Marketing Science and the Future of Social Media – SPJ Alumni Spotlight with Kishore Parthasarathy
“I believe Metaverse is how we will interact with friends and family in the future. We are making immense progress in the AR/VR space and mobile internet as we know is due for a transformation.
Our social media interactions will move from connecting and looking at apps to being in an immersive experience using full embodiment.”
Kishore Parthasarathy (GMBA 2008)
Director of Marketing Science (SEA)
Facebook
Q. Could you give us a brief introduction of your personal, educational, and professional backgrounds?
Kishore: I started my career as a Computer Engineer in Wipro Technologies building terabit routers for a telecom company. I switched my career post my MBA and joined the Central Branding & Marketing team at Reliance Communications in Mumbai. Owing to my technical skills and interest in marketing, I found my sweet spot as I moved to Marketing Analytics. Soon, I got an opportunity to continue my career in the analytics space as I moved to Singapore to lead the Data and Analytics Team at Starcom Mediavest Group, a media and advertising company. Currently, I work as a Director at Facebook, leading the Marketing Science function for South East Asia and emerging markets.
I am married and have two kids (an 8-year-old girl and a 3-year-old boy). My wife and I have trodden a similar path (Engineering + MBA) and she works at a technology company here in Singapore.
Q. That is quite a career trajectory, congratulations! So, what does a day in your life look like at Facebook right now?
Kishore: I spend a large part of my time managing a high-performance team, consulting with advertisers (both performance and brand), working with senior stakeholders at the company and industry bodies to push gold standards in digital media measurement. Our team helps optimise the ad budgets of more than a billion dollars for our advertisers in South East Asia and emerging markets.
Q. Facebook is the largest social media platform today with 2.6 billion monthly active users and revenues worth billions of dollars. According to you, what marketing sciences and strategies have attributed to this tremendous growth?
Kishore: Our advertisers spend on our platform because our platform delivers. Our team’s job is to show that there is a bang for every buck that is invested in our platform. We have worked on the gold standard for mobile measurement and built first-party products to prove the value of every dollar spent. Apart from that, we have built a partner ecosystem so that advertisers can measure their investments through a third party. Importantly, we have also shaped how we need to make the right strategic shifts in the industry as mobile marketing evolves by working with various industry bodies across the globe.
Q. You graduated from SP Jain back in 2008. Are there any fond memories from your time at business school that you still remember?
Kishore: Of course! I made some amazing friends and we are still a close-knit community. We help each other and often have WhatsApp debates attempting to solve world problems :). I love visiting the SP Jain campus occasionally to eat at the canteen and relive our amazing time back in the day. I am also in regular touch with our professors and participate in several alumni connect events as well.
Q. What is your biggest prediction for the future of social media?
Kishore: I believe Metaverse is how we will interact with friends and family in the future. We are making immense progress in the AR/VR space and mobile internet as we know is due for a transformation. Our social media interactions will move from connecting and looking at apps to being in an immersive experience using full embodiment.
You can read a lot about what Metaverse means in this article in Forbes or Mark Zuckerberg’s interview with The Verge.
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