"The media agencies of the future are going to be like newsroom: there is an explosion of data, and you need systems, technology people to sift through that data," CVL Srinivas, CEO (South Asia) at GroupM told MediaNama on the sidelines of the Huffington Post India launch yesterday. "You need to get meaningful insights from data, (and) using those insights, create campaigns and solutions for clients is what the agencies have started doing. Maxus has created a newsroom for Nestle, a social command center managed by a hybrid team of 20 people from both the agency and the client side, and use the data for media planning and messaging," he says in the interview. Srini also speaks about partnering with publishers, and whether there is a conflict of interest in doing this, since agencies are meant to represent clients, rather than publishers. In a separate discussion, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington told MediaNama that certain exclusive inventory on the site is going to be available for GroupM clients. Srinivas also told MediaNama working together means that GroupM can co-create inventory with HuffPo India and offer clients unique advertising opportunities. (p.s.: Pardon audio quality...just getting started with videos. Oh, and the excited voice you hear in the background is HuffPo India Editor in Chief, Sruthijith KK)
