Mega Pandya
Data journalist, MiQ
At MiQ Datathon 6.0 this year, we challenged 57 people divided into 11 teams to think differently. While Google may have delayed its cookieless plans, we’re helping to shape the future of programmatic. For this, our event was all about bringing cookieless solutions into action. Teams were asked to come up with solutions from a fixed data set, to predict a user’s conversion probability and create a business use case. The dataset selected to train the predictive models used Authenticated IDs, which are entirely cookieless and privacy-centric by design. The three winning teams were awarded a prize, and saw their solutions joining the MiQ product roadmap.
Mayank Sagar is an associate consultant within our capabilities team (DnA). As one of the winners of our MiQ Datathon 6.0, he tells us about his experience, cookieless future and more.
- So, how does it feel to have won the Datathon 6.0?
To me, it feels truly ‘unreal’. I’ve been at MiQ for three years, and I’ve participated in every challenge from MiQ. This time, it felt like everything came together; be it the team work, the solution or every single learning that I have had from all the previous participations. It resulted in my team winning the solution of Datathon 6.0: ‘Team HumbleFool’. The idea was to identify the best channels (Display/Video/CTV/Audio etc.) for a given CRM data of a client based on historic trends and overlap performance.
- Can you describe your experience?
Datathon for me is thinking out of the box along with an element of fun in it. It’s an opportunity that has a business aspect to it, where there is expert opinion from the panel. We had thoughtful leaders like Ramya Parashar (COO, India), Lara Koenig (global head of product, solutions), Georgiana Haig (global product lead), Hitesh Nahata (senior manager, data and analytics), Biddappa Muthappa (director, data science RnD). At the same time, it allows for creativity and to produce one’s own idea with no limitations to thinking. This helped me gain critical knowledge about Authenticated ID, cookieless tactics, and cookieless future datasets.
- What are the things you will take back from the MiQ Datathon 6.0?
The feeling of winning, having fun with the team, learning from the ideas of other people from the organisation, and more. We had eleven new innovative ideas around business use-cases for a variety of clients across regions. The most important learning being how to build a product and to sell the product. MiQ Datathon 6.0 was the best one till date because coding and product around coding translated into business, which then gets added into the pipeline.
- What were the top highlights of this year’s MiQ Datathon 6.0?
In terms of the ‘Future Drivers’, it’s with cookieless being at the forefront for shaping the future of programmatic advertising. It’s great to see how you can be a part of shaping the future and contribute to the growth of the organisation. This year’s theme was about bringing cookieless data integrations into on-ground testing and experimentation. There were new ideas around user prediction and data infrastructure, effectively helping the RnD teams with new product ideas.
- How does MiQ challenge tech talent??
MiQ provides a common platform which is a great avenue for data scientists and analysts all across teams to come together with their best ideas. We have brainstorming sessions, meetings, discussions, feedback, and collaboration.
- What do you have to say about teamwork, collaboration and cooperation with people outside of your team?
The product or analyst roles involve working with different people across departments, even outside of India. You get to know people before you work with them and that makes things easy and helpful. MiQ propagates an inclusive culture that allows collaboration, where I got to work with folks from DnA and RnD team to mix business and tech minds in solving the most critical problems facing the AdTech industry.
Note:
Authenticated IDs/ Data sets:
Authenticated IDs/ Data sets are typically tied to hashed and encrypted emails, that can do everything cookies can do, and more. This is just one piece of the cookieless future. Being able to recognise and leverage a multitude of solutions and authenticated ID in a privacy-first manner, across a range of platforms and environments, is critical to helping advertisers future-proof their campaigns.
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