Tag: API

Fashion sizzles on CTV with 97 per cent ad completion rate: VDO.AI report

MUMBAI; Viewers in India are tuning in and staying glued to fashion ads on connected TV, with a staggering ~97 per cent video completion rate, according to a new report from adtech player VDO.AI. The study, released on 4 July, reveals that fashion brands are reaping the benefits of immersive, distraction-free CTV formats, with advanced formats like DCO and API-triggered ads powering 67 per cent of top-performing campaigns.

Fashion storytelling is thriving in CTV’s premium environments, particularly in southern cities. Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Goa are leading the charge, posting an 87 per cent higher engagement rate compared to their northern counterparts, including Delhi and Jaipur.

VDO.AI co-founder & chief executive Amitt Sharma said: “CTV represents the convergence of cinematic storytelling capability with precision target ing that fashion brands require. Such a heightened completion rate validates our thesis that when content quality meets the right viewing environment, consumer engagement follows naturally. We are sure these insights will help fashion marketers make the right decision to move beyond traditional impression-based campaigns toward more sophisticated storytelling approaches that build emotional connections with consumers.”

Co-founder & chief technology officer Arjit Sachdeva pointed to the visual appeal of CTV for fashion campaigns. “CTV provides a high-quality, distraction-free, full-screen experience, especially powerful for a visually driven category like fashion.,” he explained. “As a result, fashion brands are increasingly leveraging advanced CTV advertising formats to create shopping-like experiences. Interactive elements such as CTV carousel ads and store discovery units are enabling viewers to explore collections and brand offerings without leaving their screens, mimicking the intuitive browsing behaviour familiar from social media and e-commerce
platforms.”

As fashion advertisers chase performance over reach, VDO.AI’s latest data signals a fundamental shift—CTV is no longer just for awareness; it’s driving real engagement, brand recall and intent.

July 7, 2025
Tata Tele to expand its cloud communication suite Smartflo with WhatsApp Business Platform

Mumbai: Connectivity and communication solutions for businesses Tata Tele Business Services (TTBS) has announced the strategic integration of WhatsApp Business Platform into its cloud communication suite, Smartflo. This is an advanced move in the digital era to offer an enhanced business communication experience, thus accelerating user engagement, boosting CX, and ensuring impactful customer interactions.

WhatsApp Business Platform is a simple and trusted solution for businesses to better manage customer discussions and inquiries around the world. Its superior UX, further enhances business communications, enabling seamless, rich, and impactful interactions in the way customers want to engage in today’s business ecosystem.

Tata Tele Business Services, in its endeavour to transform digital experiences with technology, brings to the table in-depth knowledge of enterprise customer needs and requirements, as well as trust and service assurance. This integration will assist businesses in mapping customer operational needs across multiple channels, while also improving customer experience through unified hyper-personalised interactions and multi-touch attributions.

Sharing his views on the enhanced cloud communication suite, Tata Teleservices Ltd SVP & head of product, marketing, and commercial Vishal Rally said, “We are excited to offer WhatsApp Business Platform through our Smartflo business suite, thereby, allowing businesses to adapt to new challenges and provide exceptional assistance to their customers on the messaging platform. Customers today expect communication to be efficient, simple, and genuine, which is enabled by WhatsApp Business. It connects our customers to their target audiences in the way they like to be assisted. As a WhatsApp Business solution provider, we at TTBS guarantee a superior user experience based on trust to our valued customers.”

“We are excited that WhatsApp Business Platform is being leveraged for customer engagement by Tata Tele Business Services for its (CPaaS) suite,” he added.

Businesses across sectors use the WhatsApp Business Platform to build a variety of customised, scaled solutions. It helps advance customer convenience and enable richer customer engagement. We look forward to continuing to build partnerships with businesses to help them unlock avenues of access to new audience cohorts who use WhatsApp extensively every day,” added WhatsApp India director of business messaging Ravi Garg.

Smartflo, in collaboration with WhatsApp Business Platform, offers an integrated omnichannel solution experience that incorporates various channels and methods of connecting with and integrating customers. It unifies the customer experience (CX) across different channels such as websites, mobile apps, social media, and phone calls, as a single-point system to optimise the collective interaction experience.

Smartflo makes business communication easy and rich, with a host of features such as single customer view, workflow automation, AI-enabled chatbots, chat interfaces, advanced analytics, hyper-personalisation, one-click integration, and an easy-to-integrate API platform.

Counted among the country’s leaders in smart digital solutions, Tata Tele Business Services, not only provides the digital highways on which companies, big and small, run their businesses but also acts as the technology catalyst for their growth by offering a comprehensive portfolio of digital solutions in the domain of security, collaboration, marketing, the cloud, and SaaS.

Smartflo, SmartOffice, SD-WAN iFLX, Microsoft 365, Google Workplace, Zoom Communications, EZ Cloud Connect, Customer Experience Platform for Businesses, Ultra-Lola, and Smart Internet leased line are among the company’s enterprise-grade solutions.

November 24, 2022
Google delays the blocking of third-party cookies till 2024

Mumbai: Google has revealed that its ambitious aim to disable third-party tracking cookies in the Chrome browser will be postponed until the second half of 2024.

In early 2020, Google made its first announcement about its plan to phase out support for third-party tracking cookies in Chrome, called the Privacy Sandbox API testing initiative.

Speaking on the initiative, Privacy Sandbox vice president Anthony Chavez said, “By Q3 2023, we expect the Privacy Sandbox APIs to be launched and generally available in Chrome.” He added, “We now intend to begin phasing out third-party cookies in Chrome in the second half of 2024.”

The Privacy Sandbox initiative is aimed at working with the ecosystem to provide privacy-preserving alternatives to third-party cookies and other cross-site tracking.

Google has released trial versions of a number of new Privacy Sandbox APIs in Chrome for developers to explore over the last few months.

Google and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), earlier this year, stated how they seek to develop and release the Privacy Sandbox in Chrome worldwide.

The company said in a statement, “The most consistent feedback we’ve received is the need for more time to evaluate and test the new Privacy Sandbox technologies before deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome.” For these reasons, “we are expanding the testing windows for the Privacy Sandbox APIs before we disable third-party cookies in Chrome,” it added.

The APIs are now ready for testing. Later, in early August, the Privacy Sandbox trials will expand to millions of users globally. Throughout the rest of the year and into 2023, Google will steadily expand the trial population.

July 30, 2022
TRAI issues draft regulation to facilitate consumer choice of TV channels using API

MUMBAI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Friday issued the draft (Second Amendment) to the Telecommunication (Broadcasting and Cable) Services Standards of Quality of Service and Consumer Protection (Addressable Systems) Regulations 2017. Through this draft regulation (second amendment), TRAI is seeking the comments of stakeholders on the issue of developing of app by third parties and consequent sharing of information using Application Program Interface (API) between DPOs and consumers.

The new tariff order rolled out in the beginning of this year put power in consumers’ hand to select television channels they want to watch. To ensure proper implementation of the new framework, the authority has made a number of efforts such as series of meetings with DPOs, publicity in electronic and news media, interactions with customer groups etc. Despite all the efforts, it has been brought to notice of the authority that consumers are not able to make real choice of TV channels.

“It was noticed that quite a few DPO platforms were not providing adequate freedom and choice to consumers. Customers also complained that the call centre of DPOs are also not helping to facilitate consumer choice of the channels,” TRAI said in a release.

To resolve the issues, the authority felt need to have channel selection system developed by third party to facilitate easy channel selection by consumers. As per TRAI, since the third party app will be accessible by every customer of Broadcasting & Cables Services sector, it will facilitate easy choice to consumers.

To facilitate functioning of third-party apps, TRAI created channel selection system API specifications document which prescribed common APIs with all distribution platform operators (DPO). TRAI intends to mandate all the DPOs to compulsorily share information with the apps after authenticating the subscriber so that such apps can help in easy selection of the required TV channels.

The newly issued draft regulation (second amendment) issued shall be open for comments of the stakeholders up to 22 August.

August 10, 2019
Twitter ads now available to all US users

MUMBAI: Twitter‘s senior director of product for revenue Kevin Weil announced the launch of its advertising options for all US users on Tuesday at TechCrunch‘s Disrupt in New York. The company had previously made advertising on the platform invite-only.

The first announcement was made on April 2010 by social media giant stating it would show ads. Since then it has openly promoted tweets and accounts, which lets people pay to get their updates seen and their profiles followed. Additionally, it announced limited availability of a self-serve tool for buying ads in March 2012, and an ads application programming interface (API) for programmatic buying of huge campaigns in February recently.

Last week, Twitter announced that its ads could be targeted based on keywords tweeted or within tweets engaged with by users, which lets Twitter move towards demand fulfillment like Google search ads.

Most recently, Twitter opened its advertising API to third parties, letting larger advertisers to create more refined campaigns on the portal. The company launched that program with five partners – Adobe, Hootsuite, Salesforce, SHIFT and TBG Digital.

“Over the past year we‘ve listened carefully to feedback from the thousands of businesses and individuals who‘ve had access to the self-serve tool, and made enhancements based on their suggestions, including more targeting and reporting in the UI,” the company wrote in a blog post. “It‘s because of this feedback that effective today, we‘re ending our invite-only period and opening signups for our self-serve ad platform to all users in the US.”

According to eMarketer the company, which is expected to go public within the next year, is projected to earn $1 billion in ad revenues in 2014.

May 1, 2013
NDS joins Anytime Technology partner programme

MUMBAI: Anytime, Asia Pacific’s leading Video on-Demand (VoD) channel, today announced that NDS, the leading provider of technology solutions for digital pay-TV, is the newest member of the Anytime Technology Partner Program.

The Anytime Technology Partner Program is a collaboration between Anytime and the world’s leading VoD technology vendors. It aims to reduce the time to deploy secure, quality, VoD services in Asia Pacific. The Program allows technology vendors to come together to ensure process compliance and data flow compatibility from publishing, to billing API’s and royalty reporting. NDS Group is a NASDAQ-listed company; the largest shareholder in NDS is News Corporation.

NDS solutions enable broadcasters, network TV operators and content providers to profit from the deployment of digital TV technologies including innovative solutions for digital video recorders, interactivity, secure broadband, home networks and content on the go. NDS boasts an impressive customer list, featuring some of the world’s leading pay-TV operators, such as BSkyB, DIRECTV, SkyLife and FOXTEL, informs an official release.

“NDS is pleased to join the Anytime Technology Partner Program. We regard this as an important technology alliance to enable our customers to implement VoD services in a timely and seamless fashion,” said Sue Taylor, VP & GM of NDS Asia Pacific.

“With their in-house expertise, ANYTIME will help us test and review a complete range of IPTV products and solutions and develop reference architectures for our customers. The Anytime Technology Partner Program is the answer to fast-tracking VoD deployments in Asia Pacific.”

“NDS’s end-to-end deployments demonstrate the company’s ability to offer unparalleled expertise in content delivery and protection. Conditional access is a vital component in any VoD delivery model and NDS has the capabilities to bring content security to a new level,” said Anytime CTO Craig Ginsberg.

NDS joins a rapidly growing number of the world’s leading technology vendors including Verimatrix, SecureMedia, Concurrent and Tatung as members of the Anytime Technology Partner Program.

The Anytime Technology Partner Program has two levels of agreement – Technology compliance, and Cooperation & Co-marketing. If accepted into the Program, vendors can work with Anytime to ensure their products, services or solutions, comply with the highest industry standards for VoD content delivery.

The Program is open to STB manufacturers, middleware vendors, Conditional Access and DRM hardware and software makers, VoD server manufacturers, and Systems Integrators. It is vendor-agnostic, ensuring that Telcos, ISPs and Digital Cable providers receive impartial advice and information on VoD delivery technology, the release adds.

November 10, 2006