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India Stack is a set of open APIs and digital public goods that aim to unlock the economic primitives of data, payments and identity at population scale. 


Identity is managed by the Aadhaar program that seeds the population with secure, versatile digital IDs that can be used to quickly authenticate a user’s identity. 


Payments are managed by UPI with a goal of enabling every citizen to take part in the digital economy by enabling interoperability between money custodians, payment rails and front end payment applications. 


Data is managed by DEPA that aims to restore the ownership and control over user data to its rightful owners through a standardised and programmable digital template for capturing user consent to share their personal data with third parties.


The utilities offered by the India Stack today, can help a developer build a full-fledged consumer engagement platform, where the Aadhaar protocol performs eKYC, UPI deployed to enable commerce and DEPA ensures that the consumer’s data is used only with their consent. For a country of billion people, safe, secure and compliant infrastructure cannot belong to few entities; it needs to be democratised, so that enterprises can build innovative solutions in the marketplace. 


Unlocking data, payments and identity related challenges are not confined to financial inclusion. It is desperately relevant to advertising and marketing as well. After all, it is advertising that fuels most of the big tech companies today. Last week AdAge carried a feature from the studies conducted by Truthset, which evaluates consumer databases, studied 15 data brokers and found that email and postal address matches that underpin ad targeting and audience measurement are only right 51% of the time. The feature claims that Truthset has not publicly identified those trusted or verified sources, but leading industry bodies like Advertising Research Foundation and Coalition For Innovative Media Measurement increasingly uses these studies for improvements. Philadelphia retailer John Wanamaker popularly said “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half” way back in 1922. Despite having abundant data, after nearly 100 accountability in advertising is still an unfinished business. 


During my recent interaction with one leading publisher, their head of revenue lamented that the prevailing AdTech systems simply does not provide a consistent and transparent approach to calculating on-target reach (OTR) and more often than not, they end up on the wrong side of the reality. Advertisers, representing the demand side are equally concerned that the targeting systems built on look-alike algorithms are once again shooting in the dark using old or incorrect data sets. It is quite popular to hear, “what is your match rate?” amongst ad industry circles; but the sad reality it is often garbage in, so one can expect poor match rates that is garbaged out. India Stack has much to offer to fix the AdTech problem. It has all the ingredients to reimagine the AdTech stack, without reinventing the wheel. 


Here are three provocative ideas:


Every other industry across finance, education and health care now use Aadhaar number for verifying consumer credentials. DigiLocker linked to Aadhaar number now provides all the key documents from educational qualifications to driving license. Why can’t advertising leverage this? Imagine if all the digital platforms use Aadhaar number as a part of their log in credentials for their entertainment opportunities. Ad industry is struggling to implement virtual IDs that de-duplicates consumers to measure reach. Aadhar number and the back end infrastructure that comes with it offers this instantaneously. 


Retail media networks are emerging as the next big opportunity for brands to leverage their first party data with that of the commerce platforms. This creates a unique audience marketplace where brands, platforms and consumers engage in a consented value exchange that is relevant to all of them. This increases customer loyalty for the retail platforms, while the brands get better reach for the consumers even as the consumer enjoys superior value exchange. Payments are enabled by UPI for all these retail media networks. Can advertisers leverage this by creating interoperable consumer wallets that can connect multiple retail media networks in offering a scaled up marketplace?


DEPA framework recognises account aggregators as “consent managers”, a trusted environment through which multiple enterprises can safely share their customer data for the purpose of cross selling and upselling their products and services. Currently this is being imagined from the perspective of financial inclusion across insurance and banking. What is advertising agencies can play the role of “consent managers” in creating a trusted environment for brands and platforms to share their customer data for a safe and secure collaboration for the purposes of targeted advertising. Managing the transmission of consent across the digital advertising supply chain is the most important requirement in the industry today and advertising agencies can key role in performing this role. 


Essentially the India Stack across Identity (Aadhar) – Payment (UPI) – Data (DEPA) offers a readymade stack for the advertising industry to solve three very big challenges in front of them. De-duplication and verification of identities in measuring real reach; building an interoperable marketplace to run scaled up loyalty programs and last but not the least, a readymade consent management protocol that is successfully running in an even more important industry like banking and finance to cover advertising and marketing as well. 


India Stack for the Indian Advertising Technology Stack is an opportunity waiting to happen. Nobody can stop an idea, whose time has come. Are we ready to embrace it?


Gowthaman Ragothaman is a 30-year media, advertising and marketing professional and CEO of Aqilliz, a blockchain solutions company for the marketing industry.

MAdtech Point: India stack for India’s advertising technology stack

As a consumer, our financial information is extremely valuable. Secure exchange of our financial data creates better value for us across our banking, financial and insurance needs. A very strong ecosystem is emerging now to manage this value exchange and some of the biggest and the best innovations in India are coming out of this ecosystem. 


The main participants of this ecosystem are all the Financial Information Providers (500+ FIPs) like Private Sector Banks, Public Sector Banks, Foreign Banks, Health Insurers, HFC, NBFCs etc., and the Financial Information User (FIUs), technology service providers (50+ TSPs) and account aggregators (13+ AAs). Typically most of the FIPs on the supply side are FIUs as well on the demand side, making this a tightly closed loop ecosystem. All the members of this 1000+ strong and growing FinTech ecosystem are regulated by the Reserve Bank of India under a clear operating license.


In the FinTech ecosystem, account aggregators have played a critical role in connecting the demand side with the supply side without any friction. An average consumer need not have to travel hundreds of kilometres from their hometown to the nearest city just to give their collateral papers or bank statement to lending banks. 


Download the AA App and share your data directly with the lending bank. Skip sharing personal and sensitive information with intermediaries and agents. Sahmati, through a harmonious adoption of an account aggregator framework, enables this value exchange. When a customer gives consent to an account aggregator (AA), it collects your digital financial data from one or more of your accounts, and delivers it to the financial institution that is providing services like loan or insurance to you. 


Now let us try to draw some parallels to this with the MAdtech ecosystem. Secure exchange of our online behaviour data creates better value for us across content, community and commerce requirements. The main participants of this ecosystem are all the advertisers, publishers, technology service providers (DSP, SSPs etc.,) and advertising agencies. This is where the similarities stop; and the differences with the Fintech ecosystem emerge. 


For starters, there is no regulator for the MAdtech ecosystem, resulting in poor role clarity for all the participants. For example, in FinTech, a bank will not be allowed to play a role of an account aggregator, whereas in MAdtech, all participants can play all roles across the ecosystem. As a result of this, today, advertising revenues are not truly following the consumers, so much so that 65% of the revenues are with platforms where only 35% of the consumers are going. This is also complicated by the fact that we as consumers, do not value our online behaviour data as important as our financial data and have consented to offer it for FREE. 


Without a proper consent management framework, third party trackers with no accountability whatsoever, have created this imbalance in the value exchange. Privacy regulations all across the world, including Digital Data Protection Act in India helps in correcting this imbalance. 


The obligations of securing, managing and updating consent helps in clarifying the roles for all the participants in the ecosystem. Today most of the publishers are advertisers; and most of the advertisers are wanting to be publishers too. Both of them have appointed their own technology service providers (DSPs and SSPs) and account aggregators (read advertising agencies) without any framework where are these participants are connected. Now imagine what a framework like Sahamati can do to the MAdtech ecosystem.


Some thought starters:

1.Can the Data Protection Board play the role of RBI in clarifying the roles for advertisers, publishers, technology service providers (DSPs and SSP) and account aggregators (advertising agencies)? 

2.Can the advertising agencies truly perform the role of an account aggregator in connecting the demand side with supply not only with impressions but also with identities?

3.As such DSPs are wanting to become an SSP and vice versa. Will the consent management framework force them to close ranks and integrate their technologies sooner than later? Will there be a choice? 


Today, advertising and sponsorships helps publishers fund their content production needs three times to one. Subscription revenues are growing but in a market like India, ad funded content will remain salient for some time to come. It is advertising that will continue to fund the publishing ecosystem. 


Secure exchange of our online behaviour in a transparent manner creates a balanced value exchange and the consent management framework, exactly enables that. Advertising agencies in the form of account aggregators can play a very responsible role in managing this. They need to reinvent themselves and believe that they can play the role of account aggregators and not leave it to the technology service providers to do that job. 


The bigger question is this. There is only one consumer. They do not differentiate Fintech from MAdtech. These are our terms and definitions. Privacy regulations too, do not distinguish FinTech from MAdtech. They have made the consumer, the primary data principal, be it for advertising or finance. They have also prescribed the obligations of the data fiduciary, whether it is a bank or an advertiser or a publisher. Then why cannot we make the Sahamati framework applicable and relevant for MAdtech as well? Why reinvent the wheel and duplicate costs? Well that is for another week…


Gowthaman Ragothaman is a 30-year media, advertising and marketing professional and CEO of Aqilliz, a blockchain solutions company for the marketing industry.

MAdtech Point: Decoding the role of account aggregators

When something is free, it avoids the price system. It avoids the related liabilities to the customer they serve. It avoids the requirements of security. It avoids the obligations of security. It also prohibits learning. Key to capitalism is learning curves. Knowledge is wealth. Economic growth is from learning. One of the key instruments of learning are the signals of prices, said George Gilder during the launch interview of his book, Life After Google.

Imagine when your nearby shop owner makes this offer to you. That they will insert a device at your home to only listen to all the discussions at your residence. They also commit to you that they will only pick the relevant discussions that give them insights on your cooking needs. And in return they will offer a 50 percent discount to all the cooking related goods you will buy from them. They also offered to give this device for FREE! Third party cookies were one such free item. It not only avoids all the requirements of security and its related obligations; it does not pass back the learnings to you, for your own benefit. 

Well, there is always a tradeoff. We reject some such offers; but also take a chance and bite into a few other offers. Accessing content for FREE is one such trade off! In a price conscious market like India, this was a no brainer. Content, commerce and communications all freely flow through this device, today. The business model of the media and entertainment industry is built on top of this value exchange. Prima facie, the value exchange in offering goods or service, in return for insights from your data, is NOT the issue. Giving away the device for FREE is not the issue, either. When a very large ecosystem – like the entire digital advertising industry – gets built around this device and multiple players start offering many different services, it begins to cause strain in the system, in the form of poor accountability and rampant abuse of the insights. This is where the proverbial cookies crumbled. 

By the end of the year, nearly 75 percent of the world’s population will be protected by sovereign regulations from their respective countries. Technically, the insights that are being collected by the device belong to the consumer, as the data principal; and without his/her consent, these insights must not be used beyond the purpose for which the consent is given. Privacy regulations are now meaning to ensure that the purpose of the device is decoupled from all other services that are being offered to provide transparency. And to drive this, essentially the device needs an owner. Digital advertising is at the crossroads in fixing the ownership for this device. For more than three years, many solutions have been tabled, but a FREE all-purpose device offered scale, which none of the many other owners can match up to. 

There are two ways in which this can be addressed now: 

1. Distributed ownership in a Web2 way: Privacy regulations across the world have clearly identified the stakeholders, their roles and their responsibilities. We, the consumer, is the sole owner of our data as its principal and we now have the obligation to offer consent to use our data. The device will now belong to each data fiduciary who will take the responsibility to use this information, for the purpose that it is meant to be. India has gone one step further with the creation of a Data Protection Board, where the consent and its usage is maintained in a unified manner and made available for the consumer to check and verify. In this approach, data fiduciaries can come together in creating a scaled-up marketplace based on specialisms or segments like sports, young mothers, education etc., and share insights and consent in a federated manner. 

2. Tokenized ownership in a Web3 way: Here, there is no device. It becomes a wallet in the hands of the consumer. As the data principal they have full control over their data, stored in their wallet. Depending upon the nature of the value exchange, they can share relevant details in return for enterprises to airdrop their services into the consumers’ wallet directly. This is totally secure, safe and compliant. While this approach ticks all the privacy related regulatory requirements, there is still some friction in the form of taxation, as tokens are treated as assets. There are some strong enablers in the form of a unified payment interface for ease of payments and in my view, it is not far off, when some of the enterprises start offering token gated commerce for exclusive content. E-sports, luxury goods, premium automobiles, timeshare holidays etc., are already exploring this approach. 

Whether it is distributed or tokenized ownership, the common theme is around the need for clear declaration and/or sponsorship of this ownership of data and its insights, that drives accountability and offers transparency in the value exchange across the digital advertising supply chain. On last count, every enterprise, at an average, deploys more than 15-20 Martech and Adtech tools in a fragmented manner. Firstly, they all need to be synced up. Secondly, they need to ensure that they are made available for collaboration in a compliant manner. Well, that is for another week. 

Gowthaman Ragothaman is a 30-year media, advertising and marketing professional and CEO of Aqilliz, a blockchain solutions company for the marketing industry.

MAdtech Point: What will happen when third party cookies get totally deprecated?

Who owns the internet?


It is a globally distributed network comprising many voluntarily interconnected autonomous networks. It operates without a central governing body with each constituent network setting and enforcing its own policies. On last count there are nearly 10 different organisations that govern the internet across naming, technical, engineering, identifiers, domains, standards, policies, research, registries, and improvements. Amongst all this Worldwide Web Consortium is the most active one that creates standards that enable the open web platform. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which leads development of the technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the web remains open, accessible, and interoperable, officially launched as a public interest non-profit ogranisation as of January 1, 2023. After 28 years of being hosted collectively at MIT and three other international host organizations, W3C as it is called, have become their own entity. Technically, still, no one entity or country owns the internet.


Business model of internet


It is advertising that runs the internet. From the first banner ad that AT&T ran on Hotwired in 1994, the business model is for the web domains to offer personalized services including advertisements, in return for using the consumer’s data. In this case AT&T funded Hotwired with advertising monies that in turn helped Hotwired to generate content that is most relevant to AT&T. The Internet has always been made for advertising. When we moved on from banners to rich media to content to search to social, it has always been a “bespoke engagement” built for consumers; and this engagement in turn is monetized through advertising monies. Over a period of time, multiple domains emerged putting the cart (advertising) before the horse (engagement) and we all remember the dotcom burst. Some of the platforms learnt this the hard way and succeeded when two things fell in place – strong insights on the consumer need (e.g., connections, content etc.,) and superior analytics on consumer want (e.g., recommendations) – and when this became proprietary, we called them walled gardens. Essentially, it is advertising that funds the internet, today. 


How did the cookies come by?


Cookies are free trackers dropped on the browsers that help domains “made for advertising” to better serve the advertisers. Walled gardens never needed a cookie. All those domains who neither have a strong insight on the consumer need nor have superior analytics on consumer want, use the lazy route of relying on cookies to garner advertising revenues. In return, cookies helped fund the browsers. Remember Altavista. Remember Lycos. Remember Internet Explorer. However, browsers that built a strong “aggregation service” out of consumer insight survived as they could throw some light on what consumers want. It is then left for the domains to build solutions to address that need. Some well-established walled gardens sometimes erred on the wrong side by triggering this want through click baits, consumer surveys etc., It resulted in many online scandals that we all know about. Cookies essentially helped put the cart before the horse. 


The trigger for privacy regulation


When things go out of hand, regulations kick in. In the case of the internet, the value exchange between consumer engagement and advertising lost its balance. For the domains, there is an insatiable need to continue to build better and better consumer insight to stay ahead, often to sustain. Insights invade privacy, often when the consumers are unaware. Remember, it is advertising that funds the internet. Well, there is a price that consumers were willing to trade their privacy for advertising; in turn to avail the services of the internet. When consumer privacy crossed the line beyond advertising into their daily lives it is the sovereign responsibility of the government to protect its citizens. Remember, no one entity or country owns the internet. And here we are with the General Data Protection Bill in the EU, followed by CCPA in the US, Digital Data Protection Act in India, and various other data protection bills across the world. It is estimated that by 2024, nearly 75% of the world’s population will be protected for data privacy by the respective governments. 


Need for Consent


Across the world, there are three common themes that emerge from the data protection regulations. First things first. All the countries now recognize that every citizen is a data principal, and he/she must have complete control and ownership of their data. Secondly, all the domains that are generating consumer insights out of this data to provide better services are called the data fiduciaries. These data fiduciaries need to seek explicit consent from the consumer (data principal) to offer their services. These services may include advertising and if that is the case, it needs to be explicitly stated as well. And if these insights are being traded outside their business with other fiduciaries, it needs to be explicitly recorded as well, including made for ONLY advertising domains. Essentially, regulations are resetting the equation. To put the horse before the cart. 


An all-new digital society is emerging. The new internet will now be monitored and governed by the sovereign regulator in each market. There is no going away from it. Responsible use of consumer data will reset the balance and advertising will no longer run the internet. A strong consumer need will need to be met in a privacy compliant manner; and this idea will run the internet. Digital Public Good. Civic Services. Real Estate and Properties. Education. Employment. Financial Inclusion. These will run the internet. Not just advertising. Unified Payment Interface is a fantastic example of financial inclusion. Businesses will need to properly justify the need to use the consumer data and for what purpose. And if two businesses need to exchange consumer data and/or insights between them for mutual benefit, that purpose is to be recorded and made explicitly clear to the consumer. Essentially consent and purpose will reset the internet; and put the horse before the cart. 


Gowthaman Ragothaman is a 30-year media, advertising and marketing professional and CEO of Aqilliz, a blockchain solutions company for the marketing industry.

MAdtech Point: If Advertising will no longer run the Internet, then what will run the Internet?

By Gowthaman Ragothaman


There are three types of people in this world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those who wonder what happened. Advertising industry is somewhere between the latter two types. Tectonic shifts are happening to the advertising and marketing industry. Some of these are global in nature, while a few are specific to our country. 


In my view, three trains have already left the station, leaving the industry with very few options but to make fundamental changes to their operations, else reconcile to play in a smaller and smaller addressable market (read Linear TV like Print)


Train 1: Responsible use of consumer data. For more than a decade, we have been talking about General Data Protection Regulations from the EU. While the US and UK are still forming their regulations; India has joined the EU with its own digital personal data protection act. With its own unique consent management mechanism, under the aegis of a data protection board and a clear articulation of who is a data fiduciary and their obligations, there is a need for the Adtech and Martech systems in India to customise its technologies for India. It will simply not be possible to deploy global customer data and relationship systems in India, just like that. 


Train 2: There is more data outside an enterprise today than their own. Brands and publishers have long remained very comfortable with bigtech companies exchanging consumer data for search, social and commerce solutions in return. On last count, more than 50+ technology companies across search, social, e-commerce, entertainment and news have built their own walled gardens, rendering the 50,000 Cr digital advertising industry to become a concrete jungle with nearly no infrastructure for collaboration. This has resulted in near total absence of consistent measurement metrics for the industry. Above all, it has resulted in an unfair competitive advantage for a select few companies that hoard and control consumer data. Nett nett, there is no ONE report on the actual size of the advertising industry today. 


Train 3: Rising digital public goods infrastructure. India leads the world with this infrastructure today. Rapid adoption of new and enhanced service delivery of identity systems, banking and payments has fundamentally changed the way consumers shop, entertain and now even travel. This infrastructure has enabled a level playing field for all the players and offers secure collaboration of data with highest levels of security and compliance measures. Some of these features like account aggregators framework, consent management through DigiLocker, unified payment interface and open network digital commerce are totally relevant and applicable for the AdTech and Martech ecosystem. These companies are far more equipped and compliant to operate in the digital advertising ecosystem. 


There is a need to totally re-imagine the existing digital advertising and marketing systems. Forrester talked about the convergence of AdTech and MarTech systems many years back. Industry experts even coined a new term, MAdtech, but so far, very little is being done in this field. We continue to have multiple systems across CDP, CRM, DSP, SSP, DMP, adserver, verification and few more such systems, connected to each other like a frankenstein stack, protecting legacy businesses and preventing real growth from being unlocked. 


However, the emergence of digital public goods infrastructure is going to give the Fintech (E-commerce) companies a huge runway to grab the share of the advertising budget. They do not have to invest separately in identity systems, consent management and verification systems, and instead focus on building and delivering their core services. They have learnt to collaborate far more efficiently with far more sensitive sets of consumer data like finance and banking. Advertising industry must learn from this and rewire their existing business models.


Some thought starters:


What if we leverage the existing digital public goods infrastructure for consent management and identity resolution instead of re-inventing the wheel separately?

 

What if we come together to create an open network advertising system that unlocks and brings in more advertisers? We will really know the actual size of the market!


What if we are able to bring analog and digital advertising systems on to the same platform? We will be able to measure the true ROI of advertising better!


Existing digital advertising and marketing systems simply cannot afford to find monies to rewire themselves. It will be an outside job. FinTech systems are already equipped with all the necessary tools that are required for digital advertising. 


This is going to be the best time ever for digital advertising. To Break down and ReBuild. 


Gowthaman Ragothaman is a 30-year media, advertising and marketing professional and CEO of Aqilliz, a blockchain solutions company for the marketing industry.

MADTECH