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Interactive Television: Throwing light at cinema advertising

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MUMBAI: In the country where cricket and movies are more than a pastime, for Ajay Mehta films meant more than just a family business.

Brought up in a household of film distributors, Mehta decided to do much more than that for the same industry. “I wanted to do something related but not join the family business and working with advertisers sounded exciting and fun,” he recalls.

Founded in 1996 in New Delhi, Interactive Television, was set up as a marketing agency which provides cinema advertising and marketing services in multiplexes, malls, and shopping chains.

However, the journey wasn’t a smooth one even though he belonged to the film fraternity. “The biggest challenge was to convince people of the medium without any data and in fact the cinema industry still does not offer enough data to advertisers,” says Mehta while adding that in the digital age that is simply unacceptable.

Even though everyone knows that cinema is like a religion in India but without viewership data and demographics, advertisers are investing in the dark, highlights Mehta. To counter this, Cinema Audit Monitoring (CAM) was launched, which according to him was the first step in making the medium transparent and accountable.

Today, working across 9000 screens in India, the company is country’s only integrated entertainment and retail marketing company, releasing CAM report each month, which gives comparative analysis of cinema advertising and movie marketing throughout the country.

Satisfied with the journey so far, Mehta feels that the process of establishing a medium which was not in any major advertisers plans to one which is included in every major plan has been tremendous. “High point have been many, every conversion of a client is a high point especially the non believers, every innovation is a high point as it feels special to create an idea which has not been thought off before, advertising for Indian clients in international markets like the USA, UK and the UAE has been a high point as Indian movies now have a global reach and can offer a platform for clients trying to reach out to the Indian diaspora.”

Seeing the potential, WPP had acquired the company, but it remains an independent company. “They have been fantastic shareholders and we have learnt a lot from them, apart from access to clients, we have learnt a lot on systems, processes, accountability   to clients.  The business has benefited from the insights which they have brought and we have managed to scale up the business post them coming on board,” informs Mehta.

Started with just three people, the company now employees more than 70 in six cities which helps it to create exclusive packages for its clients. “Our people are our biggest strength and come from diverse backgrounds like cinema chains, media agencies, logistic companies, research agencies and ad sale houses. This is unmatched in the industry and gives us deep understanding of what clients want from their media investments and also gives us insights into how the cinema channel thinks. This ability to understand the entire landscape of cinema advertising is our biggest advantage.” The  company  has  been  responsible  for  immense  value  adds  to  promotions  for corporates like Samsung, HLL, ITC Foods, Reckitt Benckiser, Vodafone, Star Network, and many more.

On the current market trend, Mehta believes that single screens have a lot of potential for advertisers trying to reach out to the mass market and categories such as FMCG, telecom, BFSI etc can leverage the reach and impact offered by the largest screen in the world i.e. the movie screen. “Digital cinema is an enabler for it and today new content reaches smaller cities on the same day as the Delhis and Mumbais of the world, this means piracy is controlled and newer audiences are embracing cinema. Till today, advertisers found advertising on single screens in small cities logistically difficult but this has changed completely with digital cinema. We think digital cinema will be the growth driver for the whole cinema advertising industry and we at Interactive want to lead this transition,” he pinpoints.

As for the future plans, the agency wants to lead the process of making this medium more transparent and accountable through newer tools and Big Data. “We also think cinema is more than just the screen and is the only medium where one can have a live engagement with the audiences, off screen advertising is still pretty much a virgin territory and we want to ensure that gets its value,” concludes Mehta.

 

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Nielsen launches co-viewing pilot to sharpen TV measurement

Super Bowl pilot to refine how shared TV audiences are counted

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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.

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Delhivery chairman Deepak Kapoor, independent director Saugata Gupta quit board

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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.

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Meta appoints Anuvrat Rao as APAC head of commerce partnerships

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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.

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