• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, September 11, 2014

Vik Kathuria in April was named global chief media officer at Publicis Groupe’s Razorfish. In that role, he oversees the agency’s 300 media employees and responsible for leading digital media strategy and working with clients including DHL, Starwood, HSN and Best Buy.

Prior to joining Razorfish, Kathuria was global head of digital investments at MediaCom, and before that, SVP, digital media at OMD. Media Daily News recently caught up with him at Razorfish’s New York headquarters.

MDN: So why does Razorfish, known for “experience design” and tech development, need its own media group with sister agencies like StarVest Media Group within Publicis?

Kathuria: Our strong belief is that the traditional media model is somewhat antiquated. Our philosophy really is about focusing on the non-interruptive advertising model, and that’s where data and technology comes in to provide the right context for the consumer. We have the expertise in UX and creative, as well as Web development and design, all under one roof. That’s our big point of difference versus the old 'just buy media’ approach. So, it’s really about the overall experience, and media is one component of that.

MDN: Programmatic buying has been a focus for Razorfish’s media practice in recent years. Do you have concerns about clients shifting away from agency trading desks or taking buying in-house?

Kathuria: This happened with search a couple of years ago, and now with programmatic. But if you want to take it in-house, there’s a couple of facts you should consider beforehand. One is just the sheer amount of investment needed… you have to be sure your finance and procurement groups are aligned in investing in an ongoing basis, millions of dollars to keep up.

Number two is talent. We know firsthand how hard it is to recruit top talent, in this case for programmatic. And then, just as important, is having scale. We’re consolidating across multiple clients, which helps from an efficiency perspective, and also helps when one goes out and starts creating private marketplaces. There again, when you want access to premium publisher inventory, you need to have relationships, and that goes back to having scale in the marketplace.

MDN: With Facebook a key part of digital budgets, what’s your take on its move to reduce organic reach in the name of cleaning up the news feed?

Kathuria: The big focus with [Facebook] for us has always been on having access to data. We’ve been very successful with them, not only having access to data, but to best practices when it comes to creative storytelling. Based on consultations we’ve had with them in the last 12 to 18 months, they’ve gone ahead and now have a whole group within Facebook advising our clients and us on the best possible creative assets to deploy against certain categories. So to us it’s been a pretty fruitful partnership.

MDN: But do clients just have to live with spending more to market on Facebook?

Kathuria: It goes back to the business objectives. And Facebook is one of multiple channels that we use. So as long as we believe the KPIs and the ROI are justified, absolutely. If you get to a point where you start to see a lot of diminishing returns, and the alternative is other channels within the social realm, then we’ll go that route. But until then, why not?

MDN: In that vein, what about the wave of messaging apps that have gain prominence this year? Have they become alternative marketing options?

Kathuria: We always advise our clients to making sure it’s serving a specific business purpose. That could just be gaining the awareness to figure out, where does it fit in with the overall strategy, or not. At the same time, it’s important to have that sort of an innovation budget, so to speak, so you’re cognizant that while testing this out, the expectations are on ROI. That’s what’s really fun about Razorfish, the “hack” sort of culture…that’s always been part of its DNA, helping to identify new and upcoming apps and platforms.

MDN: Does the overlap between social and mobile make it, in a sense, help to get around some of the challenges of mobile advertising, because when you’re buying on Facebook or Twitter, you’re also making a mobile buy?

Kathuria: It absolutely does. In the past it’s always been about mobile ad networks, cookie issues, tracking issues, privacy issues, fragmentation, and on and on. With Facebook and Twitter, the channel of choice is becoming mobile, so from that perspective a lot of our ad dollars are allocated toward that medium. When you lump in Facebook and Twitter, the mobile part gets a lot bigger. The pure-play mobile ad network will definitely face challenges.

MDN: What about publishers seeing much more traffic from mobile?

Kathuria: There still doing what they’ve been doing for the last couple of years, which is the bundling of desktop and mobile inventory. But some of their mobile sites or other assets aren’t maybe [mobile-optimized] quite yet, so that goes back to the user experience. A bigger challenge is making sure they understand the unique difference between mobile users versus desktop. Share with us specific insights and habits, which will help us to decide where it makes sense to target. Help us to understand based on who my client is. So there’s still a ways to go for publishers to figure out how to best monetize in mobile.

MDN: What industry buzzword are you most tired of hearing?

Kathuria: I’d say Big Data. Numbers can tell anything you want to -- you can drown in numbers. Figure out the relevant KPIs you want, and work backwards to figure out, how do we get our data warehouses and channels to capture that information that goes back to relevant KPIs. You have to reverse engineer…start with your business outcome, tie it back to the KPI and figure out what data stream goes with that, and optimize. That’s how you’re supposed to do it.