Sridevi Sarkar, a Media Account Specialist for YouTube Adverts at Google, explores the shift in digital promoting and how you can create significant model affect
By 2025, digital promoting could have hit a key turning level, Happydemics wrote in a current article, “Newest Digital Advertising Tendencies: Driving Promoting Success in 2025.” With greater than 5.5 billion web customers and 5.2 billion folks lively on social media, manufacturers now have a variety of alternatives to attach with audiences. Nonetheless, this large alternative has made precision an obsession: it’s essential to ship the fitting message to the fitting particular person on the proper time to ensure success.
Sridevi Sarkar, a Media Account Specialist for YouTube Adverts at Google, believes this mind-set overlooks larger alternatives. Over 15 years, she has crafted advert methods utilized by 1000’s of advertisers worldwide. She helped develop instruments and frameworks such because the YouTube Adverts Digital Maturity Framework, OptiScore for Model Campaigns, and Full-Funnel Price range Mixes in Attain Planner. These improvements have had an affect on billions in advert spending and altered how companies stability model and efficiency advertising and marketing.
We talked with Sridevi about the necessity to transfer branding previous slim concentrating on, the brand new concepts she has helped create, and what lies forward for promoting.
Sridevi, your space of labor challenges the concept that precision concentrating on is what helps manufacturers develop. Why do you assume branding wants a distinct technique?
Precision is the inspiration of efficiency advertising and marketing. If the purpose is to make somebody obtain an app or purchase a product right now, concentrating on them primarily based on intent alerts and specializing in fast conversions is sensible. However branding isn’t a transaction. It builds on belief, reminiscence, and that means. These are parts that develop over time, not in seconds.
After we take a look at branding primarily based on efficiency metrics, we might find yourself focusing an excessive amount of. We’d join with people who find themselves able to take motion now however miss out on future clients, influencers, and different key audiences. Sturdy manufacturers don’t thrive as a result of they chase clicks. They final as a result of they construct emotional ties that folks bear in mind.
At Google, which has been described as “probably the most highly effective firm on the earth” by the BBC, you helped create techniques that mix technique and scale. Are you able to give examples of instances when this method led to raised outcomes for advertisers?
One instance is the YouTube Adverts Digital Maturity Framework, which we constructed utilizing greatest practices from Google and BCG. It helped advertisers determine in the event that they have been at first phases, rising, linked, or superior of their digital maturity. This technique inspired international shoppers to make use of data-driven planning, smarter concentrating on, and cross-funnel monitoring. Ultimately, it led to noticeable enhancements in ROI throughout the board.
One other instance is OptiScore for Model Campaigns. Prior to now, Optimization Rating was identified for performance-focused campaigns. So, I advocated for constructing one for Model that may allow advertisers to attach and optimize marketing campaign construction to model well being outcomes. This doubtlessly helped model advertisers discover a technique to consider success of their model promoting {dollars}.
There’s additionally Full-Funnel Price range Mixes in Attain Planner. This instrument helps advertisers successfully divide their budgets throughout phases like consciousness, consideration, and motion. It turned the primary of its form to convey multi-funnel planning to a self-serve format. This gave advertisers a technique to defend spending on consciousness whereas retaining it tied to finish outcomes.
Then, whenever you have been at Google India, you designed and led the analytical framework that powered the analysis, “Shopper Querimetrix: A Machine-Studying Powered Framework to Nowcast Shopper Conduct from Google Search Knowledge.” Shopper Querimetrix is the primary of its form in India as a result of it makes use of machine studying to know what persons are trying to find on-line, after which makes use of the identical information to know what they really need in actual life, one thing surveys and vendor reviews had by no means achieved. So, are you able to inform us extra about it?
At the moment, a variety of forecasting in India was primarily based on surveys or vendor reviews, which have been usually gradual and inaccurate. Nonetheless, Shopper Querimetrix modified all that. Shopper Querimetrix is a machine-learning mannequin constructed to forecast shopper demand by search habits on a big scale. When sufficient folks seek for related phrases, these searches may be grouped and in contrast towards precise gross sales information, giving carmakers and advertisers the chance to foretell possible outcomes.
A great variety of analysis research develop into irrelevant with time. Nonetheless, Shopper Querimetrix remains to be very important for the sector of digital promoting right now as a result of it helps us change the best way we view search information. Are you able to shed extra gentle on that?
Sure, Shopper Querimetrix could be very important for digital promoting as an entire as a result of it helps us change the best way we view search information, from being seen as a tactical instrument to extra of a strategic asset. It isn’t only a report, however it’s a working mannequin, which can be utilized by advertisers, automakers, and even traders to make actual choices. By demonstrating that search information might be used to foretell demand, it gave digital intent a brand new function in company technique. Now, search is not nearly clicks. It may be used to make billion-dollar choices relating to manufacturing, stock, and advertising and marketing. That’s excellent news for digital promoting because it strikes past simply implementation to technique.
Thereafter, you created the Buyer Goal-Pushed YouTube Promoting Methodology for Model Effectiveness, which is a novel framework as a result of it supplies a proper and structured system that begins with an advertiser’s enterprise aims after which overlays them neatly onto marketing campaign design. How does that work?
Beforehand, most YouTube campaigns have been constructed round such metrics like impressions or cost-per-view. So, there was no such framework to align company objectives with YouTube Adverts technique and execution. Now, the Buyer Goal-Pushed YouTube Promoting Methodology for Model Effectiveness reverses that. It’s a step-by-step planning framework, which fairly begins with the precise enterprise aims of the advertiser similar to gross sales, market share, or model fairness. Based mostly on that, you align these aims to the precise advert format, audience, and a timeline view of how you’ll set up and run your advert campaigns and the way you’ll measure success. So, it’s a thorough consultative resolution on the technique you create primarily based on what the enterprise really needs to perform.
Methodologies can solely make a distinction if they modify apply. So your YouTube framework, the “Buyer Goal-Pushed YouTube Promoting Methodology for Model Effectiveness,” is critical within the sense that it has reworked YouTube right into a platform for constructing actual manufacturers. In what particular methods is it altering the best way we promote right now?
By integrating buyer aims into marketing campaign design, it permits Chief Advertising Officers (CMOs) to hyperlink advert spend on to outcomes they will focus on within the boardroom, similar to model worth, loyalty, or long-term development. That is essential as a result of it places model advertisements on the identical stage with efficiency campaigns when it comes to accountability. With time, companies adopted it, and advertisers began utilizing it to justify bigger, extra important video budgets. Now, it has made YouTube a platform you should utilize to measure model success as an alternative of simply being seen as a channel for impressions.
Now, many individuals usually speak about your management function at Google when discussing your work. However exterior of that, what units your contributions aside within the promoting world, and what results has it had on the trade?
I consider originality comes from rethinking how we measure issues. For years, digital promoting handled branding and efficiency as in the event that they have been two separate areas that didn’t align. I’ve labored to show that the identical cautious strategies we use in efficiency campaigns also can work for model campaigns with out dropping creativity. For example, I prompt utilizing OptiScore, which was often known as a efficiency measurement, for model campaigns. It gave advertisers the primary probability to hyperlink marketing campaign high quality with model well being. This shifted the main target from asking “can we measure branding?” to asking “are our campaigns constructed to create long-term belief?”
Immediately, thousands and thousands of advertisers depend on my instruments and frameworks due to their widespread use. Many companies and organizations are capable of get steerage on marketing campaign planning. I’ve used my work to talk at small and medium trade occasions and lead workshops to share the data and steerage. Many specialists have now adopted related strategies of their work, displaying how helpful these approaches are.
Why has the trade acknowledged these improvements, in your view?
I believe it’s as a result of these frameworks and instruments didn’t solely succeed at Google. They modified how advertisers in numerous fields method development. Being requested to guage the World Recognition Awards in Know-how and Software program Engineering this yr reveals that. The trade appears to be shifting. It’s not simply outcomes that matter but additionally recent approaches that would form the place promoting heads subsequent.
Your journey started far-off from Silicon Valley. How do you assume that formed the way you see issues?
I began out in India, working on the submit workplace in a typical setup. Transferring into tech felt like a leap, nevertheless it helped me construct a ardour to know how customers behave and the way digital techniques work. Throughout my time at Google India, I labored on modern tasks like Shopper Querimetrix, which confirmed how search queries may forecast gross sales in a really important means. This was the primary such examine. It was pioneering in its method and was adopted by main gamers within the auto trade. I additionally led shopper analysis research to assemble insights on how Automotive Patrons Seek for Solutions, which noticeably modified how the auto trade checked out their digital presence and promoting methods.
Once I moved to Mountain View, I introduced the identical method with me. I mixed detailed analysis with real-world enterprise use. It wasn’t at all times simple. Some markets doubted data-focused strategies, and it took power to stability international work with private life. These struggles, although, pushed me to seek out new concepts and keep centered on making an actual distinction.
Having mentioned that, what excites you exterior your function of main technique at Google?
For me, it’s about giving again to society. I’ve discovered lots from numerous markets and a few very clever minds within the promoting trade. So, I consider that is my time to share such info. At IMT Ghaziabad, I sit on the advisory board for his or her Advertising Space and I’ve a possibility to work with professors to arrange the following era of leaders to work in an trade that’s at all times altering. It’s my ardour to help in shaping lecturers on this method, because the trade can solely develop into stronger once we spend money on its future leaders.
I’m additionally deeply energized by my Senior Membership within the E-Commerce & Digital Advertising Affiliation (ECDMA). It connects me with a worldwide neighborhood of innovators and leaders shaping the way forward for digital commerce. What excites me most is the chance to trade concepts throughout industries and geographies, contribute to setting new requirements in digital advertising and marketing, and mentor rising professionals within the discipline. It permits me to increase my affect past my day-to-day work, serving to advance the trade whereas being impressed by the breakthroughs and views of friends worldwide.
I additionally facilitate periods for the “I Am Outstanding” program, empowering underrepresented teams to acknowledge and rejoice their achievements. I additionally advocate for psychological well being in inner boards. These efforts are deeply significant to me, as I consider probably the most impactful manufacturers and leaders succeed not solely by outcomes, but additionally by compassion and inclusion.
Lastly, when you concentrate on the long run, what’s the following huge step in branding and promoting?
We’re shifting right into a time the place model and efficiency will combine greater than ever. Nonetheless, there’s nonetheless the hazard of focusing an excessive amount of on fast outcomes. The subsequent huge factor is pulling all of it collectively, tying model campaigns, efficiency efforts, and enterprise objectives into one system. Image linking the creativity of a YouTube advert to how a lot cash it brings in or determining how top-level storytelling builds lasting loyalty.
