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Sunil Gupta lectures AI’s transformative role at IAA Conversations

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MUMBAI: Artificial intelligence isn’t just a buzzword anymore—it’s shaping the way industries think, act, and innovate. At the recent IAA Conversations in Mumbai, Harvard Business School Edward W. Carter professor of business administration, Sunil Gupta delved into AI’s transformative power in marketing, branding, and beyond. The event, titled ‘Marketing in the Age of AI’, was moderated by VML India CEO and an IAA Mancom member, Babita Baruah and organised in association with Harvard Business School.

The session kicked off with Gupta highlighting the disruptive nature of AI and how businesses across sectors are adapting to leverage it. “Almost every business, not just advertising, is thinking about AI and how it will affect their operations,” he noted.

He outlined three ways AI is transforming industries:

1    Augmenting and automating tasks to increase efficiency.

2    Expanding and growing capabilities with innovative tools.

3    Disrupting and experimenting, encouraging businesses to push creative boundaries.

Gupta cited tech giants like Facebook and Google, explaining their use of AI to automate ad creation, audience targeting, and budget allocation.

Gupta emphasised the unprecedented access to consumer data in today’s digital age. “It’s not just about what they buy or search for. It’s also about what they do on social media or why they contact a call centre,” he observed.

AI, he argued, offers the ability to synthesise qualitative and quantitative data to create a 360-degree view of consumers. It enables brands to map customer journeys, uncover pain points, and even predict behaviours. “AI can act as a smart research assistant, helping brands connect the dots across vast datasets,” he added.

Gupta also introduced the concept of synthetic consumers, personas created using past data to simulate market research scenarios. This approach offers quick insights at early product development stages.

Gupta didn’t shy away from discussing the hurdles of AI adoption. “The use of AI will increase competition as it lowers entry barriers, making it easier for anyone to experiment and innovate,” he said.

However, he flagged the risk of short-term thinking in advertising. “With AI’s ability to experiment and fine-tune ROI, there’s a danger that brands might focus too much on immediate results and lose sight of long-term brand building. And advertising is all about building brands,” he cautioned.

Addressing how organisations should approach AI, Gupta urged companies to embrace the technology actively. “You can’t learn to swim by watching someone else. You need to dive into the pool yourself,” he remarked.

He recommended dedicating time to understanding AI’s potential and limitations, noting that no technology has ever reduced workload—it has only shifted it. “Jobs don’t go away, tasks do. AI will eliminate non-value-added tasks, allowing professionals to focus on more impactful work,” he asserted.

On a closing note, Gupta reminded attendees of the importance of starting with the problem, not the technology. “Sometimes, we get so caught up in the technology that we forget the problem we’re trying to solve,” he said, adding that copyright and IP protection will remain critical concerns in an AI-driven world.

IAA India Chapter president, Abhishek Karnani underscored the event’s relevance, “At the India Chapter of the International Advertising Association (IAA), we take pride in being the only body in the industry that brings together creative agencies, media agencies, and media under one roof. This year, our focus is clear—Conversations, Skilling, and Artificial Intelligence—all aimed at preparing us for the opportunities and challenges ahead.”

Organised with support from Free Press Journal as the presenting partner, the IAA Conversations event highlighted the intersection of technology, creativity, and strategy, offering a forward-looking perspective on how AI is reshaping industries.

MAM

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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MAM

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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