Raghu Kashyap is the Co-Founder & CTO of Intentwise, an AI-based intuitive platform for optimizing Amazon Advertising. A unique blend of technical strength and business acumen defines him. He comes with strong domain knowledge in the field of Advertising, Hospitality & Travel, Telecommunication, and Health Care. Raghu, with his experienced background in technology and analytics, helps build out an innovative suite of solutions to help clients in the areas of Marketing and Analytics. In an interaction with CXO Outlook, Raghu talks about the impact on Amazon Advertising due to COVID-19 and how Intentwise helps brands, sellers, and digital & advertising agencies to maximize returns from their Amazon Advertising spend.
How can brands/customers leverage technologies like AI, machine learning, and analytics in making personalized ads?
Today a customer journey spans across many devices, and many days before a purchase is made. There must be a significant time spent to derive the right customer intent. Patterns and customer intents are derived better through Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence. Over the last 15 years, Google showed us how ads could be personalized through extensive data analysis and targeting. Amazon has the advantage compared to Google, which has all the customer data to target in a much effective way. ML will lead the way with targeted ads to show the right ads to the person looking for a product.
What has been the impact on Amazon Advertising due to COVID-19? Have you observed any changes since the start of the pandemic to date?
We have been in conversations with many of our clients throughout the pandemic time, and we are seeing a broad array of scenarios in which they are finding themselves due to Coronavirus (COVID-19). Some have seen a massive spike in sales as if we were in a holiday season. And while that is generally good, some are running into inventory issues, mainly because factory capacity is not back to full tilt. On the other end of the spectrum, clients have had their Amazon orders come to a halt, and they are concerned about the future. From a longer-term view, events like this result in a step-function change in buying behaviours. We have seen this happen in 2001 and 2008-09.
What makes India an important market for Intentwise from a business point of view?
E-commerce growth in India is there for all of us to see. COVID-19 has accelerated this trend. In addition, we are going to see several Indian brands become global brands. Intentwise wants to be the enablers of that growth.
Our vision is to provide a smart e-commerce optimization platform for brands and agencies. We want to help brands optimize their presence across all the marketplaces. We intend to enable all aspects of e-commerce over time as we do not just want to focus on advertising.
What are the benefits of Intentwise’s technology platform for its customers?
With so many options around, a customer’s journey spans across many devices and platforms, and many days before a purchase is made. There must be a significant time spent to understand the right customer intent. Patterns and customer intents are derived better through Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. Online retailers require an advertising strategy that is uniquely tailored to their needs and the current market to make themselves noticed on the busiest e-commerce platform in the world.
The Intentwise platform is continuously analyzing data and surfacing recommendations to optimize campaigns. Recommendations span areas such as bid management, keyword optimization, ASIN gap analysis, account structure design, etc. Intentwise’s deep domain expertise is its powerful recommendation engine. Clients leveraging these recommendations have seen a 30% improvement in account performance on an average.
What are the USPs of the platform? What makes it different from other optimization platforms and tool providers?
Our customers find the platform to be user friendly and extremely powerful to use. It is that balance we have struck that makes us different. Our objective is to simplify the lives of advertisers and help them compete effectively on Amazon. We have invested heavily in building a technology platform that simplifies the optimization of Amazon advertising. Advertisers working with us have seen both improved advertising returns and savings on time and effort.