Himanshu is VP of Customer Growth at Trafficguard-India & South Asia, in charge of driving commercial growth and positioning Trafficguard as the leading fraud prevention solution provider in the region. He has 15+ years of experience in digital media and ad tech sales and has a proven track record of evangelizing media and tech solutions to clients across the region.

What are the future additions in business development in terms of digital media?
Given the rapid pace of technological developments, the future of media is shifting to digital advances for entertainment, news, and business, resulting in enormous economic potential. And if we talk about TrafficGuard's business development strategy, we are focusing on improving team management across both domestic and international geographies by driving omnichannel point solutions, social ad fraud extension capabilities, and self-serve for small-medium organizations.

TrafficGuard is quickly becoming the preferred measuring and verification solution for corporations and SMEs worldwide. We are currently in rapid expansion mode, complementing and driving the product's vision ahead - particularly towards SMEs, who are bad actors and the hardest hit by ad fraud. We are also enthusiastic about the next additions and look forward to expanding our product offering by assisting brands in reaching their full market potential.

What motivates you to win the award for digital ad verification and fraud prevention platform, and what are the strategies you have used to be successful?
TrafficGuard has grown dramatically as a result of its customer-centric approach and a drive to raise awareness among marketers. However, with the rise of new-age bots, various fraudulent activities have emerged, with ad fraud being one of them. To combat these issues, the dedicated team of engineers and data scientists of TrafficGuard has made significant efforts to develop PPC protection, providing customers with an unprecedented level of safety. We have gained significant momentum from our clients by protecting them from fraud, which has helped us achieve numerous accolades and recognition. Our motivation to win awards stems from our successful case studies and results, as well as our collaboration with prestigious brands. In fact, winning awards not only helps us build credibility but also demonstrates our commitment to providing customers with high-quality services.

How should companies measure their social media Marketing success?
AdTech firms with the capabilities to give customers a way to display ad metrics are popping up everywhere. The ability to precisely target the audience can reap great rewards for marketing and revenue objectives. In fact, in the digital era, ad fraud is becoming a nuisance to businesses across domains. Ad fraud and invalid traffic (IVT) are bad news for all advertising campaigns. Whether it's accidental clicks on the ads or the malicious behavior of botnets, IVT drains the ad budget on clicks that won't convert and skew marketing metrics— a social media manager's nightmare! Protecting social campaigns with ad fraud prevention software will ensure only genuine users can click on paid ads, increasing conversions and helping ad budget go further.

Therefore, it is evident social media has become an integral part of the organization's growth, and measuring social media marketing success has certainly become imperative. Here brands need to establish transparent and measurable goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with those objectives, which can be tracked by various metrics such as reach, performance, conversion, engagement, and traffic. In fact, to measure these metrics, ad tech firms can use social media analytics tools that specialize in monitoring and analysis. By analyzing these metrics, ad tech firms can evaluate the effectiveness of their social media marketing campaigns, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to optimize their strategies.

According to you, what is the Futuristic layout of the ad tech industries in India?
As we live in a digitally driven era, the adoption of digital media is growing, and new users are adding daily. In fact, there is a paradigm shift in the way digital media is bought, from buying an impression to buying an audience. In light of that, marketers should work with various ad-tech platforms and audience-buying tools which combine the use of first-party data and cohorts to help them reach out to relevant audiences. Apart from this, when working with display or top-of-the-funnel publishers, marketers should partner with ad-verification companies, which assist them with metrics like viewability and brand safety. However, there is tremendous pressure on marketers to keep CAC competitive when it comes to performance marketing. For this, marketers should deploy tools that provide accurate data for real-time optimization.

Though with the changing dynamics, there are various challenges that have emerged, and ad fraud is the biggest one, wherein marketers end up paying for fake engagement or conversions. Hence, it becomes essential for marketers to partner with mar-tech companies that can provide a full-funnel view of conversions and control them at every funnel and not only detect but prevent invalid traffic to avoid ad fraud and misattributions. Furthermore, AI & ML is also becoming an inseparable part of digital advertising. It is deployed across the advertising path, from targeting the user to measuring the accuracy and efficacy of the investments made. As a result, with the ever-growing nature of technology, the ad tech industry's future seems promising and gaining momentum with considerable advancements in India.