2016 ‘Redefining Digital’ CMO Summit Returns

Following from a huge success of Carat-Amnet ‘redefining’ series in 2015, this year ‘s “Redefining Digital” CMO summit has attracted an unprecedented amount of attention from top international brands’ senior decision-makers, industry experts as well as leading media owners in China. Some of the prominent speakers are: Sean O’Brien , CEO of Carat Asia Pacific, James Harris, Chief Digital Officer of Carat Global, Lawrence Federman, Senior Director – Digital Ad. Ratings China at Nielsen, Angela Doland, Asia Editor at Ad Age and Denis Dong, eCommerce Marketing Head at Mondelez China. The event saw the leading voices in the digital realm share powerful insights into what it means to be successful in the digital economy and discuss practical know-how to respond to an environment where complexity, speed of change and disruption is the norm. Lawrence Wan, Amnet China Managing Director, moderated a panel discussion ‘PROGRAMMATIC’S NEXT FRONTIER’ along with three of the sharpest minds in thought leadership.

The inspirational speakers on the panel included Peter Cheng, Managing Partner of Integral Investment Group and former Tencent GM of Advertising Platform & Products, Yong Qian, General Manager Assistant of China International Broadcasting Network, and Sheng Wang, VP of Shanghai Oriental Pearl Media Group. Lawrence first gave an overview on China’s complex programmatic landscape, which is poised for tremendous growth, dominated by the so-called “BAT” companies and shaped into “one-stop shop” model. Peter Cheng, highlighted the need to address conflicts of interest between local ad tech companies.

“In US, third-party tracking companies rarely cross into DSP side of the programmatic ecosystem, because the dual role as player and referee will affect the independent measurement and effectiveness” he said.

The following discussion paid special attention to a new talking point in China’s media industry – OTT (Over The Top). Amnet brought together Yong Qian, General Manager of China International Broadcasting Network and Sheng Wang, VP of Shanghai Oriental Pearl Media Group, exploring the current market and future blueprint with programmatic.

Yong said, “The rise of OTT makes it easier to satisfy users’ needs for fragmented information, with its delivery of a variety of online media content from a third party. In terms of the ad serving model and user satisfaction, in comparison with IPTV and DVB, OTT presents stronger opportunities as an emerging channel to integrate with programmatic. ”

Among the most critical challenges in the industry, as Sheng Wang indicated, is a lack of clear industry regulations in data usage and transaction process along with disparate inventory resources.  “The real value of OTT ads has not been clearly identified.  We should differentiate OTT from OTV in terms of ad value, since OTT users have unique characteristics and behaviors, ” explained Wang.

As the programmatic industry continues to be evolving and shifting, programmatic TV/OTT is up next for sure. To fully tap into the marketing value of OTT industry and better integrate with programmatic, a new regulatory framework for the OTT ecosystem will be required.