Vishal Sharma serves as Deputy Vice President – Media Buying at LS Digital, where he leads impactful media strategies and performance-driven campaigns. With over 15 years of experience in digital media buying, he specializes in optimizing digital campaigns and driving measurable outcomes across industries. In this interview, he shares his insights on balancing innovation, accountability, and risk management in media investments.
With more than 18 years of experience in diverse verticals, how have these cross-industry insights affect your strategic approach to the media and trade?
My cross-industry experience- BFSI, Automotive, Tech, and more has taught me that each sector has unique audience behaviour, the basic data of media buying is linked with data agility. For example, BFSI demands high trust-building through accurate targeting (eg,. NW18, Payment gateways, Data layering etc), while growing on immersive formats such as video and CTV to show automotive features. Tech is far more performance oriented, with market standard ROAS.
In India, where regional diversity and language mix is high, with this we can create hyper-localized yet scalable strategies. For example, OTT platforms work universally, but language-specific inventory- Jio Hotstar for Hindi vs Sun NXT for South India and Payment Gateway Integration (e.g. transactional-focused creative) sector-specific consumers. Generally, P&L focus ensures that align with each rupee conversion funnel – branding for auto, lead genes for BFSI and apps for tech integrations like SDK.
When working in areas such as BFSI, Automotive and Tech, how do you buy a strategy to the media keeping the results of the performance in the core?
The strategy begins with an audience-first approach, enhanced by smart platform insights.
BFSI: Focus on intent-based channels like search, offer driven audience, affiliate marketing and reliable publishers such as TOI, NW18, Times Now, Zee News etc.
Automotive: High -impact format like YouTube mastheads, Jio Ads boot up, Google TV, and Samsung tv etc. – majorly connected TV dominate the views. We also use DV to track the view-through rates and dealership walk-in through integration like ADH
Technology: Performance Marketing Rules- Apply campaign through app DSP’s, Innovative advertisements / Rich media and impressive participation. Matrix such as CPI and retention rates are important.
In India, we should always factor regional and cultural nuances with virtue-led messaging for Tier 2 and Tier 3 audiences. and seasonal (festive spikes for auto, tax season for BFSI). Tools such as appsflyer, trackier, offer18 and branch help in characteristic results for the final mile.
In high-day customer relationships, how do you create the right balance between innovation, accountability and risk management in media investment decisions?
My approach is test, scale and safety:
Innovation: Innovation: Pilot to validate new channels (e.g., programmatic audio for Fintech) with a controlled budget of 10–15% expenditure, using A/B tests. For example, I scale CTV advertisements after testing with an auto client, noting a 30% increase in recall.
Accountability: Third-party equipment (IAS, Nielsen, DV, GTM etc.) ensure visibility and prevention of fraud. Transparent dashboard (salesforce, custom OEM tools) gives customers real -time ROI visibility.
Risk Management: Diversity in investment- High reach platform like OTT with performance DSP. To protect customer interests, interact on fix annual deals or discounted rate card (e.g., CPM guarantee).
And in a market like India, clients often want innovation—but with a safety net. So every new idea is tied to a clear business outcome. Whether it is an affiliate model or a campaign with softer KPIs, the goal is always to try something new without taking a bigger risk and have BAV policies in place.
What emerging trends in media trading and performance marketing, do you believe that will shape the next wave of development for digital advertisers?
There are three major trends that will dominate the landscape in India:
For the performance distress, there will be confidentiality-influence data stacks (UIDAI 2.0, clean rooms) and regional impressive ecosystems (eg, Moj, Josh) game-changes.
How will you see the role of affiliated marketing within today’s full-rich digital strategies?
Affiliation marketing is no longer just a “final-click” tool-it is a complete-funnel growth liver In India:
Top of Funnel: Material collaborations like Jio coupons, grabon and cashkaro type of inventory drive awareness through cashback offers.
Mid-funnel: Influencers and Content creators such as Auto review bloggers build credibility
Performance layer: Track the conversion on the display networks using tools like Aiffise, Offer 18, Trackier etc.)
Result have shown significant uplift- affiliated revenue from 3x to 4x by integrating it with performance branding for example affiliates saw higher conversion rates when aligned with targeted advertising efforts. Closed-loop attribution was also enabled by routing affiliate leads directly into the CRM system, and reach was further expanded through hyper-local activations with Tier 2/3 micro-influencers.
With a rush-ecosystem of equipment and platforms, how do you assess and choose the right media mixture to run the performance results of the performance?
A 4-step framework helps in building the right performance media mix:
1. Target Alignment: We should give top priority to targeting aright audience followed by performance where we are also getting a reach followed by CPA / ROAS down the funnel.
2. Audiences mapping: Consuming materials from sources such as audiences (eg, news for Gen Z for Quora, Reddit, LinkedIn, B2B and Instagram).
3. Tool Stack:
4. Cost Efficiency: Annual deals for high spending customers + JBP interaction
The focus should be on mobile platforms like OEM’s, Glance, Mobile DSP’s etc and reginal adv networks for South India. According to the customer’s mandate, keep the regular audit mixture lean and effective for advertising fraud through various fraud detection solutions.
