Category: Over The Top Services

Nazara acquires US-based kids gaming firm WildWorks

Mumbai : Nazara Technologies, Mumbai-based diversified gaming, and sports media company acquired a 100 percent stake in Delaware-based kids gaming firm WildWorks Inc. This would be one of the several acquisitions made in the past year by the Mumbai-based company.

According to a filing with the BSE, Nazara Technologies agreed to acquire 100 percent of Wildworks’ share capital in an all-cash transaction from their existing shareholders for $10.40 million.

After the merger and acquisition, WildWorks will continue to run the business with its original co-founders Clark Stacey and Jeff Amis as part of the “Friends of Nazara” network.

WildWorks, founded in 2003, creates games for the children’s market. It’s available on iOS and Android mobile devices as well as on desktops.

Oquirrh Ventures and Signal Peak Ventures were the investors of Wildworks at first. In contrast to 2020, the US-based company’s revenue decreased by 25 percent to $13.8 million in 2021 from $18.8 million in 2020, while EBITDA was recorded at $3.1 million in CY21 compared to $4.9 million in CY20.

Prior to this, Nazara supported the educational app for preschoolers, Kiddopia, and bought the majority of the shares of Sports Unity, a platform for multisport content, Sportskeeda and Datawrkz.

September 1, 2022
ZEE5 Global provides Bollywood entertainment in Middle East

Mumbai: Bollywood films have always been appreciated and loved throughout the Middle East, particularly in the UAE among both Indians and local audiences. ZEE5 Global, a streaming platform, is now amplifying this connection.

ZEE5 Global provides South Asian entertainment in the Middle East and around the globe, has one of the greatest collections of content in South Indian languages, over 4000 movies, and the largest collection of movies across all South Indian languages.

The platform recently premiered the mega-blockbuster “RRR” in Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, and Kannada and also “The Kashmir Files” both of which were huge hits across the Middle East.

ZEE5 Global recently announced its partnership with the LuLu Group for their India Utsav celebrations to mark the 75th anniversary of Indian independence.

ZEE5 Global chief business officer Archana Anand, said, “We are very happy to partner with LuLu for yet another hugely successful event to bring the entertainment factor into the shopping experience. Sonali’s presence only added to the festive spirit as fans were thrilled to meet the star. The Middle East is a very special market for us and we look forward to continuing to enthral our audiences here with the best of Bollywood blockbusters and South Asian stories”.

She further added, “As part of the festivities, ZEE5 Global flew in actor Sonali Bendre, who had a special meet and greet with fans who flocked to Dubai and Abu Dhabi on 20 August. Sonali, who recently made her OTT debut on ZEE5 Global with The Broken News, also shopped with fans who were overjoyed to meet her”

The announcement was made at the LuLu regional headquarters in Dubai during a live press conference.

The “India Utsav” was launched across the GCC countries on 15 August 2022 at Al Wahda Mall in Abu Dhabi, in the Lulu Group’s first ever simultaneous region-wide launch of this celebration.

Actor Sonali Bendre said, “It’s been such a fun experience being at the India Utsav in Dubai and interacting with everyone here. It’s great to see how everyone has participated in the activities as part of the celebrations. My association with ZEE5 Global has always been amazing and I’m so glad that my first OTT show, The Broken News on ZEE5 Global, has been much appreciated and loved by audiences across the world. I’m also excited that Duranga is receiving a positive response on ZEE5 Global, which is a creation of Rose Audio production and helmed by my husband Goldie Behl.”

In addition, the brand has planned a slew of new content launches and partnership announcements for the coming holidays, which will be revealed in the coming weeks.

September 1, 2022
GUEST ARTICLE: Why content creators need to embrace OTT platforms for better growth and impact

Mumbai: OTT (over-the-top) services have received a lot of attention in the last three years, completely transforming the way we consume information online. OTT platforms are significantly altering the landscape of the entertainment and media industries. OTT services are classified into several groups based on the type of content, helping both innovative content creators and brands gain better visibility and engagement among a wider set of global audiences. With access to internet video material, artists and content creators also have an opportunity to build a brand out of their work, which will lead to organic development and popularity among viewers.

With the versatility of gadgets, modern consumers are more accustomed to consuming video material at any time and from any location. According to a PWC analysis, India’s OTT video industry would grow at a 21.8 per cent CAGR from Rs 4,464 crore in 2018 to Rs 1,1976 crore in 2023.

From large companies to start-ups, everyone is welcoming OTT platforms for innovative and data-driven campaigns. This also provides content creators with an opportunity to drive better brand partnerships, find sponsors, and build a stronger viewer base for themselves, as well as enjoy a wider reach to viewers via dedicated OTT platforms.

In line with the above, having a dedicated OTT platform and building a niche ecosystem can have several benefits for content creators, like:

1. Better engagement

OTT platforms have enormous potential for expansion. The enormous market makes it all feasible, but before proceeding, one needs to understand the approach to engaging the audience. OTT enables content makers to create content that increases engagement. It provides a diverse range of materials to choose from based on the consumer’s preferences. Consumers, on the other hand, have increased viewing independence in terms of location, device, time, and quality of options.

Additionally, OTT platforms also help the audience to locate new material quickly and effortlessly, which will undoubtedly lead to success for content providers.

2. Increases brand awareness

OTT platforms are excellent at preserving an image that will improve your audience’s reach. On a regular basis, almost 70 per cent of users watch at least three hours of video streaming services. According to a different survey, video accounts for 82 per cent of all consumer web traffic. So it’s evident that digital and video are here to stay. Any brand, person, or organisation that can successfully combine these two. Owning an OTT platform will aid in improving brand exposure, increasing reach, and gaining more consumer loyalty.

3. Focus on your target audience

OTT platforms clearly identify their target audience, followed by enticing and relevant advertising based on their target group’s interests, which increases the ads’ views and reach. The OTT network’s 5G network is based on fixed wireless access video transmission. 5G will encourage high-quality consumption in households, thus enlarging the advertising area. Focus on a certain target first, then expand your reach after you have a clear understanding of the OTT audience.

4. Monetization model

Content producers now have the resources and flexibility to pursue their passions. They might monetize their material in a single or several ways. These include ad-supported video-on-demand (AVoD), subscription video-on-demand (SVoD), and a hybrid approach, i.e., ad-supported video with a subscription mode. The service provider or creator should select the most appropriate model for the platform. It all depends on your target audience.

Every content producer has a strong desire to increase the exposure of his or her own brand in the entertainment industry. And with a strategically planned platform, it is possible for large and small content creators to generate revenue and make an impact in the market through a well-planned and managed platform.

The author of this article is Ssoftoons COO Hansa Mondal.

September 1, 2022
Create campaigns to increase engagement and attract customers:Disney+ Hotstar’s EVP & CMO S Shakdher

Mumbai: In today’s world, creating the best marketing campaign means the company not only aims to attract consumers towards ads but engage them too, expressed Disney+ Hotstar executive VP and CMO Sidharth Shakdher. He was speaking at The Advertising Club’s third edition of D-CODE, held in Mumbai recently.

He discussed the effectiveness of funnel marketing for Disney+ Hotstar, which led to the conversion of 95 million engaged viewers from an overall spike of 140 million viewers. In 2019, the viewership increased to 112 million.

Shakdher further explained that in funnel marketing, a potential consumer goes from becoming aware of your brand to purchasing the goods or services.

“While building a funnel, two things were important to us: to have a better experience and to maximise the spike. We wanted to reverse the narrative that digital drives people,” he said. “We created this funnel as there was a spike happening and the challenge was to convert them into engaged consumers.”

“And every time a person got converted, they would negate, and then iterate the recommendations again and show him another set of recommendations so that he could convert from spiked to engaged,” he added.

Sidharth further advised that in all marketing campaigns, advertisers have to be able to pivot the right objectives, so, if they’re looking at a conversion-based campaign then it is requisite that advertisers have an action-based campaign in place.

“Your conversion could be a purchase, but your action could be an add to cart, reading a product retail page, or anything. Always know what works best for you in terms of conversion is concern,” he added further.

Mentioning about the creative ads on Disney+ Hotstar, he highlighted the local superheroes advertisements that have Indian middle-class power. The professional campaign titled “Superheroes” was published in India in October 2020. Disney + Hotstar had built the creative where “superheroes” were shown as common people, and they were using superpowers to stop their friends from going out and watching a match with them. An interesting campaign indeed!

He discussed further on ‘moment marketing’- a strategy for advertising that concentrates on reaching potential customers and where an advertiser takes advantage of ongoing events by delivering relevant and relatable content. Disney+ Hotstar reaped potential benefits matching it up during the IPL matches- an important cricket event. The broadcaster picked those moments on the controllable prioritisation matrix. The broadcaster prioritized its promotional technique based on trending things happening during the event and used social media to create connections and marketing opportunities.

Shakdher mentioned that Disney+ Hotstar has built a prioritisation matrix and established 15 rules, which led to the incorporation of 15,000 dynamic creatives. In order to produce effective results, dynamic creatives optimise a variety of ad components (such as pictures, videos, titles, descriptions, and CTAs).

There are instances, where a batsman is nearing a half-century of run, the other was a batsman’s strike rate went up above 150 percent , and there were two wickets falling in a row. In all the cases, ads used to appear automatically & matched with the situation when wickets were down, or batsmen were playing well & hitting sixes, which led consumers to click & engage with ads while watching matches.

“We were able to serve up in real-time while the match was going on,” claimed Sidharth. “That led to a 200 per cent improvement in cost per click (CPC), and we were able to reach 80 million viewers.”

Dynamic creative optimization (DCO), a real-time display advertising technology, was used by Disney+ Hotstar to personalise ads based on viewer information at the time of ad serving. Every time something similar occurs in a match, it appears on visual display, in static campaigns, performance marketing campaigns, or programmatic campaigns.

“Always have practical objectives for the campaign. If your message is that a particular product serves a particular need, then we also have sub-segments like pricing, convenience, etc., so run these smaller campaigns within the larger campaign and find out the segments that gave the best result,” he concluded.

August 31, 2022
Mirchi Plus to launch a true-crime series ‘India’s Most Wanted’

New Delhi: Mirchi has launched its new crime audio series, ‘India’s Most Wanted’, exclusively on the Mirchi Plus App. The audio series, which is hosted by Indian television producer and director, Suhaib Ilyasi – is a spin-off of his 90s crime TV show.

With his unique voice and iconic narration style, Suhaib Ilyasi delves deep and provides an analysis of the nation’s ten enthralling crime stories for Mirchi Plus listeners. Each 30-40 minute episode takes the listeners through a different heinous crime story. The series brings a diverse set of stories from different parts of India centered around mass killings, kidnapping, and scandalous high-profile murders, among others.

The combination of Suhaib Ilyasi’s gripping storytelling skills and the turn of events in the stories are sure to keep the listeners engrossed throughout. Furthermore, each episode has Mirchi’s original background score, thus creating an immersive listening experience for the users.

Commenting on the show’s launch, Entertainment Network India Ltd (ENILN) national content director Indira Rangarajan said, “We are delighted to witness a positive response from the audiences with the launch of each audio content. Our first celebrity marquee audio show 1000 Crore Ki Laash has been a huge success. In line with Mirchi’s aim of making Mirchi Plus ‘kahaniyon ka asli adda’, we have launched our latest true-crime audio story – India’s Most Wanted. Narrated in Suhaib Ilyasi’s quintessential voice, the series is sure to treat the users with a thrilling crime genre. We hope to continue to bring in multiple genres of audio entertainment for our listeners.”

August 31, 2022
VI brings live darshan of Lalbaugcha raja to its loyal customers

Mumbai: To enable its customers to experience the Lord Ganesha from anywhere in the world, telecom brand, Vodafone Idea will be streaming live darshan of Lalbaugcha raja on Vi App and Vi Movies & TV App, powered by ShemarooMe.

The Ganesh Festival will be celebrated from 31 August to 9 September across the country.

Vi customers can access the Vi Movies & TV App or Vi App from their mobile devices to watch live daily virtual aartis throughout the 10-day festive period.

The daily aarti will be streamed live at 1:00 p.m and 8:30 p.m. In addition, Vi customers will be able to watch Ganesha documentaries on the Vi App and Vi Movies & TV App.

On Anant Chaturdashi, viewers can join the live-streamed visarjan procession and bid Ganpati Bappa farewell until 10 p.m.

Vi has also made special arrangements to install Led screens in select Vi stores in Mumbai, which will broadcast Lalbaugcha Raja’s live darshan for the benefit of visitors and the general public.

August 31, 2022
Reliance Jio to roll out 5G services in major cities by Diwali

Mumbai: On Monday, at the 45th annual general meeting, Reliance Industries announced that Jio has prepared an ambitious 5G roll-out plan, which is claimed to be the fastest in the world.

Using immersive and interactive metaverse technology, Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani addressed the shareholders at the AGM and made the announcement.
The chairman’s statement also said that they have made a total investment of two 2 lakh crore rupees.

He said, “Within the next two months, by Diwali, we will launch Jio 5G across multiple key cities, including the metropolises of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai. Subsequently, we plan to increase the Jio 5G footprint month after month.”

“By December 2023, which is less than 18 months from today, we will deliver Jio 5G to every town, every taluka, and every tehsil of our country,” he added.

The company unveiled the AirFiber, a wireless plug-and-play 5G hotspot that does not require fibre cables and provides a personal Wi-Fi hotspot at home or in the office.

Reliance Jio chairman Akash Ambani said, “Jio 5G is an ultra-high-speed fixed-broadband. Since you get ber-like speeds over the air without any wires, we are calling it JioAirFiber. With JioAirFiber, it will be really easy to quickly connect your home or office to Gigabit-speed Internet. We have developed a JioAirFiber Home Gateway, which is a wireless, simple, single-device solution.”

Mukesh Ambani further added, “Digital Freedom is the birthright of every Indian. Therefore, 5G cannot remain an exclusive service, available only to the privileged few or only to those in our largest cities. To build our pan-India true 5G network, we have committed.”

“We are working with Google to develop ultra-affordable 5G smartphones for India. We will also leverage the advanced capabilities of Google Cloud to offer Jio’s private 5G stack and other 5G-enabled solutions to both domestic and global users at scale,” said Akash Ambani.

Jio has 421 million mobile broadband subscribers on their 4G network, and according to the company, they consume, on average, nearly 20 GB of broadband data every month, nearly doubling their consumption from the year before.

Jio’s pan-India fibre-optic network is more than 11 lakh kilometres in length.

“We will use our combined wireless and wireline assets to cover 3.3 million square kilometres, India’s total land mass, with fibre-quality broadband, connecting even those parts of the country where satellite technology was the only option,” said Mukesh Ambani.

The company has deployed the Made-In-India 5G stack in their network, with sufficient capacity to serve hundreds of millions of users right from day one.

“Using 5G technology, we can dramatically reduce latency or lag, and deliver breakthrough increases in broadband speed, network capacity, and the number of connected users,” said Mukesh Ambani.

According to Reliance Jio, the main objective is to roll out top-quality, highly affordable fixed broadband services to hundreds of millions of locations in a very short period of time.

Jio believes it could expand broadband availability to further stimulate the adoption of connected intelligent solutions across all walks of life.

Mukesh Ambani said, “We will connect over 100 million homes with unparalleled digital experiences and smart home solutions. We will catapult tens of millions of small merchants and small businesses to great heights, empowering them with cutting-edge, plug-and-play solutions delivered from the cloud. We will provide millions of medium-sized businesses with the same digital capabilities that were earlier available only to larger companies.”

“We will accelerate the digital transformation of tens of thousands of our large enterprises and make them globally competitive. And we will launch billions of smart sensors with connected intelligence that will trigger the internet of things and fuel the fourth industrial revolution,” he concluded.

In FY22. Reliance Industries has continued to make all-around progress across its businesses. The company became India’s first corporate to cross $100 billion in annual revenues. Reliance’s consolidated revenues grew 47 per cent to Rs 7.93 lakh crore. Reliance’s annual consolidated Ebitda crossed a crucial milestone of Rs 1.25 lakh crore.

August 30, 2022
Meta and Jio Platforms team up to launch JioMart on WhatsApp

Mumbai: In a global first, Meta has partnered with Jio Platforms to launch an end-to-end shopping experience on WhatsApp, where consumers can shop from JioMart right within their WhatsApp chat. JioMart on WhatsApp will enable users in India, including those who have never shopped online before, to seamlessly browse through JioMart’s entire grocery catalogue, add items to their cart, and make the payment to complete the purchase – all without leaving the WhatsApp chat.

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post, “Excited to launch our partnership with JioMart in India. This is our first-ever end-to-end shopping experience on WhatsApp—people can now buy groceries from JioMart right in a chat.”

“Business messaging is an area with real momentum, and chat-based experiences like this will be the go-to way people and businesses communicate in the years to come,” he added.

Making the announcement, Reliance Industries chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani said, “Our vision is to propel India as the world’s leading digital society. When Jio platforms and Meta announced our partnership in 2020, Mark and I shared a vision of bringing more people and businesses online and creating truly innovative solutions that will add convenience to the daily lives of every Indian.”

“One example of an innovative customer experience that we are proud of developing is the first ever end-to-end shopping experience with JioMart on WhatsApp. The JioMart on WhatsApp experience furthers our commitment to enabling a simple and convenient way of online shopping for millions of Indians,” he further said.

The launch is part of a strategic partnership between Meta and Jio Platforms to accelerate India’s digital transformation and provide people and businesses of all sizes opportunities to connect in new ways and fuel economic growth in the country, the company said in its statement.

Consumers can start shopping on JioMart via WhatsApp by simply sending ‘Hi’ to the JioMart number on the networking app, it added.

August 30, 2022
BBC Studios inks content partnership with BookMyShow Stream

Mumbai: BookMyShow Stream, the video on-demand (TVoD) service, announced an exclusive content partnership with BBC Studios India. This inaugural partnership will see the launch of a BBC first: a dedicated branded space in the form of a widget on BookMyShow Stream, enhancing its portfolio with a dose of premium, bold, and British drama. Pre-bookings for these coveted titles are now live on BookMyShow Stream.

Sherwood: It was launched to over six million viewers on the BBC (seven-day consolidated) and has been hailed by critics as one of television’s greatest dramas of recent years. The drama, which follows a tense and heart-wrenching investigation into two shocking and unexpected killings that shatter an already fractured community, is award-winning playwright and dramatist James Graham’s most personal work, having been inspired, in part, by real events that occurred in the Nottinghamshire mining village in which he grew up.

Ragdoll: A gruesomely imaginative serial killer thriller, Ragdoll captures the fascinating but flawed friends struggling with the consequences of institutionalisation and trauma. Starring Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Thalissa Teixeira, and Lucy Hale, Ragdoll is executive produced and commissioned by AMC and UKTV’s Alibi, and executive produced by Sid Gentle Films with Freddy Syborn as lead writer and executive producer.

Unforgotten Season 1: This crime drama focuses on a cold case reopened after 39 years. When the body of a young man is discovered in a derelict building, DCI Cassie Stuart-one of the Met’s smartest detectives-is called in to investigate. There are four suspects, each with a secret to hide. As their lies unravel, the people they love most begin to wonder what else they might be capable of. Unforgotten brings together one of the most accomplished acting ensembles seen on British television in years. The multi-award-winning cast includes Nicola Walker, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Bernard Hill, Trevor Eve, Ruth Sheen, Golden Globe and Bafta-winner Tom Courtenay, and Bafta-winner Gemma Jones.

BookMyShow Stream will feature other titles, including Smother (seasons 1-2), Traces (seasons 1-2), The Chelsea Detective, Happy Valley (seasons 1-2) and Unforgotten (seasons 1-4) on its platform over the next two quarters.

BBC Studios’ VP for distribution in South Asia Stanley Fernandes said, “BBC Studios is known for its premium content that is backed by powerful storytelling and the ability to connect with a global audience. We are constantly looking at innovative ways to complement the evolving consumption habits of our audiences and are delighted to embark on this new partnership with BookMyShow Stream to reach new audiences in the dynamic and vibrant streaming landscape of India.”

BookMyShow COO-cinemas Ashish Saksena said, “The TVOD space is gaining traction as more and more entertainment enthusiasts are imbibing the culture of ‘Pay for what you want to watch’, rather than having multiple subscriptions. With BBC Studios taking cognizance of the mammoth opportunity this category holds, we are excited to see this exclusive partnership scale it further. We are thrilled to bring coveted BBC Studios titles into the BookMyShow Stream fold, furthering our aspiration to bring compelling international content to Indian audiences. The BBC First widget on our platform will attract audiences gunning for purposeful content, bringing the best of British content to India. Through this strategic partnership, we aim to take our entertainment quotient a notch higher and offer an unmatched viewing experience to our consumers.”

Fans can ‘rent’ or ‘buy’ on the BBC First dedicated branded space in the form of a widget on BookMyShow Stream. Entertainment enthusiasts can avail a 50 per cent discount offer on Sherwood, Ragdoll, and Unforgotten (season 1) for a limited two-week period on the platform.

With over 2,000 titles available since its launch in February 2021, BookMyShow Stream features a handpicked, specially curated library of content from around the world and India that users can rent or buy and watch. The platform uses over two decades of BookMyShow’s user understanding and data insights to focus on personalised content discovery with access to a selection of on-demand content from across the world.

August 30, 2022
Saregama, YouTube announce global licensing deal

Mumbai: Saregama has announced a global deal with YouTube for YouTube Shorts, a short-format video experience on YouTube.

This partnership will allow users to create short videos on YouTube using Saregama’s humongous catalogue of songs. Saregama said that it is India’s oldest music label with a catalogue of over 1.40 lakh songs across many different genres, including new and old film and non-film songs, devotional music, ghazals, and Indipop in more than 25 languages like Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Telugu, Bhojpuri, and Gujrati, amongst others.

Starting now, YouTube Shorts creators will be able to use music from one of the most extensive music libraries in India, which includes classics from legends like Lata Mangeshkar, Kishore Kumar, Mohammed Rafi, Asha Bhosle, Gulzar, Jagjit Singh, R.D. Burman, Kalyanji Anandji, Geeta Dutt, and Laxmikant Pyarelal, and at the same time, the latest hits from Badshah, Neeti Mohan, Papon, Adnan Sami and many other contemporary artists.

The short content format is very popular among audiences and creators as it is a very inclusive way of expressing thoughts, emotions, moods, or experiences in a more vibrant, personal, engaging, and meaningful manner.

August 30, 2022