Parag Chemburkar is the chief creative officer for Centric DXB, a full service digital strategy firm based in the United Arab Emirates. His team serves brands such as DELL, ASUS, Falcon Aviation, Perfetti Van Melle and more. On a daily basis, he is challenged to bridge between imagination and implementation, while ensuring that the concepts developed fly within the technical parameters. He can be reached on parag.chem@centric.ae

There is no doubt that the brand innovations unveiled at the Mobile World Congress last week were palatial. But with all the activity, it was clear that mobile is cascading and advertisers are planning to increase spending on video-rich mobile ads. Multitudinous studies point to a customer preference towards watching videos on a smart device, making it the ideal touchpoint for capturing customer mindshare.

The demand and supply side of the equation were apprehensive about the speech by P&G's Marc Pritchard and whether they were open to being audited by the Media Ratings Council. The supply side with its digital inventory has been the scapegoat for offering low quality mobile data and failing to help campaigns scape. Publishers are more interested in an ecosystem where their inventory is merchandised and where advertisers target based on in market segments. Both sides of the coin were open to offering multiple data sets to improve profitability.

Brand marketers announced a desire to get more involved in all areas of media planning as well as buying and, especially, to encourage a proper evaluation of realistic alternatives to their preferred media mixes. While the context within which P&G's Marc Pritchard spoke against digital's effectiveness was understandable, the panel's questioned whether P&G's brands were really using TV as effectively as possible. Attendees also wondered how many TV GRPs are too much or too little. Another point of concern was on improving P&G's upfront TV buying procedures and whether they have been objectively evaluated. Mobile experiences that support virtual reality will become the hot new toy that advertisers want to experiment with. And advertisers present at the Mobile World Congress are at the same time demanding transparency and accountability from current and future vendors. Prior to the event, Facebook and Google announced their verifications from the Media Ratings Council, initiating FOMO. As advertisers demand more insight and guarantees on their ad dollars, mobile advisers will need to comply. Just one of the many technological changes to capitalize on by 2020.