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The One Show opens its doors to the insurgents

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NEW YORK: The One Club has shaken up its awards structure in the most significant overhaul in decades, launching The One Show Indies—a dedicated competition designed to level the playing field for independent agencies, design firms and freelance creators locked out of the global creative spotlight by better-resourced rivals.

The new category, debuting within The One Show 2026, is a direct challenge to the holding company orthodoxy that has long dominated the industry’s most prestigious accolade. Entry is restricted to truly independent outfits: at minimum 51 per cent founder or staff-owned, with no more than four physical offices. The signal is unmistakable. The One Club reckons independent shops are being starved of recognition, and it intends to rectify that.

The One Club chief executive Kevin Swanepoel  framed the initiative as an act of creative liberation. “The One Show Indies is like a new rebel wing inside The One Show,” he said, summoning the rhetoric of insurgency. “We’re recognising independent shops and creators who make powerful work without holding company budgets and restraints.”

The economics of entry have been designed to entice participation. Submissions are capped at a modest ten entries per eligible shop, with each piece of work allowed into no more than three categories. Entry fees come at a steep 20 per cent discount off The One Show’s regular rate, whilst burdensome case study films are restricted in their use as judging material. The combined effect is tangible: a genuine attempt to remove the financial and administrative friction that deters cash-strapped independents from throwing their hat in the ring.

The jury will be drawn entirely from creatives at independent agencies, using the same rigorous judging standards that underpin The One Show’s reputation. Winners will claim Gold, Silver and Bronze Pencils and Merit awards, with an additional Crystal Pencil bestowed on an overall Best of Indies champion. A separate celebration event is planned, staged in casual surroundings away from the formal May ceremonies during Creative Week.

The One Show Indies crystallises a shift in the creative industry’s consciousness. Independents have spent years grumbling about glass ceilings at award shows dominated by multinational holding companies. They’ve complained—often with justification—that the costs of entry and the judging structures inherently favour agencies with dedicated awards departments, bigger budgets, and armies of administrative staff to shepherd work through the submission process.

This new category doesn’t solve that structural imbalance entirely. But it cracks the door open. For smaller shops punching above their weight, a One Show Pencil—even one contested exclusively amongst independents—remains a genuine prize. It offers market validation, bragging rights, and the kind of industry credibility that shapes client perceptions and staff recruitment.

The One Club’s motives are plainly also commercial. Awards bodies thrive on volume and participation. Attracting a hitherto underserved cohort of independents will swell submission numbers and fortify The One Club’s position as the creative industry’s dominant credentialing authority.

Entry deadlines are stacked across four rounds, with the super-early window closing 30  October  2025, offering the deepest discounts. Regular entry runs until 23 January 2026, with a final window through 20 February 2026. Judging commences in January, with winners announced in May.

The One Club operates as a non-profit, recycling revenue from entries back into industry programming across four pillars: education, inclusion and diversity, gender equality, and creative development. That circularity—awards funding grassroots support—gives the organisation a moral sheen beyond the commercial calculus of conventional awards schemes.

The One Show Indies lands at a moment when the creative industry is reassessing who deserves a voice. This rebel wing may just prove to be the most inclusive—and competitive—corner of the awards landscape.

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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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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