A key problem for the digital publisher and advertising network ecosystem in India is that of reliability in receipt of payments from advertisers, and the inordinate amount of time it takes for payments to be collected. The Internet and Mobile Association of India has, for the last three years, been trying to cobble together an agreement with the Advertising Agencies Association of India, with little success. A key part of the issue is that from the publisher site itself, some large digital publishers (and we've heard, Google), refuse to come on board, because they get their payments in time, and without an agreement, payment cycles do not improve. Still, the attempt to put together an agreement for enabling faster payments continues: we're aware of a meeting that took place on the sidelines of the IAMAI's India Digital Summit earlier this year, involving all key stakeholders from the publisher and ad network side, but that yielded little. To understand the impact of the long payments cycle in India on startup businesses and why payments get delayed, MediaNama spoke with (a rather diplomatic) Manish Vij on the issue. Vij understands multiple sides of this issue, since the Smile-Vun group has been involved with both the agency side with Quasar Media, the ad network side with Tyroo (now SVG Media) and DGM: MediaNama: How are you impacted by the delay in payments? Manish Vij: My biggest problem is not for companies like ours. We somehow manage at scale, though we also face challenges. The…
