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Tag: Vdopia

  • Lovnish Bhatia joins Worldwide Media as vice president – digital product

    Lovnish Bhatia joins Worldwide Media as vice president – digital product

    MUMBAI: Worldwide Media, a subsidiary of the Times Group, has named Lovnish Bhatia as vice president – digital product. Based in Mumbai, he will spearhead the publisher’s digital strategy, mobile platforms and product innovation.

    Bhatia brings more than 20 years of experience across digital media, operations and business development. He was most recently head of operations at Wify Technologies, after a brief stint as a new business development consultant.

    Earlier, he served as chief operating officer at Timesaverz, led services at Hettich India, and drove business development for video advertising firm Vdopia, where he was instrumental in securing the ICC World Cup 2011 digital sales mandate for Star India.

    His media career began at Sony Entertainment Television in 2000, followed by digital sales leadership roles at NDTV Media and Viacom18, where he introduced digital syndication and online-only monetisation models.

    With a career spanning technology, advertising, consumer services and media, Bhatia is expected to play a key role in accelerating Worldwide Media’s digital transformation.

  • “The market is expanding faster than expected and more brands are going digital”

    “The market is expanding faster than expected and more brands are going digital”

    As 2014 comes to an end and as the media and entertainment industry bids adieu to the year, company executives are leaving no stone unturned when it comes to listing down the achievements it has attracted throughout the year. 

    On the same lines is Vdopia, a programmatic buying and selling platform for mobile and online video advertising. It tags itself as a pioneer in mobile and online video advertising, enabling major brands to engage their desired audiences in premium content environments around the world. 

    Vdopia SVP-APAC Preetesh Chouhan pens down the major digital happenings in the year 2014 for Vdopia and the entire industry and also the future of digital platforms in the coming year.

    Major digital happenings…

    Digital Video Revolution – 

    •             Video viewing on PCs has almost doubled in three years in India. (source – comScore)

    •             India now has over 59 million video viewers. (source – comScore)

    •             73 per cent online audience now watch digital video. (Source – eMarketer)

    •             The share of video in internet data traffic is expected to rise from 41 per cent in 2011-12 to 64 per cent in 2016-17. (Source – Assocham and Deloitte)

    Emergence of specialised apps –

    •             App downloads in India likely to cross nine billion by 2015 (Source – Assocham -Deloitte)

    •             Mobile TV registered a 400 per cent growth rate in viewership. 

    m-commerce revolution India –

    •             India has reached 50 million digital buyers. (eMarketer)

    •             1 out of 3 customers of Flipkart arrive via mobile.

    •             33 per cent of Flipkart revenue originates via mobile based transactions. (Flipkart)

    •             60 per cent of all orders received by Snapdeal originate on mobile phones. (Snapdeal)

    Micro-video multiplied –

    •             Micro-video ads can transcend the mobile, tablet, PC and even TV gap, could eventually result in micro-video becoming the most portable video format across screens.
    Television is going digital:

    •             Television content is no longer being consumed only within the four walls of the viewer’s living room.

    •             TV remains one of the primary modes of communication reaching out to 60 per cent of the population, online videos are witnessing a steady surge in consumption even as internet penetration in India currently stands at about 16 per cent.

    Coke Studio, for example. While the latest season of the show on MTV received lukewarm response on TV, it went on to garner more than 54 million views on YouTube and across social media platforms.

    •             By 2018-end, India’s internet user base is expected to touch 494 million as against 938 million TV viewers.

    Marketers in India are leveraging digital marketing –

    •    96 per cent of the Indian marketers have high confidence in the ability of digital marketing to drive competitive advantage. It is among the highest in Asia-Pacific APAC with only Australia leading with 97 per cent.

    •    Indian marketers believe that the key driver to adopting digital is a growing internet population (70 per cent in India against 59 per cent in APAC).

    The big achievements for Vdopia…

    •    Launched Chocolate, a global programmatic buying and selling platform exclusively for mobile video advertising. 

    •    After major metros and cities, Vdopia’s reach has expanded to tier 2 cities, tier 3 cities and small towns.

    Lessons learnt…

    •    The market is expanding faster than expected and more brands are going digital. The demand has grown for new category of content and rich media video ad formats for better engagement. Like, travel, auto, humour, lifestytle, how-to videos etc.

    •    With 70 per cent growth in Asia Pacific, programmatic is the future. 

    Future of digital platforms in 2015…

    Digital India program – The Indian government’s $17 billion ambitious Digital India programme has the potential to be a game changer for the country. (Source – Forrester)
    P.S. – Currently, nearly 74 per cent of the population has mobile phones, most of which though is in the hands of urban India. 

    Focus on mobile content – In 2014 out of 885million mobile users, 185 million are mobile internet users. (IDC and India Digital Review). It’s a changing world, and businesses absolutely need to focus on ways they can give their marketing efforts a mobile component.

    Focus on Content – Content has been an integral part of digital marketing strategies for a few years now, but with so much of it out there, your content needs to be better and smarter. Content that’s relevant and interesting isn’t just a good idea, it’s a requirement. 

    Programmatic advertising will be understood by the majority of marketers – More than two-thirds of marketers are now using programmatic in one form or other shows programmatic might have become mainstream over the course of 2014. It’s a safe bet that this trend will continue in 2015 as more marketers realise the benefits of programmatic in their paid media programmes (Media Week).

    Clients will dictate the future of programmatic – Fundamentally, we believe the future of programmatic market landscape will be driven by the clients’ diverse characteristics and needs. Clients are either transactional or not, large or small, international or local, e-merchants or brick and mortar, large media spenders or not.

    Spending on RTB display advertising will accelerate – Spending on real time-bidded display advertising will accelerate at a 59 per cent compound annual growth rate through 2016, making in the fastest growing segment of digital advertising over the next few years. (IDC)

     

    (These are purely personal views of Vdopia SVP-APAC Preetesh Chouhan and indiantelevision.com does not necessarily subscribe to these views.)

     

  • Vdopia announces APAC launch of Chocolate

    Vdopia announces APAC launch of Chocolate

    MUMBAI: Vdopia, the global leader in mobile and online video advertising has announced Asia-Pacific (APAC) launch of programmatic buying and selling platform exclusively for mobile video advertising.

    The new marketplace product called, Chocolate, is built from the ground up solely for mobile video advertising. It is designed for brand marketers and demand partners who want a highly functional marketplace platform that offers top quality mobile video inventory at significant scale with complete transparency. Chocolate is being launched with a potential audience reach of more than 200 million unique users globally.

    “Vdopia has constantly delivered excellent video ad campaigns for top brands in APAC. With more than 10,000+ mobile sites and apps globally, we are excited to support brands and publishers to deliver amazing ad experience in a more efficient manner,” said  Vdopia CEO Saurabh Bhatia and added, “With Chocolate, we’re providing an automated, scalable solution for advertisers to further take control of their campaigns; advertise on mobile with a high ROI; and generate more loyal customers. Chocolate is positioned to capitalize on macro trends including moves into programmatic and the emergence of mobile native advertising.”

    The Chocolate platform is device-agnostic and is compatible with all major operating systems. All ads served through Chocolate are vast compliant. The platform is integrated with leading demand partners, analytics providers such as Metamarkets and measurement partners including Nielsen (mobile OCR) and comScore vCE to provide a highly transparent, scalable and measurable advertising experience for brands and their agencies.

    “One of the unique advantages of Chocolate is its capability to provide real-time bidding to demand partners which have only basic VAST support but no RTB or Real Time Bidding capability,” said Vdopia CTO Srikanth Kakani.

    “The new marketplace unifies a fragmented mobile video market space and addresses growing mobile industry complexities including lack of standards, brand safety and a dearth of quality mobile video inventory” said Vdopia APAC senior VP Preetesh Chouhan. “Chocolate is the only marketplace that offers end to end functionality for scaling video ads on mobile and best monetisation opportunities for publishers”.

    Chocolate also allows leading brands to auto-play video ads on mobile web pages and apps, adjacent to content, on virtually any smartphone, without disrupting the user’s web-browsing experience. This keeps users on the page without annoying distractions and increases video reach and measurability. Chocolate takes advantage of Vdopia’s proprietary .VDO technology, which enables advertisers and publishers to seamlessly run video-enabled ads on the mobile web and apps using simple tags and SDKs.

     

  • Vdopia realigns its top management

    Vdopia realigns its top management

    MUMBAI: In order to strengthen the business and its product offerings, Vdopia has made changes in the top management.

     

    To meet the distinct demands and challenges of the ad tech industry, it has appointed Saurabh Bhatia, who co-founded Vdopia in 2007 and has served since as its chief business officer (CBO), as its chief executive officer (CEO), succeeding Srikanth Kakani (also a co-founder) who becomes the company’s chief technology officer (CTO), a new position. Chhavi Upadhyay, another co-founder, who has served as chief operating officer (COO), becomes Vdopia’s president, also a new position.

     

    Bhatia believes that under Srikanth’s direction, Vdopia served video ads to 63 of the top 100 ad age advertisers and expanded globally opening up offices in nine countries. He says: “Building on the momentum set by him, we aim to innovate with greater speed, efficiency and capability in a fast-changing world. We are in the most exciting phase of our growth, as the mobile video ad market is expected to grow by more than 300 per cent in the next four years. As an organisation, we will build a stronger, growing business portfolio by further solidifying our core technology offerings. This structural reorganisation is indispensable for Vdopia to respond with agility to the changing business environment.”

     

    As Vdopia’s CEO, Bhatia will have global responsibilities for driving the company’s growth and vision, leading the company’s strategy, defining the product road map and be in charge of overall revenue growth.

     

    With over 10 years of sales and business development experience, prior to co-founding Vdopia, he held executive positions at Maxcellence, Peak Performance Solutions and Insways Software. Bhatia holds a degree in Industrial Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

     

    As Vdopia’s first CTO, Kakani will oversee the development, implementation and growth of Vdopia’s technology vision. This includes but is not limited to strengthening the core technology of VDO, Vdopia’s proprietary ad format, launching and building a mobile video marketplace, development of big data targeting engines and Vdopia’s approach to native advertising.

     

    Upadhyay, as the company’s president, will provide leadership and direction to human resources, legal, accounting and finance in addition to her current responsibilities of global operations and business development.

     

    “With these management changes we will focus on making internal and external processes at Vdopia more productive, efficient, simple and scalable,” adds Bhatia. “We will continue to focus our energies and efforts on building great products and providing value for our customers, stakeholders and the advertising industry.”

  • Social Media-the stadium for 2014 World Cup

    Social Media-the stadium for 2014 World Cup

    MUMBAI: Brazil had a reason to cheer this FIFA World Cup season. While it lost the big title, it was still the hub of all the excitement related to the football extravaganza. What is interesting to note is that social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter became another venue where the action unfolded with an audience comprising global fans.

     

    The entire span of the World Cup saw a total of 672 million tweets being sent out: the highest number, Twitter has announced so far related to any event.

     

    Of the 672 million tweets, a bulk of the conversation was during the live matches. The semi-final between Brazil and Germany saw fans sending out more than 35.6 million tweets —setting a new Twitter record for a single event.

     

    The other top four matches were Germany versus Argentina with 32.1 million tweets. Next was Brazil versus Chile which garnered 16.4 million tweets followed by the match between Netherlands and Argentina receiving 14.2 million tweets. Finally it was the Brazil versus Colombia game which got 12.4 million tweets.

     

    Three of the top five most-tweeted moments occurred during Brazil’s 7-1 semi-final loss to Germany on 8 July, while the other two moments came in during the final match. The top five moments that generated the biggest peaks of Twitter conversation, measured in tweets per minute (TPM), during the entire tournament was Germany defeating Argentina to win the World Cup final with 6,18,725 TPM. Next was Germany’s Sami Khedira scoring a goal assisted by Mesut Ozil during the semi-final versus Brazil which got 5,80,166 TPM. Germany’s Mario Gotze scoring the winning goal of the World Cup on 13 July generated 5,56,499 TPM. Germany’s Toni Kroos scoring his second goal in the semi final against Brazil was fourth in line with 5,08,601 TPM. Finally, Toni Kroos scoring his third goal during the same semi-final match against Brazil garnered 4,97,425 TPM.

     

    The top 10 mentioned players in India during the WC were Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez, Cristiano Ronaldo, James Rodriguez, David Luiz, Robin Van Persie, Neymar Junior, Mesut Ozil, Pepe and Wayne Rooney.

     

    While Twitter was buzzing, Facebook wasn’t far behind. 350 million people joined the conversation during the entire span of the World Cup generating 3 billion interactions (posts, comments and likes).

     

    Brazil’s demolition by Germany spurred around 66 million people to create more than 200 million Facebook interactions in the semi final match. People thronged to the platform: 10.5 million people from the US in the final and host country Brazil with 10 million. Men in the age group of 18-24 posted on Facebook the most as compared to any other demographic. This was followed by men aged 24-34, women aged 18-24, women aged 24-34 and men aged 13-17.

     

    NeymarJr saw the most fan growth on his page since approximately 15 million fans ‘liked’ his page since the beginning of the World Cup.

     

    Meanwhile, to give  a perspective of the  fervor and excitement surrounding FIFA World Cup – Vdopia a leader in online and mobile video advertising recently released an info-graphic calling it ‘The ultimate multi-screen event’ after  examining the impact of online and mobile devices on fan interaction with the World Cup.

     

    The report found that fans across the Asia Pacific (APAC) region and India were following the FIFA on multiscreens like TV followed by mobiles and then laptops. The most significant trend the report noted was a paradigm shift in consumer’s video consumption behaviour termed as “multi-screen intake” or “platform agnostic” intake. Simplified, it means a typical consumer who was watching the match, checked FIFA updates and shared highlights of his favourite match on his mobile, updating them on Facebook, looking up for some information on their tablet or just sending an email – all during the same time.

     

    Some of the finds mentioned that the mobile has become the second most preferred medium in APAC after television with 80 per cent of the respondents looking at television+smartphones. It also said that 2,50,000 Indian unique viewers visited football sites everyday via their mobile. It says that the social buzz volumes in India were the highest between 8:00 pm to 4:00 am.

     

    The report further mentions that India saw one of the highest ever online sports audiences in May with 6.5 million viewers who watched 59.7 million sports related videos in May 2014.  The report appropriately sums up that the 2014 FIFA World Cup has been regarded as the ‘most social event ever.’

  • CricHQ expands India executive team

    CricHQ expands India executive team

    MUMBAI: CricHQ, a cricket technology company is on an expansion spree. The company, which is looking at expanding its executive team in India has appointed Karthik Ramanujam as director of digital sales and marketing for the India market.

     

    Ramanujam brings with him over 16 years of experience in ad sales, content and digital marketing, with earlier stints at NDTV Media, Sony Entertainment Television, Ten Sports, Vdopia and Qyuki Digital Media. In his current role, he will support global sales and user acquisition for CricHQ’s online and mobile platforms.

     

    CricHQ CEO Simon Baker said, “We are very bullish about the Indian market opportunity and are building a strong team here to take full advantage of this opportunity. Karthik’s appointment is a significant boost for CricHQ’s India operations and it also sets the stage for more senior level hires in the near future.”

     

    The company plans to hire 15 professionals for its corporate office in Bangalore in the next few months, which are in addition to over 70 professionals currently employed in India. CricHQ currently has presence in Chennai and Kochi. The Chennai office has 50 employees engaged in product development and data capture and analysis; whereas the Kochi office focuses on CricHQ’s global operations. The company aims to expand its India head count to over 400 employees in the next three years.

  • Vdopia appoints Daniel Ahiakpor as VP, business development

    Vdopia appoints Daniel Ahiakpor as VP, business development

    MUMBAI: Vdopia has announced the appointment of Daniel Ahiakpor as its vice president, business development, a newly created position in Vdopia’s New York office. Ahiakpor will be responsible for striking and developing key publisher and mobile-app partnerships for the company.

     

    Vdopia co-founder, chief operating officer Chhavi Upadhyay said, “Daniel is an accomplished advertising technology professional with over 12 years of experience in sales, business development, publisher relations, and ad operations with a focus on video. He will be an important addition to our New York operation as we ramp up our mobile video programmatic buying and selling capabilities.”

     

    Ahiakpor began his career with Providian Financial (now owned by JPMorgan Chase) as a project coordinator – marketing operations.

     

    Ahiakpor comes to Vdopia from Adap.tv (New York), an AOL Company, and a video ad exchange and platform, where he led the company’s North American publisher platform business as Sr. director/head of publisher platform sales.

     

    Prior to that, he was a senior member of the publisher business development team at ScanScout, a technology-driven video ad network which was sold to Tremor Video in late 2010.

     

    Additionally, he has also held various roles in operations, ad technologies and sales development over several years for Yahoo and for Fox Interactive Media.

     

    “I joined Vdopia because of its solid global position at the intersection of mobile and video. As we know, both are among the most important and fastest growing categories in digital advertising. Simply put, mobile is the environment in which audiences are most engaged, and video is often the most effective and entertaining way to deliver branded messages to audiences,” explained Ahiakpor.

     

    He added, “With its proprietary, VDO format, Vdopia brings innovation into the equation by helping marketers target and deliver creative branded video messages across mobile and tablet devices, with greater ease and efficiency. Vdopia is also bringing automation to its ad solution to further streamline the process of planning, buying and selling mobile video.”

     

    Vdopia VP-APAC Preetesh Chouhan said, “Daniel is an accomplished advertising professional. He will play a pivotal role in Vdopia’s efforts to bring automation to its ad solution to further streamline the process of optimising mobile video. The recent inclusion of talented industry players like Daniel in our team will further boost the growth wave that Vdopia has been riding on.”

  • Vdopia & BlueKai to enter into global agreement

    Vdopia & BlueKai to enter into global agreement

    MUMBAI: Vdopia announced that it has integrated with BlueKai data to provide Vdopia’s customers with advanced mobile video targeting on a global basis.

     

    BlueKai mobile data will be integrated into Vdopia’s platform for mobile audience targeting, giving its advertisers’ access to 330 million unique mobile users (iOS and Android). Data from BlueKai, as well as other mobile targeting partners, will enrich Vdopia’s own data resulting in segment targeting abilities that are constantly refreshed to provide broad reach at scale.

     

    Vdopia already offers mobile targeting based on context, device type, time, operating system, location, demographic information and audience behavior. The addition of BlueKai’s 3rd-party data provides additional targeting parameters to help brands reach their intended audiences with more impact and efficiency.

     

    “Vdopia has always had the industry’s most comprehensive set of video creative units for mobile. The addition of BlueKai data sets will vault us into a global leadership position in targeting effectiveness,” said Vdopia chief business officer & co-founder Saurabh Bhatia.

     

    “No other company offers the worldwide audience reach for mobile video advertising that we provide for our customers,” added Bhatia.

     

    “In 2013, advertisers increased spending on mobile video advertising by 167 per cent and will increase spending by 81 per cent this year. With such a large investment in mobile video, advertisers must deploy the most advanced campaign targeting tools to maximise their ROI. With Vdopia and BlueKai together, they will get just that,” pointed out BlueKai vice president of mobile Jeff Frantz.

     

     “Advanced mobile video targeting sharpens access of advertisers to the right audience while choosing the parameters that are most effective to their campaigns. Our association with BlueKai will help us elevate our cutting edge video advertising solutions in this fast growing segment,” mentioned Vdopia vice president – APAC Preetesh Chouhan.

  • Vdopia appoints Ajay Prakash Mishra as APAC director- operations

    Vdopia appoints Ajay Prakash Mishra as APAC director- operations

    NEW DELHI: Vdopia, an online and mobile video and media platform has appointed Ajay Prakash Mishra as APAC director -operations.

     

    As part of Vdopia’s rapid and continued strategic global growth, the company introduced the Global Operations and Media Hub in Gurgaon and infused new talent in local and global teams. Strengthening the leadership ranks further is Mishra, who brings with him 10 years of experience in operations, business analysis and client servicing.

     

    At Vdopia, Mishra will be focusing on the company’s operations leading its current, high-touch operations model. He will be responsible for quantitative and qualitative analysis to support APAC’s campaign portfolio, shape strategy and identify solutions to business and operational challenges.

     

    Previously Mishra was with xAd, a location-based mobile ad platform where he was director- emerging markets and was overseeing Ad-Ops and corporate-development related activities.

     

    “Ajay is a dynamic leader who brings strategic thinking and maturity, combined with a roll-up-your-sleeves approach to run our operations. He will help Vdopia build on the momentum we’ve been gaining in the last few years,” said Vdopia VP-APAC Preetesh Chouhan.

     

    Excited about working within the Vdopia team, Mishra said, “There is a really good vibe at Vdopia, with openness and a sense of passion to ‘get things done’ for our clients and their business in the most efficient way possible.”

     

    Vdopia’s recent senior hires represent an infusion of new talent and energy into its expanding offices as it continues to develop innovative solutions supporting advertisers who seek more efficiency and reach across all platforms.

     

  • Vdopia announces three senior-level appointments

    Vdopia announces three senior-level appointments

    MUMBAI:  Vdopia has announced the appointment of several top talents to further strengthen its leadership ranks: Jason Shulman, Farzad Jamal and Narayanan Iyer.

     

    Farzad Jamal has come on-board as vice president, Europe. Jamal will be based in the company’s London office and will be responsible for expanding Vdopia’s business across Europe. Previously, he was at the OpenX (London) where he has been commercial director of EMEA for the past two years.

     

    Jason Shulman has joined as senior vice president, sales at the company’s San Francisco office. Shulman will be responsible for growing North America media and programmatic revenue for the company. “There are very few companies with global scale in the mobile video advertising space and Vdopia is on that short list. There was no saying ‘no’ to such an opportunity, especially when Vdopia is rolling out programmatic offering,” said Shulman.

     

    Senior director of finance, a newly created position, will be occupied by Narayanan Iyer.  He will be based in Fremont and is responsible for company’s finances. A veteran with 20 years of experience, he’s worked with Rocket Fuel, Mint and Intuit. Prior to Vdopia, he was working with Quri (San Francisco), a retail intelligence company.

     

     “Vdopia is moving ahead at a great pace and building a world-class team, which has expanded dramatically over the last year to match pace with our growth.” said Vdopia APAC VP Preetesh Chouhan.

     

    “Jason is an amazing strategist of the digital century—helping brands take best advantage of the growing programmatic landscape.  Farzad is a creatively driven revenue executive and been able to produce big digital ideas in Europe. And Narayanan is hardcore numbers guru,” added Vdopia co-founder & chief business officer Saurabh Bhatia. “Together they will help Vdopia build on the momentum we’ve been gaining. We are thrilled to welcome them to the team.”