AI markup language will play a dominant role in all aspects of digital marketing: LS Digital’s Vinay Tamboli

In a conversation with afaqs!, Vinay Tamboli, LS Digital’s senior VP (products, analytics and consulting), talks about the services provided by DigiVerse, future of adtech in India, among other things. 

Digital marketing has grown by leaps and bounds over the last few years, particularly post-COVID. What has driven advertisers towards it, is its unfettered potential in reaching out to a more organised and targeted audience. And to wield this prowess, adtech companies have evolved over the years to provide brands with adequate tools.

LS Digital, a Mumbai-based digital marketing company, recently launched DigiVerse, an end-to-end digital transformation service. It helps brands to monitor their digital operations in one place, through an integrated platform. 

In a conversation with afaqs!, Vinay Tamboli, LS Digital’s senior VP (products, analytics and consulting), talks about the services provided by DigiVerse, future of adtech in India, among other things. 

Edited excerpts:

What is DigiVerse?

The primary goal of DigiVerse is to make digital marketing operations more efficient. A few decades ago, the invoicing or billing system in marketing, was all manual. Each accounting team had 20-30 people. 

With digitisation, the team has come down to 3-4 people. The procurement or inventory management has seen a similar transformation.

Typically, brands employ multiple agencies to execute digital operations - from creatives to performance and branding. The entire energy of brands goes in coordinating these verticals, and that leaves little room for strategising. 

DigiVerse allows brands to consolidate all these verticals, and monitor the data from one platform.

How did LS Digital come up with the idea for DigiVerse?

We’ve been in the industry for the last 12 years or so, and have collaborated with 700-plus clients. To make our operations more efficient, we already have an internal system in place. 

That is where DigiVerse comes from. With our experience, we’re confident of taking DigiVerse to the market, and help provide the same benefits to brands and other agencies.

How does DigiVerse compare to other martech platforms?

Instead of competing with adtech or martech platforms, DigiVerse actually complements them. DigiVerse helps with the operations part. 

The platform will assist C-Suite executives in managing multiple campaigns, compiling data from their operations, tracking invoices and finding out, at a given time, how much expenditure the company is looking at. 

Is there an increase in the amount of money brands invest in martech platforms?

Over the years, brands have shifted their budgets significantly towards digital platforms. With this remarkable growth, there is a need for a platform like DigiVerse. We can expect similar platforms in future that could help provide services that facilitate a more organised system of digital operations management. 

Which brand categories can benefit from DigiVerse?

The brands that spend more on digital, can benefit the most from this platform. Fundamentally, DigiVerse can help all the brands that have invested in digital marketing.

What are the upcoming trends in martech space? 

Artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be the most foreseeable trend. In future, AI markup language (AIML) will play a dominant role in all aspects of digital marketing. 

With DigiVerse, if a brand wants to utilise AIML for its strategies, all the data required will be available in place. Unfortunately, right now, that data is stacked up in excel sheets. 

What are the challenges that martech agencies face?

There are many challenges in accumulating data in one place. This is accentuated by ‘walled gardening’, where data aggregators try to cancel out access to each other’s insights. Facebook will not share its data with Google, and vice versa. This is a challenge for agencies.

How can the marketers bypass this? 

We’ve seen Apple ban third-party data collection. Google will follow suit shortly. The challenge now, for brands, is to be capable of collecting first-party data. Most brands in India, unfortunately, aren’t equipped for that. Brands need to come up with systems to be able to deal with the absence of third-party data.