agencies, publishers to essentially take data back decision, right? And in India, I believe at this stage we are not there, we don't have the numbers. So, you know, in the near future, at least going into 2021 and beyond, I believe this is a part that Nielsen will definitely look at and enable for the market for decision making. Great, yeah, agreed. I think definitely looking at incremental reach when we look at traditional versus digital media, specifically, I think that will definitely be interesting and the question that we get asked from the brands and marketers as well. So, you know, would love to see how we actually evolve and bring that solutions back to the table for the brands. Yes, I think it's very interesting conversation. I think we can carry on for maybe another hour because there's a lot to sort of cover. But I also wanted to, you know, open the floor for some Q and A. I've seen a few questions which are coming along. So maybe I can pick up your claim. So first of all, I think we've covered this a little bit but maybe if anybody still wants to take a shot at this is why would brands use audio platform when they can get video platforms that are much lower or CPR? I want to take a shot.  Something that you get really cheap and that's commoditized, right? Media is commoditized, let's accept those facts. You know, we're only selling impressions and CPMs. Nobody's looking at affinity, quality of audiences, you know, the premiumness of audiences. And yes, audio platforms are maybe, you know, the cost per reach maybe a tad higher but then the affinity to your brand is what matters. I mean, ultimately that's where you are putting your marketing dollars to work for. Just because something is cheap and you want to show a metric of cost per reach does not necessarily mean quality is essentially what I'm saying. But that said, I think over the last few years, you know, with more and more brands experimenting the cost amongst all the audio platforms is actually now fairly come down to what it was two, three years back. So I don't see a massive gap within what's out there in display or what we guys offer. Yeah, I am just to add to that completion rates. You know, audio platforms have 96% completion rates and that's actually from Nielsen, right? Her art platform might be even higher for others. And so when you think about it, when you, if you're running video ads and you're, they're now down to six seconds and even those get skipped, you can actually buy cheap inventory, but if you have to fight to get six seconds attention and audio is giving you 15, 20 seconds of which 96% is completion, there's your ROI right there. And it's because people, when they're in an audio format, don't feel, they're not looking for the skip button. With video, you're actually interrupting their experience, right? And it's, they're very trigger happy to skip that. And so I would say that's probably the biggest reason. Yeah, absolutely. And attention time for consumers. I mean, I was reading a survey that 90% of people are actually looking at their mobile phones while watching television. You know, and that's a fact, look at our lives. You know, where do you get 100% share of voice of a user? I think that's where audio really kicks in and the completion rates are fantastic. Yeah, they're upwards of 90%. Yeah. I would say that reach is only one part of the entire outcome that advertisers are trying to try. Within Nielsen, we say that when advertisers are investing on any media, they need to look at measuring three things. One is reach. Second is resonance and third is reaction. So while you may have a low cost per reach, which a particular publisher is offering to you, that low cost per each may not necessarily translate to high brand awareness or high consideration. It may actually not necessarily lead to high ROI or sales impact. So look at all those three becomes important when it comes to decision making. Right, I agree. Yeah, I think absolutely on point on that. Hopefully that helps, you know, also understand that, you know, like we discussed that it's really not video versus audio and we need to be thinking about a medium mix where audio is complimenting video and it's as Vishal mentioned and as Virginia W mentioned, that it's the quality of the audience that we bring the engagement that we bring, which leads to the higher impact in terms of the brand metrics that we are seeing from a recall, purchasing, type, et cetera, that kind of thing. That's what audio brings to the table as well. And I think there are a couple of questions which are euding to, you know, a similar sort of a thought. Let me pick up this one, which is slightly more different. Industries moving towards performance where brands are looking for conversions, product sales, et cetera. How can audio platform help marketers here? Anybody wants to take a talk? Let me start and others can chip in. Yes, so I mean, look, we do understand, you know, that there is a performance side, you know, to your bias. And up till now, I think most of the audio platforms are very strong in their top of the funnel, you know, metrics, but this problem is something that, you know, Virginia also mentioned, we are also trying to solve, you know, as in when we're launching more and more effective, more engaged units, we are trying to create that whole attribution model wherein audio platforms do, you know, help in creating a positive business outcome, you know, for a brand. But one thing one has to understand, consumption of audio usually is in a screen dark environment. You know, so brands that come back, that we want leads and we want calls, that doesn't work.  And that part of time, I don't suppose, you know, you would want to step out of your treadmill and open a landing page and fill a long form. So, you know, there are certain really positive ways of how the medium works. The others is something that we are working on with new technology, building new engagements, you know, and at our end, what we're also trying to do is change that shift of consumption on our platform from a screen dark to a screen on environment. And so there are lots of features like videos, there's vertical videos, and now there's a new feature called Hot Shards, which is 15 second video features. So brand, people are spending more time on the screen. So I think that's something that in the next few, you know, in the future will help in building more engagement and more performance driven advertising solutions. Great. Yeah, I just, just to add to that on performance, you know, I mentioned this earlier, drop the pixel on your website or run it through programmatic. And essentially those two things will bring you a lot closer to be able to track performance and also optimize because as you learn more about your website traffic, we'll also be able to tell you, you know, 60% of the people coming to your website tend to have hip hop as a genre, but your anthem is ARMA, right? So like those are the kinds of insights that performance doesn't only come from that, but how you spend your creative dollars and how you build your strategy. I also think that, you know, any of the main pixels that you drop, whether it be the retargeting one, all of these things can drive performance. The one thing that I will suggest to brands on performance that are facing the pressures of performance is if your call to actions include a compelling discount or compelling reason to buy, audio allows you to actually build that into the audio creative.  Seven, 10, things like that. All right, yep, great. And I think we are on time now. I see a lot of questions, which are there still on the chat. And maybe we can try and answer them back separately. So I think that should be okay. I'd like to conclude the session then today. Thank you all for joining, just a quick summary from my side, just key takeaways, right? So what is definitely growing we know, able to build effective reach, you know, we know audios on when screens are off, the impressions are highly measurable, and we know there's enough and more brand responsiveness, you know, add effectiveness from the audio formats that we're able to bring to the table, and it's a brand safe environment. So hopefully that's given, you know, you guys enough food for thought in terms of bringing and unlocking the potential for audio for your brands. Thanks a lot, Vishal, Virginia, and Robin for joining me here today. Thanks for you for hosting us as well. Thank you all. Thank you all for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Take care. Bye-bye.


Don't stay away from people who make you feel hard to love. You are not hard to love. You're just trying to be loved by the wrong people, but you are not hard to love.


Kiko Artsana, an Italian company that makes and retails baby apparel, toys, nursing, healthcare and cosmetic products, was founded as a small family company manufacturing products for pharmacies. Kiki Di Fili Citta, otherwise known as Seeds of Happiness for Special Children, is a project in collaboration with Chico and IB Association. In an effort to collect funding for adoption, Seeds of Happiness provides information, training and assistance to couples and children throughout their journey. Consumers wear Kiki Di Fili Citta bracelets to show their support of children. Etched into a stylish chrome charm, it can be worn to bring awareness to the cause and as tangible and visible support for these children. Kiko encourages participation because they believe that lasting change begins with the seed of an idea nourished by love and attention and brought into blossom through greater awareness and support. Their mission is to help happiness flower inside every child and the issue of adoption for special children has amplified the mission, as well as been critical in bringing Kiko's purpose to life. This program has inspired passion and engagement from consumers and employees while creating a deep emotional connection to the brand.