Launched in 2010 as an email marketing company and then building on its social media and digital offerings, iCubesWire has recently changed its positioning to being a Unified ML driven Ad Platform for enriching customer engagement, retention, and re-engagement via Mobile, Desktop, and Influencers.
That being said, today the company which was valued at Rs 1200 crore in 2022 has also expanded its geographical footprint from Gurgaon, Mumbai and Bangalore in India to Riyadh in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Jakarta in Indonesia and Dubai in United Arab Emirates.
In an exclusive interaction with Marketing Mind, Sahil Chopra, Founder and CEO, iCubesWire, stated that since the company had been working on building its capabilities in the digital ecosystem by building tools and platforms which brands can utilise alongside the large inventory pools coming on web, social, and mobile, the positioning change seemed to be the right step.
“Our decision to opt for a positioning change isn’t a short sighted one and we’ve been working on it for the past two years. Today, at iCubesWire we have a platform called InfluenceZ which is backed by Video Production and Strategy and has inventory pools or reach that comes from brands and creators. The other side of the business for us is on programmatic which is run on both desktop and mobile and therefore we have an AI ML Driven Data Management platform called Pie and a Real Time Ad Serving platform called Grab. It is via these three platforms that we represent the iCubesWire platform as a whole to the advertisers,” he said.
With this, he also mentioned that at the time of its launch in 2010, iCubesWire started with providing services like email marketing and with time began expanding its array of service to digital marketing, performance marketing, social media marketing and now AI ML Driven Global AdTech Platform in its 14 years long journey.
“In the past 18- 24 months, we’ve invested heavily into products, growing new markets and even entering new ones. Hence, from last year to this year, we’ve seen a steady growth of 20-25% in the numbers. But entering our 15th financial year, the focus is largely going to be on consolidation since we really want to put our energies and heads into growing things we’ve already initiated,” he added.
Delving into what this consolidation means for iCubesWire, Chopra mentioned that having developed the three platforms- Pie (DMP), Grab (DSP) and InfluenceZ, the company now intends to bring these platforms into spotlight in a very large fashion and consolidate on all the large initiatives that it has taken so far across various markets.
“As we progress, we may also expose ourselves to private equity or a large deal eventually by the end of this year,” he affirmed.
Commenting on whether a Merger and Acquisitions deal (M&A) by an ad Network or Tech major is on the cards, he stated that since the company itself has now become a tech player, he will be happier if it’s a tech-based M&A rather than an agency one since he doesn’t feel that the companies acquired by ad Networks today enjoy the same freedom as they did a couple years back.
“We are not thinking about this at least for the first three quarters of this year. But eventually, if we do receive an offer that is juicy enough and there is an acquisition opportunity which makes a larger scheme of things in the future, then we will be excited to explore that,” he said.
Upon being questioned on whether iCubesWire is also looking forward to club the three platforms when it comes to pitching it to its clients as part of its consolidation plans in India and elsewhere, Chopra replied that while Pie and Grab would largely be a combination, InfluenceZ is likely to function in a standalone way as iCubesWire has also signed exclusive deals with creators for the platform and all brands may or may not find the suitable fit for their niche and vice versa.
“Some of the best campaigns we’ve done on InfluenceZ are for players like Flipkart, Giffy, Cleartrip, Oppo, Samsung and more. We work with some of the largest banks in India, some of the top airlines and OTAs,” he said.
Having said that, he also mentioned that some of the brands do use all of the company’s services in tandem.
“We are the official digital partner for Adani and hence we use all the services for them when running their different initiatives for them on digital platforms,” he stated.
Throwing light onto the various objectives that iCubesWire aids brands in achieving via its three platforms, Chopra emphasised that since generating higher Return on Investments is something that most clients look for in today’s day and age, the company’s DSP and DMP platforms enable one to contextually target audiences genre-wise on digital platforms including CTV and OTTs and therefore have better chances of potential conversions, Cost Per Mille or any other costing metrics.
“Most of the OTT platforms, say the likes of JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar, today connect their APIs to exchanges. And, in a lot of cases, they are even connected to some selective SSPs or directly to DSPs for programmatic. But there are times when an overtly premium inventory, for example IPL on JioCinema, isn’t available on programmatic, so once they open up and pick exchanges or DSPs, we do configure with them as well,” he added.
But to the extent where CTV is concerned, he mentioned that neither the demand nor the supply is as much as the noise or hype around it.
“However, the medium is definitely picking up and in the coming times, I’m sure that both demand and supply are going to go up to live up to the noise and get bigger as a channel. Having said that, at iCubeswire, we do CTV inventories which are also locally present in vernacular in both mobile and desktop,” he opined.
As for the influencer ecosystem, Chopra emphasised that unlike CTV, the hype that is built around creator economy and influencer marketing is real, but even in that case, the one place where he feels that the challenge remains is- rationality to economics, and he hopes that InfluenceZ will be able to bring just that with some level of transparency.
“While brands do want to work with a wide range of creators and there are a lot of creators who want to get associated with certain brands, sometimes there is no rationality to unit economics. For example, A is a creator with a million followers and B with say hundred thousand followers, but that doesn’t mean that A should charge 5x of the amount that B charges,” he said.
Elaborating further, he mentioned that with platforms like InfluenceZ, he believes that some rationality would be brought in, and not just in terms of economics but also in the sense of sentiment.
“A creator may have a large fan following and you may see him getting a lot of engagement on the content he creates but he might not be creating positive content. So as a brand, you may not want to work with such a creator,” he added.
Therefore, in his viewpoint, it is important to build algorithms which have a combination of quality, sentiment, reach and ultimately ROI, because even though not many brands talk about ROI in terms of influencer marketing today, the time is not far away when they will begin noticing metrics like quality reach and a fair price.
“The other trend which is also picking pace because of certain mega influencers becoming all the more unaffordable is that brands have begun to move from them to micro and nano influencers who speak vernacular languages and are region specific or even if they have a local accent which is relatable to the brands. And this is only going to amplify in the future as there is less rationality to economics today,” he concluded.
