Executive Dossier

Will work closely with IBF and ISA to meet BARC deadlines: Ambi

Published

12 years ago

July 29, 2014

An advertising person constantly strives to connect market research data to insights to come up with a winning campaign and who better to understand it than MG Parameswaran aka Ambi. The brain behind the transformation of Ulka Advertising into Draftfcb Ulka Group (now FCB Ulka), the former IIT-ian with a sharp wit and a way with words knows his subject at the back of his hand.

The man, who has seven books to his credit in which he has penned down insights from his 35 year long working career in advertising, is the new president of Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI).

The newly elected executive council will meet in next 10 days and as he takes charge for the year 2014-2015, Indiantelevision.com’s Meghna Sharma speaks to him on the key focus areas, awards and much more…

Excerpts…

What are the five things you will focus on as the new AAAI president?

The new elected executive council will meet to deliberate on what should be the key initiatives, but from the top of my head, I think we need to move on the following points with speed:

– AAAI will literally move to its new office in the next six months; this is a spacious office located mid-town. We will create facilities for our member agencies to use (for outstation agency members it can be a big boon).

– AAAI will endeavour to work closely with IBF and ISA to ensure that the BARC deadlines are met and we have a world-class television measurement system in place soon.

– AAAI will try to help member agencies face the challenges of the future; targeted seminars and workshop on the business of advertising will be a priority going forward; but first we will ascertain the demand for such programs.

– Talent development at the grassroot level will be a priority; we will see if we can leverage the online medium to help reach top class training to smaller cities and towns of our country.

– AAAI has played a vital role in the development of sister organisations; we will endeavour to build strong bridges to all the other industry organisations including ISA, IBF, INS, Ad Club, IAA, IMAI, Outdoor Association, Radio Association, Cinema Association etc.

To sum it up, we will ensure that AAAI serves the purpose of all its member agencies, big and small, in big cities and in small cities and help them stay vibrant and profitable, play a more meaningful role in helping their clients and the society at large.

In the next year, what will be the focus area – seminars or awards – for the organisation?

Awards were never the be-all and end-all of the AAAI. Unfortunately, that gets the maximum media coverage. Many things that AAAI does, like helping member agencies collect outstanding amounts from clients or helping media organisations collect their rightful dues are not as exciting to write and read about. Further, many of these are really in the private domain. AAAI is an industry body set up the help ad agencies do their business better, serve clients better and do well. Towards this end AAAI has held workshops, created forums and also hosted award shows. We will continue to do all that.

In the recent past, many objections have been raised regarding obscenity in advertisements. Do you think there is a need for stricter rules?

All ads have to follow the norms laid down by society. AAAI was one of the founding partners of ASCI and I think ASCI, in the last few years has made its process a lot more efficient and effective. All the big advertisers have signed off that ASCI will have the last word. Similarly all media organisations have agreed to abide by the ASCI rulings.

Obscenity can come at you from any category, undergarments, perfumes etc. If readers feel any specific ad needs to be pulled off they should complain to ASCI. The process is well laid out on its website.

Having said that, let me reiterate, an ad has to be measured against what is prevalent in society at large. At one time no Hindi movie showed a man and a woman kissing. That has become a norm today, and some heroes / heroines are vying to set new records. The society is also changing rapidly enabled by the rampant spread of digital medium. So our standards for measuring ads should also become more flexible. What was obscene 10 years ago may not be seen as obscene today. One needs to factor in the variable that consumers are not morons; they do see ads with a tinted pair of spectacles, especially ads that promise miraculous results, like deos.

Finally, it is ASCI’s turf to decide what they think is permissible and what is not.

Also, how do you plan to get back the lost glory of Indian awards?

Awards play a useful purpose to motivate young people to stay engaged in the advertising industry. There is nothing to beat the joy of receiving an award in front of your industry peers. AAAI will work closely with Ad Club to ensure that we have a transparent mechanism in the jury process. Efforts will be made to ensure all the key agencies participate in the Awards. Please remember the Abby Awards belongs to Ad Club and has a wonderful history backing it. That will not be allowed to fade away.

Related Topics:AAAI advertising Ambi ASCI BARC IBF ISA MG Parameswaran

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Executive Dossier

Game on, fame on as Good Game hunts India’s first global gaming star

Published

2 weeks ago

January 27, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Game faces on, pressure high India’s gaming ambitions are levelling up. Good Game, billed as the world’s first as-live global gaming reality show, has officially launched in India with a bold mission: to crown the country’s first Global Gaming Superstar.

Blending esports with mainstream entertainment, the show brings together competitive gaming, creativity and on-camera performance in a format that tests more than just joystick skills. Contestants will be judged on gameplay, screen presence and their ability to perform under pressure, reflecting how gaming has evolved from pastime to profession and pop culture currency.

Fronting the show are three high-profile ambassadors: actor and entrepreneur Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Indian cricket star Rishabh Pant, and gaming creator Ujjwal Chaurasia. The winner will take home Rs 1 crore ($100,000) among the largest prize pools for any Indian reality show along with the chance to represent India on a global stage.

Backed by a planned annual investment of up to Rs 100 crore, Good Game is also courting brand partners, promising a minimum reach of 500 million among India’s core youth audience. The creators position the show as a bridge between entertainment and interactive culture, offering long-format content, community engagement and commercial scale.

Auditions are now open to Indian citizens aged 18 and above, inviting amateur and professional gamers, creators and performers alike. Shortlisted candidates will be called for in-person auditions in Mumbai on 14 and 15 February, and in Delhi on 28 February and 1 March 2026.

With big money, big names and even bigger ambition, Good Game signals a shift in how India views gaming not just as play, but as performance, profession and prime-time spectacle.

Digital

SpotDraft hires new CMO and CFO to fuel global push for its AI contract platform

Published

2 months ago

December 3, 2025

indiantelevision.com Team

INDIA: SpotDraft has strengthened its senior ranks as it gears up for faster global expansion, naming Alon Waks as chief marketing officer and Amit Sharma as chief financial officer. The appointments follow the firm’s $54 million Series B round earlier this year and mark a push to scale across the Americas, EMEA and India.

The AI-powered contract-lifecycle-management platform has posted 100 per cent year-on-year growth in customer acquisition, counting Apollo.io, IPSY, Mixpanel, Oyster and Panasonic among its global clients. The firm processes more than one million contracts annually, with volumes up 173 per cent and nearly 50,000 monthly active users.

Waks, a veteran of Kustomer, Bizzabo, CreatorIQ, LivePerson and ZoomInfo, will steer global marketing and category positioning as legal teams adopt AI-driven tools. Sharma, who has led finance across scaling tech firms since 2016, will guide financial strategy, investor relations and market expansion.

Both hires aim to sharpen SpotDraft’s bid for a larger slice of the fast-growing legal-tech market, expected to exceed $63 billion by 2032. Co-founder and chief executive Shashank Bijapur said the company is focused on scaling go-to-market operations in the Americas, deepening leadership in EMEA, and accelerating AI capabilities for general counsels and legal-operations leaders.

Clients report shorter deal cycles and better alignment between legal and business teams. “What used to take weeks now happens in days,” said Abnormal Security senior legal operations manager Susan Koenig. DeepL head of legal operations André Barrow, said SpotDraft has helped reframe legal “from a cost centre to a generator of revenue”.

Executive Dossier

Outdoor Ads Get Smarter as LOC8 Shifts OOH from Visibility to Attention

Published

2 months ago

November 28, 2025

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Out-of-home ads were once the wallflowers of marketing seen by everyone, noticed by few. But in an age where attention has become the world’s most fought-over currency, even billboards are getting a brain upgrade. Enter LOC8, OSMO’s AI-powered attention engine, quietly reshaping the old OOH playbook by measuring not just who could have looked at an ad, but who actually did. The shift is subtle but seismic: impressions are out, impact is in and data, not gut instinct, is calling the shots.

In a landscape where marketers question every rupee spent outdoors, LOC8 is turning lampposts, flyovers and traffic islands into precision-mapped attention laboratories. By crunching dwell time, visibility zones, perceptual size and real-world obstructions, the platform is dragging OOH into a future where creativity meets computer vision and where the best ideas aren’t just eye-catching, but eye-measured. From automotive facelifts to FMCG novelty and real estate trust-building, the message is clear, outdoor has stopped shouting and started listening. Indian Television Dot Com explores more about it in an Interview interview with OSMO co-founder Nipun Arora.

On how OSMO is shifting outdoor advertising from a visibility-led medium to an attention-led one through LOC8.

Traditional OOH has long been measured by visibility and impressions i.e how many people could see an ad. OSMO, through its proprietary AI platform LOC8, is shifting that narrative more towards likelihood of being noticed. Using computer vision and machine learning, LOC8 analyzes real-world video data to measure visibility zones, obstructions, dwell time and perceptual size; bringing precision to how attention is quantified outdoors. It moves the focus from mere impressions to quality of impressions, making OOH a data-verified, attention-led medium comparable to digital in accountability.

On how marketers can use LOC8’s dwell-time, visibility and perception insights to craft more effective, emotionally resonant OOH campaigns.

LOC8 helps brands understand how people truly experience outdoor media how long they look, from what distance, and under what conditions. By quantifying dwell time, visibility duration, and perceptual size; marketers can plan campaigns that align with real human viewing behavior. This empowers creative and strategy teams to design emotionally resonant storytelling where messaging, visual hierarchy and placement are optimized for how people actually notice and process OOH creatives.

About what LOC8 has revealed through campaigns like Renault Triber and Namaste India on how categories such as auto, FMCG and real estate use attention metrics to drive outcomes.

Each category uses attention data differently but all share one common goal: to convert outdoor visibility into measurable engagement.

• Automotive | Renault Triber

For the new Renault Triber facelift, bold creative met data-led planning through LOC8. By analyzing on-ground video data, LOC8 measured real audience attention across placements factoring in visibility zones, obstructions, traffic speed and perceptual size. This enabled Renault to identify corridors that delivered maximum reach, saliency and engagement, optimizing media efficiency and ROI.

• FMCG | Namaste India

In OOH, innovation is the hook and assets are the bait. But bait often hides the hook. With Loc8’s attention metrics, we ensured the bait wasn’t a hurdle, rather it became the perfect stage for innovation to deliver its full impact! The insight proved that creative novelty, when validated by attention data, drives deeper engagement and measurable brand lift.

• Real Estate

For luxury and real estate campaigns targeting HNI/UHNI audiences, attention patterns differ especially between front and rear passengers, who are often the core audience segment for premium sites. LOC8’s ability to distinguish rear vs. front visibility plays a critical role here. It helps identify sites that offer longer viewing windows and stronger perceptual dominance from the rear seat where decision-makers are most likely seated making it a key differentiator for premium and trust-led categories. Together, these insights prove that auto optimizes for impact, FMCG for recall, and real estate for trust visibility showing how attention metrics adapt to category goals while ensuring measurable outcomes.

On how attention analytics will shape the future of brand storytelling and media planning as OOH becomes more digitised and data-driven.

As outdoor digitizes, attention analytics will inform not just where to advertise but how stories are told in public spaces. This evolution transforms OOH from a static broadcast channel into a dynamic attention ecosystem, where creativity is optimized through evidence-based insight.

On how LOC8’s data-led framework helps marketers quantify OOH impact and make outdoor a more accountable, ROI-driven medium.

LOC8 bridges the gap between intuition and evidence. By quantifying metrics like visibility duration, attention opportunity index, and visual saliency rank, it allows brands to benchmark site performance and justify investment. This data-led approach brings transparency, comparability and ROI measurement to a medium historically driven by perception.

On how OSMO ensures AI and computer vision enhance creativity rather than reduce it to numbers.

OSMO believes that technology should enhance creativity, not overshadow it. LOC8’s attention models reveal what naturally draws the human eye helping creative teams refine design cues, contrast, and visual hierarchy for greater impact. By merging art and science, LOC8 empowers creativity with intelligence.

About the creative best practices and design cues LOC8 has uncovered regarding what truly captures consumer attention outdoors.

LOC8’s visual cognition analysis has surfaced clear patterns across campaigns:

• High contrast and minimal messaging outperform cluttered designs.

• Motion cues draw significantly longer dwell times.

• The first two seconds are critical, creatives must establish focus instantly.

• Contextual alignment between the creative and its environment increases attention by over 30%.

These learnings offer a scientific foundation for creative effectiveness helping brands design OOH that’s visually magnetic and emotionally memorable.

On how attention metrics will integrate into omnichannel planning where OOH, digital and social work together for unified brand impact.

Attention can become the unifying KPI across OOH, digital and social to creates seamless storytelling continuity, where outdoor triggers digital engagement. The future of omnichannel planning lies in attention-led integration ensuring that campaigns don’t just reach audiences everywhere but truly capture and hold their focus.