MAM

A new formula to ‘Engross’

Published

19 years ago

December 9, 2006

The biggest threat for advertisers is rapidly climbing as the rate of ‘ad avoidance’ crosses the 70 per cent threshold across all media, among both active and passive avoiders. What’s more alarming is the fact that ad avoidance is higher in rural India than in urban areas.

As this trend is expected to go even higher, Intellect, a part of the Lintas Media Group in association with Hansa Research Group released the findings of a study titled ‘Engross, a media engagement and ad avoidance study.’

Lintas India Pvt. Ltd director media services Lynn de Souza addressed a gathering of media planners, owners and clients, alerting them of the implications of this growing menace for the industry.

“We have all been battling with ad avoidance for a while,” says de Souza. “What we certainly didn’t expect were such high avoidance levels, even in rural areas, and even on the internet. That is clearly a reflection of the consumer’s overall disapproval of the enormously high and growing ad clutter levels and is an issue that media owners should seriously take on board. In an attempt to reduce per unit prices they often simply increase the inventory on offer in an ad sales package, which results in high clutter, and high avoidance of the very ads they are trying to get more of!”

What emerged as a result of the findings, de Souza said, was not that this group of ‘heavy media consumers’ disliked advertisements altogether, but instead they choose to avoid the growing clutter that they perceive to be dominating the media landscape. Encompassing all mass media including TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, outdoor and internet, her advice to fellow media experts, was that flooding the environment with an overdose of brands will ultimately lead the consumer to turn away from advertisements.

With specific reference to television, this will pose a big ‘risk’ to the so-called burgeoning branded entertainment industry, which is just beginning to bear fruit in India. What’s more, the changing technological media environment will aid passive ad avoiders to quickly become active in doing the same.

Spanning two months, October and November, Intellect engaged Hansa Research to update its biannual ad avoidance measures. This year the study included an understanding of how various consumer segments engage themselves with different genres of mass media, including sport, news, movies, education, fashion, serials etc.

Besides narrowing in on an urban sample size of 1,073 respondents (SEC A, 15-40 year olds, students, housewives, working people) across Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Hyderabad, the study also captured the behaviour of the rural audiences. The Bharat Barometer (Intellect’s joint venture with ITC’s e chaupal network) was used to estimate the same measures by contacting 892 people in rural UP, Maharashtra and AP. These included 606 e chaupal Sanchalaks and 286 rural women.

On having conceived the study, Initiative senior vice president Premjeet Sodhi said, “We are still discovering new nuggets of information each time we analyse the findings. This study is directly applicable to the media planning needs of our various clients who focus on the key youth, housewife, and working segments, and also provides us with data on the ‘upper market’ rural audiences which the industry has never had at such a detailed level earlier.”

Focusing on two verticals within the framework of a consumer’s media interaction – content and ambient design. The former drives engagement while the latter generates avoidance which has greatly risen from last year across media. Based on the content vertical, the study highlighted the degree of engagement taking four main factors – Content, Relevance, Interactivity and Personalisation (CRIP score). Thus, Intellect has devised 305 CRIP scores across 61 genres and five target groups to be used by media planners to improve media selection.

Speaking about the method used to administer the study, Intellect associate VP Julius Augustine says, “The most important part of the study was the development of the statements that would measure engagement across the four parameters of content, relevance, interactivity and personalization (CRIP).

“We needed to measure engagement not just at the media but also at the genre level. Hence, part of the questionnaire was self administered, guided by the interviewer. The respondent had to place all the genres simultaneously on an engagement scale at the same time for each statement separately. Hence, if needed, the respondent could go back and change his ratings as each new medium was presented (For example, he began to compare news on TV with news in dailies) till he had rated all genres to his or her satisfaction.”

Using the CRIP score which is synonymous with engagement, Engross concluded that the more engaging the content the lower the ad avoidance (except for magazines). More specifically, the more consumers are engaged with a particular genre, the less likely are they to avoid ads in that genre.

Some of the findings also revealed data that would provide a ray of hope for the umpteen news channels, as news on television has emerged as more engaging than in newspapers.

However, the biggest challenge for advertisers comes from ‘student’ consumers, as regardless of the degree of engagement with a particular genre, the level of ad avoidance remains high.

In this day and age when media clutter is commonplace and every brand attempts to adopt newer ways to ‘break through that clutter,’ the essence of creating engaging content somehow gets displaced. All in all the core aim of seducing the consumer also gets blurred!

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MAM

Nielsen launches co-viewing pilot to sharpen TV measurement

Super Bowl pilot to refine how shared TV audiences are counted

Published

3 days ago

February 4, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Nielsen is taking a fresh stab at one of television’s oldest blind spots: how many people are actually watching the same screen. The audience-measurement giant on February 4 unveiled a co-viewing pilot that uses wearable devices to better capture shared viewing, starting with America’s biggest broadcast stage.

The trial begins with Super Bowl LX on NBC on February 8, 2026, before extending to other high-profile live sports and entertainment events in the first half of the year. The goal is simple but commercially potent: count viewers more accurately, especially during live spectacles that pull families and friends to one screen.

The new approach leans on Nielsen’s proprietary wearable meters, wrist-worn devices that resemble smartwatches. These passively capture audio signatures from TV content, logging exposure to shows, films and live events without requiring viewers to sign in or self-report. In theory, fewer clicks, fewer lapses, better data.

Karthik Rao, Nielsen’s ceo, cast the move as part of a broader measurement push. He said the company’s task is to keep pushing accuracy as clients invest heavily in live programming that draws mass audiences. The co-viewing pilot, he added, builds on upgrades such as Big Data + Panel measurement, out-of-home expansion, live-streaming metrics and wearable-based tracking.

Co-viewing is not new territory for Nielsen, which has long tried to estimate how many people sit before a single set. What is new is the heavier integration of wearables and passive detection to reduce reliance on active inputs from panel homes.

For now, the pilot comes with caveats. Co-viewing estimates from the trial will not be folded into Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel ratings, which remain the industry’s trading currency. Instead, pilot findings will be shared with clients a few weeks after final Big Data + Panel ratings are delivered. Clients may disclose those findings publicly.

More impact data will follow later this year. Full integration into Nielsen’s marketing-intelligence suite is slated as a longer-term play, with a target of bringing co-viewing into currency measurement for the 2026–2027 season. This is only phase one, with further co-viewing enhancements planned beyond 2026 and additional timelines to be announced.

The push fits a wider pattern. Nielsen has in recent years expanded big-data integration, adopted first-party data for live-streaming measurement and broadened out-of-home tracking. It also positions itself as the reference point for streaming metrics through products such as The Gauge and the Nielsen Streaming Top 10.

In a market where billions of ad dollars hinge on decimal points, counting who is in the room matters. If Nielsen can pin down shared viewing, the humble sofa could become prime measurement real estate. The race to count every eyeball just found a new wrist to watch.

Brands

Delhivery chairman Deepak Kapoor, independent director Saugata Gupta quit board

Published

1 week ago

January 31, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

Gurugram: Delhivery’s boardroom is being reset. Deepak Kapoor, chairman and independent director, has resigned with effect from April 1 as part of a planned board reconstitution, the logistics company said in an exchange filing. Saugata Gupta, managing director and chief executive of FMCG major Marico and an independent director on Delhivery’s board, has also stepped down.

Kapoor exits after an eight-year stint that included steering the company through its 2022 stock-market debut, a period that saw Delhivery transform from a venture-backed upstart into one of India’s most visible logistics platforms. Gupta, who joined the board in 2021, departs alongside him, marking a simultaneous clearing of two senior independent seats.

“Deepak and Saugata have been instrumental in our process of recognising the need for and enabling the reconstitution of the board of directors in line with our ambitious next phase of growth,” said Sahil Barua, managing director and chief executive, Delhivery. The statement frames the exits less as departures and more as deliberate succession, a boardroom shuffle timed to the company’s evolving scale and strategy.

The resignations arrive amid broader governance recalibration. In 2025, Delhivery appointed Emcure Pharmaceuticals whole-time director Namita Thapar, PB Fintech founder and chairman Yashish Dahiya, and IIM Bangalore faculty member Padmini Srinivasan as independent directors, signalling a tilt towards consumer, fintech and academic expertise at the board level.

Kapoor’s tenure spanned Delhivery’s most defining years, rapid network expansion, public listing and the push towards profitability in a bruising logistics market. Gupta’s presence brought FMCG and brand-scale perspective during a period when ecommerce volumes and last-mile delivery economics were being rewritten.

The twin exits, effective from the new financial year, underscore a familiar corporate rhythm: founders consolidate, veterans rotate out, and fresh voices are ushered in to script the next chapter. In India’s hyper-competitive logistics race, even the boardroom does not stand still.

MAM

Meta appoints Anuvrat Rao as APAC head of commerce partnerships

Published

1 week ago

January 31, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

SINGAPORE: Anuvrat Rao has taken charge as APAC head of commerce and signals partnerships at Meta, steering monetisation deals across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp from Singapore. The former Google executive, known for launching Google Assistant, PWAs, AMP and Firebase across Asia-Pacific, steps into the role after a high-growth stint as chief business officer at Locofy.ai.

At Locofy.ai, Rao helped convert a three-year free beta into a paid engine, clocking 1,000 subscribers and 15 enterprise clients within ten days of launch in September 2024. The low-code startup, backed by Accel and top tech founders, is famed for turning designs into production-ready code using proprietary large design models.

Before that, Rao founded generative AI venture 1Bstories, which was acquired by creative AI platform Laetro in mid-2024, where he briefly served as managing director for APAC. Alongside operating roles, he has been an active investor and advisor since 2020, backing startups such as BotMD, Muxy, Creator plus, Intellect, Sealed and CricFlex through a creator-economy-led thesis.

Rao spent over eight years at Google, holding senior partnership roles across search, assistant, chrome, web and YouTube in APAC, and earlier cut his teeth in strategy consulting at OC&C in London and investment finance at W. P. Carey in Europe and the US.