Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) will now allow digital agencies to be a full-fledged independent member. The move will benefit standalone, independent digital agencies which were left out from the AAAI as membership was only open to creative, media and full-service agencies. Membership to the AAAI will also be advantageous for the larger digital marketing ecosystem.
“In order to future proof AAAI it is essential to include the digital agencies as our members since digital is an important and ever-increasing part of our industry. With this in mind, Anupriya Acharya was nominated by the executive committee of AAAI to drive the ‘Digital Media Forum’, which has now resulted in the opening up of membership for the digital agencies to become full-fledged members of Advertising Agencies Association of India, for the first time in our 75 years of history as an association,” Ashish Bhasin, president, Advertising Agencies Association of India and CEO APAC, and chairman India Dentsu Aegis Network, said.
“With digital advertising becoming so mainstream, there are many digital agencies operating in this space now. Hence, it is important that AAAI begins incorporating these too, to be truly representative of the current industry environment. In order to enable greater participation from the digital agencies, we created the first-ever ‘Digital Agency Forum’ wherein we got key leaders from digital agencies of existing AAAI members to identify important areas that are unique to the digital agencies and find solutions to address some of their challenges and opportunities,” Anupriya Acharya, vice-president, AAAI, and CEO, Publicis Media India, stated.
The Digital Agency Forum focuses on areas such as account shift protocols, viewability standards and audience metrics, relationships with digital bodies, best practices, commercial norms, talent and training, to begin with, but will expand its role as it grows.
The Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) formed in 1945, is representative today of small, medium and large-sized agencies. It is the apex body of agencies in India and the spokesperson for the advertising industry on all forums.