ITV

Category: Over The Top Services

  • Disney+ Hotstar’s ad inventory for ‘Koffee with Karan Season 7’ sold out; on boards 8 sponsors

    Disney+ Hotstar’s ad inventory for ‘Koffee with Karan Season 7’ sold out; on boards 8 sponsors

    Mumbai: Disney+ Hotstar has sold 100 per cent of its ad inventory for the upcoming season seven of the country’s beloved chat show – Koffee with Karan. The latest season is scheduled to begin streaming on 7 July.

    After seven successful seasons, the upcoming season of Koffee with Karan, sponsored by eight brands, will stream exclusively on Disney+ Hotstar. The show will be co-powered by Ajio Luxe and Bru while Amazon Alexa, BoAt and Only Natural Diamonds will be special partners. Just like its previous seasons, the show will be propelled by its driving partner, Audi and its lighting partner will be Jaquar Bath+ Light. India’s premium makeup platform, MyGlamm will serve as the presenting sponsor.

    In a quest to offer a bigger, better and more transcendental show to its viewers, season seven, hosted by the iconic Bollywood personality, Karan Johar, will infuse new segments and deeper conversations. Broadening the horizon, while the show will retain its usual candid conversations, it will also feature a monologue by Karan himself on current events and trending conversations, belting the naughty and nice while introducing his guests.

    The eight brands on-boarded for this season, echo the sentiment of Koffee with Karan driving synergies with their unique offerings and some of these will see interesting in-show integrations. Karan Johar will be turning on the Jaquar lights for the show’s signature Rapid Fire Round where a series of fast-paced questions bring out the hidden truth from the stars. Adding to the heat will also be the challenging buzzer round in the ‘MyGlamm Zone’ of sizzling slams and games. In addition to the fun and games will be Bru-ing conversations where stars share what floats their BoAt. Additionally, accompanying Karan Johar’s vocals request will be Amazon Alexa as he quizzes his guests to spill their beans on Diamonds and fashion.

    “The popularity of reality shows has been growing, and as one of India’s longest-running reality talk shows, Koffee with Karan establishes new standards with each new season, creating extraordinary excitement for viewers and advertisers alike. The complete sell out of the show’s ad inventory is a testimony to this fact, and with Koffee with Karan going Disney+ Hotstar exclusive, it offers a great opportunity for our advertisers to connect with their audiences, said a Disney+ Hotstar spokesperson. He further added, “We are thrilled to welcome onboard our sponsors for the latest season of the legacy talk show and are excited to see the response of the audiences.”

    Through a legacy show like Koffee With Karan, Disney+ Hotstar provides brands a unique opportunity to reach a highly engaged, urban, affluent and digitally savvy audience. The platform offers a variety of advertising and branded content solutions to help businesses across sectors engage with their audiences more effectively.

     

  • HBO Max to stop original content creation in the Nordics, Central Europe, the Netherlands & Turkey

    HBO Max to stop original content creation in the Nordics, Central Europe, the Netherlands & Turkey

    MUMBAI: Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) is putting a stop to original productions by its streaming service HBO Max in the Nordics, Central Europe, the Netherlands and Turkey.

    In a statement, the company said, “As we continue to work on combining HBO Max and Discovery+ into one global streaming service showcasing the breadth of content across Warner Bros. Discovery, we are reviewing our current content proposition on the existing services.”

    “As part of this process, we have decided to remove a limited amount of original programming from HBO Max, as well as ceasing our original programming efforts for HBO Max in the Nordics and Central Europe. We have also ceased our nascent development activities in the newer territories of Netherlands and Turkey, which had commenced over the past year,” it stated.

    “Our commitment to these markets has not changed. We will continue to commission local content for Warner Bros. Discovery’s linear networks in these regions and we remain substantial acquirers of local third-party content for use on our streaming services,” the company statement added.

  • Lightbulb.ai raises $1.5 mn in pre-seed funding round from investors

    Lightbulb.ai raises $1.5 mn in pre-seed funding round from investors

    MUMBAI: Lightbulb.ai, an emotion AI and engagement analytics platform has raised a pre-seed funding round of $1.5 million from investors Chiratae Ventures and 9Unicorns. The other investors participating include Anthill Ventures and AI-led video-editing company, VideoVerse. The funds raised by this early-stage start-up will be deployed to deepen the datasets for their machine-learning technology & expand the product offering of emotion and engagement insights gathered from a user’s video, audio and speech inputs for a variety of industries. 

    Lightbulb is the brainchild of second-time entrepreneurial trio – Ritu Srivastava, Yogesh Sachdeva and Vishal Soni – who have earlier built and exited Obino, a digital health & weight-loss coaching start-up, that offered health-management solutions across a variety of health conditions. Their successful exit to US-based health conglomerate Roundglass Partners in 2017, paved the way for their next venture. With a minimum viable product (MVP) launch in late 2021, Lightbulb has had an opportunity to validate its product and market hypotheses before zeroing in on its go-to-market (GTM) plans.

    With four patents already in the pipeline and datasets spanning millions of faces across geographies and ethnicities, Lightbulb aims to help businesses that offer remote user experiences, to solve for higher engagement by mapping user emotion & engagement in real-time! From analysing user engagement during live meetings/calls to researching the emotional impact of pre-recorded content and asynchronous user experiences on consumers, Lightbulb offers nuanced solutions that are relevant to industries such as online learning, sales enablement and consumer research. 

    With insights from early customers pouring in, Lightbulb is fast-tracking growth on its multi-modal product & this early-stage capital infusion will help accelerate Lightbulb.ai in building its product & engineering teams, particularly in the fields of data science, machine learning and consumer insights and prepare itself for an early launch in the US market. The company was exclusively advised on this transaction by PepperTree, an advisory firm run by ex-bankers Akshi Mehta & Ankur Goyal.

    Lightbulb.ai co-founder and CEO Ritu Srivastava said, “We are privileged to be supported by some of India’s most prestigious early-stage institutional investors, with vast experience in helping deep-tech B2B SAAS companies build & scale global products in international markets. And are deeply grateful for the trust that they have placed in us at this early stage!” 

    Co-founder & CPO Vishal Soni said, “Customer decisions are emotional & not rational! Since current feedback modes are post-facto, by the time actionable intelligence reaches decision makers, opportunities are lost. Lightbulb enables businesses to measure emotion data & transmit actionable insights to decision-makers in real-time, helping them acquire and retain better.”

    Co-founder & CTO Yogesh Sachdeva said, “Our focus is now on developing a powerful platform that can power significant value-adding emotion ai products with high accuracy levels across ethnicities and age groups & applicability across multiple industries.”

    “Leveraging an intelligent emotion recognition platform through video interaction, Lightbulb is leading the next wave of innovation in this space. We are excited to partner with the founding team at Lightbulb, as they disrupt leading industries like education, banking, mental wellness etc,” said Chiratae Ventures India Advisors founder & chairman Sudhir Sethi.

    9Unicorns Accelerator Fund co-founder & managing director Dr Apoorva Ranjan Sharma said, “While emotion ai is at a nascent stage, it is an exponentially growing technology with a wide variety of use-cases across multiple industries. Lightbubl.ai holds the potential to be relevant across multiple market verticals and that is a strong indicator of how valuable the company will be in the future. As the world becomes more chaotic, the importance of emotion AI will only grow. We are excited to support the team as they enhance the accessibility and utility of emotion AI.”

    “We are excited to support Lightbubl.ai at this stage of its growth trajectory. They have shown great promise so far and we are deeply interested in the solutions that they are building for media and consumer research markets. Media tech is an explosively growing field and we are sure that Lightbulb will be able to make a clear space for itself in this market and scale with speed!”, said Anthill ventures CEO Prasad Vanga.

    “As a company that also harnesses the power of AI, we recognise the potential that emotion AI has as a technology. We are thrilled to be a part of this journey and are confident the team will build a long-term product solution with strong fundamentals,” said Videoverse strategy lead Siddhant Bhandari.

  • GUEST ARTICLE: Audience insights empower OTT businesses to gain competitive advantage

    GUEST ARTICLE: Audience insights empower OTT businesses to gain competitive advantage

    Mumbai: India is witnessing a monumental shift in the consumption of entertainment with the emergence of OTT platforms dominating traditional television and big screens. The heightened demand to access quality content conveniently, has led digital video content to rise in popularity. According to a recent report by CII and BCG, between 2019 to 2022, India noticed a growth of only two per cent in the adoption of TV services by households, but a 51 per cent rise in SVoD (subscription video on demand) services, in comparison. Additionally, given the exponential rise in internet access and the rapid developments in online video streaming platforms, India’s OTT streaming market is anticipated to become the sixth largest by 2024, as per the PwC report.

    This growth has resulted in tremendous opportunities for all OTT companies in the country, widening the business landscape for OTT players to grab adequate market share/outwit competition. To stay ahead of the curve, companies are increasingly looking for ways to deliver as per consumer’s appetite for entertainment and improve online video viewer growth.

    How can businesses identify their best content and uncover actionable audience behaviours across devices and geographies to track customer interest and engagement?

    Customer engagement is the primary driving force behind the SVoD ecosystem. SVoD providers in the space are largely emphasising on data to improve the end-user experience by providing recommendations based on customer preferences more effectively. However, companies need a more innovative way to bring their value to the market and set them apart from their competitors. By taking analytics to the next level, businesses can have a greater understanding of audience dynamics and customers’ lifetime value, build more successful personalisation, acquisition, and retention strategies from data.

    Another consideration is user experience. This is an important factor in getting viewers to subscribe to an OTT service. This, of course, is taking into account that the content is engaging, and the genre is of interest to the audience being targeted. The user friendliness of the app and its seamless flow needs to be taken into account while building an OTT service. If not, it can become a deterrent for consumers to subscribe, preventing audiences from seeing the curated content.

    Unlocking ‘Audience Insights’ to create ‘Measurable Results’

    Audience data is necessary to drive revenue and business value for OTT companies, particularly those operating with an SVoD model. By leveraging a robust intelligent video platform, businesses can collect and analyse data from multiple sources in a single, reliable, secure, and scalable platform to produce valuable insights. Bringing these data sources together enables business leaders to make data-driven decisions to optimise content, marketing, and product strategies. When video performance metrics are coupled with the audience insight data, the video works better for the business and for its revenue goals.

    With this approach, businesses can unlock new insights to achieve the much-needed edge in an increasingly saturated market. For example, in order to lower customer acquisition costs and churn rates, while maximising investment in content, companies should augment data metrics with content and subscriber insights to drive the following business strategies successfully:

    •  Focus on high lifetime value (LTV) customers – Net-new acquisition costs for OTT companies are high but audience insights can lower acquisition costs by identifying which marketing sources have the highest conversion rate and lowest cost per acquisition.
    •  Engage stalled trialists – Audience data can indicate which subscribers signed up for the service but have yet to stream a video. Such viewer insight can inform automated marketing emails to those viewers, prompting them to watch and engage.
    • Reduce churn of at-risk customers – Businesses can prevent churn by identifying which audience chorts are declining in their engagement and have a high likelihood of cancelling based on behavioural patterns in their viewer history.
    • Increase loyalty – Creating the most value for customers is critical to build loyalty. Businesses can leverage insights for targeted, personalised marketing campaigns to promote relevant  content based on viewer behaviour.
    • Optimise content investment – Content acquisition costs are a huge investment. Audience insights can help understand what content is driving the most subscribers and the most consumption. Businesses can further licence more similar content that bring additional value to its customers.
    • Promote the videos that will drive the most revenue – Using content performance intelligence can direct audiences to the content assets and maximise the revenue achieved through the acquisition of content.

    Winning in the era of transformation

    Marketers have taken advantage of lots of data points over the years: subscriptions, video views, customer payments, marketing touchpoints, video metadata, marketing channel investment. All of the metrics speak to critical business needs. However, in today’s fast-paced market, having the right data is no longer enough. Businesses need intelligence from that data. They need centralised solutions that not only house that data but translate it into measurable results. With an additional layer of machine learning on top of the data infrastructure, businesses can integrate diverse data sources together and apply advanced analytics to predict customer dynamics and fuel profitable growth.

    By aggregating the data, businesses can achieve a comprehensive, 360-degree view of the video performance tied to customer engagement. Aggregated intelligence is thus becoming a critical component for business success. This next evolution of audience and content insights are central to engage customers, monitise content, and prepare OTT businesses to make the most of the changing dynamics in the entertainment industry.

    The author is Brightcove managing director – sales, India & SAARC region Subhasish Gupta.

  • Applause Entertainment expands into Southern markets; unveils Chennai office

    Applause Entertainment expands into Southern markets; unveils Chennai office

    Mumbai: Aditya Birla Group’s venture Applause Entertainment on Tuesday announced its expansion in the southern market and set up a dedicated office in Chennai. Buoyed by the opportunities that regional OTT space presents, Applause will further develop its South content acquisition and creation strategy.  

    Sign of Life Productions director and producer Pramod Cheruvalath has joined as the south – content head to spearhead this ambitious plan along with Applause Entertainment producer Vighnesh Menon.

    Pramod had earlier produced Iru Dhuruvam (Tamil) along with Applause Entertainment for SonyLIV and will now be responsible to build Applause’s content slate in all four Southern markets to create a diversified slate of premium series and movies across languages. Previously, the content studio has also produced series like Humble Politician Nograj (Kannada), Vadham, and Kuruthi Kalam (Tamil), apart from producing the second season of Iru Dhuruvam.

    Commenting on this expansion, Applause Entertainment CEO Sameer Nair said, “The global streamer has created a flat Earth and indeed, a global village. Content from every geography and in every language has the opportunity to reach audiences everywhere. After our successes in the Hindi/Hinglish category, we are really keen to work with the amazing talent in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada to tell rooted authentic stories for a domestic and international stage.  On-boarding Pramod to oversee the expansion is our first step in that direction. His extensive network, market knowledge and creative expertise will help build our unique hub & spoke business model in the key Southern markets”.

    Pramod Cheruvalath shared, “Ever since its inception, Applause Entertainment has backed and produced clutter-breaking content across genres. Regional content has unexplored potential and the ability to establish a strong connection with a local, national and international audience. Happy to take on this new role to work with Sameer and the team at Applause Entertainment to upscale the Applause Slate with genre breaking authentic and relatable South stories for a worldwide audience.”

  • Netflix’s brand & content marketing lead Dipashree Das moves on

    Netflix’s brand & content marketing lead Dipashree Das moves on

    Mumbai: Netflix brand and content marketing lead Dipashree Das has moved on after a six-year association. Based out of Mumbai, she was a manager in Netflix’s marketing team focusing on film launches across India and Southeast Asia (SEA).

    “I recently made the decision to wrap up an almost 6-year stint at a place I have had the highest honour of calling my professional home, Netflix. Oh, and what a wild ride it has been! Netflix is a place like no other, it changes you, redefines you, bends you out of shape, makes you believe you in yourself in a measure you didn’t think possible. I learnt much more than I was ever able to contribute,” she said in a LinkedIn post.

    She also hinted that she has joined another entertainment company at an Asia Pacific and China (APAC) level role.

    Das was responsible for launching some of Netflix’ biggest successes in India including “Haseen Dilruba”, “Ludo” and Sacred Games season two.

    With over 18 years of experience, Das has been responsible for launching and architecting brands across India and SEA. Prior to Netflix, she was associated with Singtel. She has had stints at Channel NewsAsia, Oak3 Films, NDTV and Unilever.

  • Affle board appoints four additional directors

    Affle board appoints four additional directors

    Mumbai: Technology company Affle on Monday announced the appointment of four additional directors to its board. The new members include independent director Lay See Tan, executive director Vipul Kedia, non-executive director Noelia Amoedo and non-executive director Elad Natanson.

    Vipul Kedia has been associated with Affle for 16 years and is currently serving as chief data and platforms officer and head of MAAS Platform in India.

    Noelia Amoedo is the founder and CEO of mediasmart, now part of the Affle Group. She has extensive experience in mobile, internet and social media, with a proven track record of developing profitable businesses from scratch in international markets.

    Lay See Tan is a seasoned finance professional who has served as CFO of public-listed companies on Singapore Stock Exchange, NASDAQ and led hyper growth tech start-ups across various industries.

    Elad Natanson is the CEO of Appnext, now part of Affle group and has been at the forefront of mobile and internet innovation for more than 20 years evangelising several companies in the digital sphere.

    With this, Affle’s board will now comprise 10 directors led by an independent non-executive chairman and will include four women directors. The additions are designed to support Affle’s accelerated growth momentum, provide greater accountability to the senior leadership and reflect upon the company’s commitment to maintain highest standards of corporate governance with enhanced depth of expertise.

    Affle non-executive chairman and independent director Bijynath said, “I am pleased to welcome new directors to the board where their years of invaluable experience, skills and diversity of opinion will help us on our journey ahead. This will further enhance our overall corporate governance, risk management processes & thought leadership enabling holistic organisational development and sustainable value creation for all our stakeholders.”

    Affle managing director and CEO Anuj Khanna Sohum said, “These appointments come at a time when we are amidst our accelerated growth trajectory, embarking on several innovations and I am elated to welcome the directors joining our board at such a pivotal phase of Affle. The directors’ unique and entrepreneurial perspective will further augment our strategic differentiation, global market position following the highest levels of transparency and governance. We look forward to leveraging their scientific and strategic expertise while keenly promoting our Affle 2.0 culture of diversity, equity and inclusion across the organisation including at our board of directors.”

  • boAt announces leadership expansion; onboards P Narayan, C Awasthi as business and HR heads

    boAt announces leadership expansion; onboards P Narayan, C Awasthi as business and HR heads

    Mumbai: Imagine Marketing, which owns the market-leading wireless hearables and wearables brand boAt has announced several new appointments to the leadership team, affirming its focus to building a top-notch team to unleash the next phase of growth. The company has increased its workforce by over 110 employees and is now over 300 boAtheads strong.

    Key additions include: 

    Prejith Narayan, the chief business officer, brings over 12 years of experience after serving industry juggernauts like Amazon, Aditya Birla Group and IBM. During his stint at Amazon, Prejith led multiple key categories like wireless audio, wearables, PCA and beauty.

    Charmie Awasthi, recently appointed as chief human resource officer brings with her a rich professional experience of over 17 years with media conglomerates like Viacom18 and Zee Entertainment. During her professional career, she has partnered with & consulted business leaders on people strategy and practices to enable organisational growth and development. She specialises in organisation design, leadership development, change management, coaching & mentoring and performance management.  

    Shyam Vedantam, who has joined the deck as a chief product delivery officer, comes with over two decades of rich experience as a tech business leader and an entrepreneur. From building products to scaling businesses, he has previously served large enterprises including Harman and GE along with start-ups across US, India, and the Asia Pacific.

    Rakshit Gupta will be responsible for spearheading the CX initiatives as the head of customer experience at boAt.  His diverse experience in areas like strategy, product, and operations across Swiggy, The Boston Consulting Group, and Flipkart, is certain to add a tremendous value to all the new customer delight initiatives that the company is set to usher in.

    Vibhor Jain, recently appointed as the head of e-commerce, brings to the table a span of experiences across e-commerce, electronics, and FMCG sector with industry giants like Tata Cliq, Appario Retail, Patanjali, and TCS where he worked in roles across corporate strategy, business development and category management.

    Essaying roles in brand strategy, market research, innovation, P&L management and new product development; Aman Brara has recently joined as the head of wearables. Known for scaling up business and brands, he has worked with Reckitt and Godrej Consumer Products in the past and is truly passionate about taking the category to new heights.

    Imagine Marketing CEO Vivek Gambhir said, “Over the years, under the inspiring leadership of Aman and Sameer, our co-founders, the company has been successful in rapidly scaling up the business and delivering profitable growth. For our next phase of growth, we are elated to expand our team and welcome dynamic and talented leaders who will help us chart the way and take Imagine Marketing to the next level. As we grow, we will continue to scout for great talent to add across multiple functions.”

  • i-Tap inks MoU with NextPlay

    i-Tap inks MoU with NextPlay

    Mumbai: Triple Com Media (iTap) Mumbai, has announced a strategic partnership with NextPlay Technologies. NextPlay’s in-game advertising (IGA) unit, HotPlay has entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with iTap, Mumbai. It is an OTT entertainment and gaming platform in India that offers comedy shorts, mobisodes, films, serials, lifestyle features, gaming and esports content targeted to Indian smartphone audiences. 

    The MOU aims at a partnership that will target India’s fast growing online gaming audience and later also extend to international markets in fourth quarter of 2022 when iTap expands overseas. The collaboration includes integration of HotPlay’s In-Game Advertising (IGA) tech into iTap’s existing entertainment, gaming, and e-sports content. HotPlay’s hyper-casual game portfolio currently includes more than fifty exciting games and growing which will also be on boarded onto iTap’s existing library of casual and trivia games and quizzes. The joint effort is designed to create an ecosystem in-line with both organisation’s business objectives while entertaining India’s 400 million plus gaming audience. 

    Despite the pandemic and recent economic turmoil, the parties believe that India remains a bright spot for growth. The partnership aims to seize opportunities in the high growth markets of hyper-casual genre games, e-sports, and gaming tournaments. Both parties view hyper-casual gaming as an opportunity due to its easy-to-play nature that engages broad audience age groups. 

    NextPlay co-CEO Nithinan Boonyawattanapisut stated, “The company sees great opportunity in the Indian market, not only from the size of the market itself but also from the remarkable growth rate of its entertainment segment, particularly in the hyper-casual game space and overall gaming industry. We are optimistic about this strategic collaboration with iTAP’s fast-growing OTT platform and an opportunity to enter the Indian market. We believe in the recent completion of our goGame asset purchase, our hyper-casual game portfolio and our HotPlay.” 

    “The parties added that an IGA solution offers great synergistic value to a diversified entertainment platform like iTap. The integration of HotPlay games and IGA will better position iTAP’s entertainment ecosystem in India and augment revenue opportunities through iTAP’s rapidly growing user base.” he added. 

    Triple Com Media, iTap founder & CEO Kunal Dasgupta said, “HotPlay will help strengthen iTAP’s gaming profile and integrating IGA into iTap also creates promotional extensions such as in-game coupons, rewards, and contests. These synergies are expected to be very beneficial and relevant for marketers besides additional opportunities for iTap and HotPlay to explore collaboration in new, emerging areas like NFTs, digital fashion and virtual artefacts for the Metaverse.” 

    Dasgupta is a veteran in the Indian media and entertainment industry; prior to founding iTAP he was Sony Pictures Networks (India) CEO for 15 years.

  • Disney Star elevates Amrutha Nair’s position as head ad sales – Hindi & English entertainment

    Disney Star elevates Amrutha Nair’s position as head ad sales – Hindi & English entertainment

    Mumbai: Disney Star India has elevated Amrutha Nair as head of ad sales for Hindi and English entertainment. She will take over from Arghya Chakravarty who has moved on from the company after a five-year association.

    Nair’s role has been expanded in addition to her current responsibility where she is managing the product and revenue strategy for the regional business.

    Nair began her career with Asianet Communications following which she joined TV Today Network to handle their ad sales for Southern markets. She re-joined Star in 2016 as product & revenue head for English cluster following which she moved on to the regional business in April 2017.