MAM
Havas establishes dedicated customer experience network
NEW DELHI: Havas Creative has launched Havas CX – a new, international network dedicated to delivering meaningful brand experiences across the entire customer journey. It brings together more than 1200 people from 20 of Havas Creative’s global agency groups and local agencies, plus additional CX specialists from across the Havas network, under a common structure, governance, methodology and mission.
Havas CX will span 18 major Havas Villages around the world, with key hubs in London, Paris, New York and Mumbai. It brings together global agency groups including ekino (digital transformation), BETC FullSix (customer experience), Havas helia (customer engagement) and award-winning leaders in their markets including Plastic Havas, Langoor, Boondoggle, Gate One, Think Design, Host/Havas, Project House and Intellignos.
Havas CX’s competitive advantage lies in its ability to combine this deep-rooted, newly coordinated CX expertise with Havas’ rich insights into modern consumers (via its proprietary Meaningful Brands study of 350,000 consumers), its ground-breaking Prosumer studies of ‘leading edge’ consumers, and its X Index – a new barometer for measuring and managing customer experience) and its unique, integrated village model–establishing the ability to look at customer experience from a more holistic, comprehensive and less siloed perspective.
This combination provides the network with the ability to marry the technological, functional aspects of CX with its clients’ brand promise and the personal and cultural context devised from Havas and BETC’s consumer insights.
The move to establish a dedicated CX network follows the successful launch of the BETC Fullsix agency model in Paris and the acquisition in 2019 of best-in-class specialists Langoor (digital engagement), Think Design (user experience) and Gate One (a digital and transformation consultancy).
The component agencies’ branding will be updated to reflect the new network identity. The new network already boasts clients including Reckitt Benckiser, Tesco, Maersk, Club Med, AbbVie, Airtel, Starbucks, Canal+.
The Havas CX network will be led by Yann Doussot (Global COO) overseen by an executive committee chaired by Chris Hirst (Havas Creative Global CEO), Mercedes Erra (Chairwoman BETC FULLSIX), Donna Murphy (Global CEO Havas Health & You) and Peter Mears (Global CEO Havas Media Group). And a strategic committee chaired by Hirst including Tracey
Barber (Global CMO), Stéphanie Nerlich (Global CCO, executive managing partner, Havas North America), Olivier Vigneaux (CEO BETC FULLSIX), Xavier Rees (CEO Havas London), Mark Sinnock (CSO Havas UK).
Havas Group chairman & CEO Yannick Bolloré says: “Having pursued an acquisition strategy of cutting-edge agencies in the customer engagement space over recent years, we feel the time is right to unify our agencies under one joined-up, global network brand. In Havas CX, we believe we have the most comprehensive customer engagement proposition the industry has to offer–and it’s one we intend to continue to strengthen by hiring top talent and making further best-in-class acquisitions.”
Havas Creative global CEO Chris Hirst adds: “Today customer experience is the bedrock on which a brand is built – indeed, the majority of a consumer’s experience of any brand won’t be through above-the-line advertising, but their personal interactions with it. As technology advances almost any conceivable purchase is just a couple of clicks away and the opportunities for brands to get it right, or wrong, are manifold. CX is the new battle ground – and the brands that get it right will win, and those that don’t will lose; it’s as simple as that.
“Now is the right time to be overt in our commitment to the one the discipline that today underpins all others by bringing our 1200-plus specialists in a single brand. With our integrated village model and our proprietary consumer insights, the Havas CX Network will significantly extend the power and capability of our offer.
“The network will be guided by our world-class leaders in France, UK, US, Asia and LATAM ensuring we share learning, best practice and capabilities to make the network greater than the sum of its parts and helping our clients build deeper and more meaningful connections with their customers”
MAM
Nielsen launches co-viewing pilot to sharpen TV measurement
Super Bowl pilot to refine how shared TV audiences are counted
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
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
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.
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