MAM
ZenithOptimedia revises global ad spend to 4.3% in 2012
MUMBAI: Media agency ZenithOptimedia predicts global ad expenditure will grow 4.3 per cent in 2012, reaching $502 billion by the end of the year.
ZenithOptimedia is a slight downgrade of the 4.8 per cent growth forecast in March. But the forecasts for 2013 and 2014 are unchanged, at 5.3 per cent and 6.1 per cent respectively.
The ad market slowed in April and May as advertisers became more cautious about the state of the global economy. The Greek elections have revived fears of a Eurozone break-up, causing investors to withdraw from risky assets. Partly as a result, economic growth has slowed across the developed world, and recessions have deepened in the southern Eurozone. Several developing markets have slowed as exports to the developed world have tailed off, although their growth generally remains much firmer than in developed markets.
The first of the year’s big sporting events – the Euro 2012 Football Championship – has begun in Poland and Ukraine, to be followed by the Olympics in the UK in late July and August. These events, together with the US elections, provide a regular boost to global ad spend every four years, known as the ‘quadrennial effect’. This year we expect these events to add $6.3 billion to the global ad market, almost all of it concentrated in the five months from early June to early November. The agency, therefore, expects ad spend growth to pick up from June onwards.
The Eurozone appears to have avoided a recession under the technical definition (two consecutive quarters of GDP decline) by maintaining flat output in 2012, but its economy is clearly in serious trouble, with deep recessions and painful unemployment in markets like Italy, Spain, Portugal, and of course Greece.
These are the four markets where ad spend is shrinking rapidly, as local advertisers struggle to maintain their cash reserves, and international advertisers reconsider the long-term potential of their investments. Elsewhere in the Eurozone adspend is flat, except in Austria, Finland and Germany, where it is growing at about the rate of inflation. Overall, it forecasts ad expenditure to decline by 1.1 per cent in the Eurozone in 2012.
The forecasts assume that the Eurozone avoids economic disaster (such as a break-up of the euro) this year, followed by slow but steady economic improvement. On this basis, ZenithOptimedia predicts Eurozone adspend will grow 2.3 per cent in 2013 and 3 per cent in 2014.
“The Eurozone is weighing down our predictions for Europe as a whole.
It has reduced our 2012 forecast for Western Europe from 1.5 per cent growth to just 0.4 per cent, and the forecast for Central and Eastern Europe from 6.5 per cent growth to 6.2 per cent,” said ZenithOptimedia.
Zenithoptimedia has also downgraded Asia Pacific slightly from 7.4 per cent growth this year to 6.7 per cent, and Latin America from 9.2 to 7.8 per cent.
“The advertising recovery remains robust in North America, however, which we have held steady at 3.6 per cent, also holding the Middle East and North Africa at one per cent while the political and social unrest continues,” ZenithOptimedia.
In the longer term, it expects gradual but sustained improvement in ad expenditure in North America, Western Europe and the Middle East and North Africa in 2013 and 2014. Meanwhile, Asia Pacific, Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America should all achieve 7 per cent to 10 per cent annual growth over these two years.
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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