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AsiaPac leads global ad growth: Nielsen
MUMBAI: Global advertising expenditures were up 3.2 per cent in the third quarter of 2013 for year-over-year period, driven largely by Asia Pacific’s expanding powerhouse ad market, as well as a bottoming out of Europe’s contracting ad market.
According to Nielsen’s latest Global AdView Pulse report, Asia Pacific ad revenues surged seven per cent in the first nine months of 2013. China was up 16.7 per cent, Indonesia 22.1 per cent and Malaysia 15.7 per cent. The gains offset declines in Australia and South Korea.
Television continues to be the favourite medium through which advertisers attempt to reach their consumers, commanding a 57.6 per cent share of all spending and growing 4.3 per cent. Display Internet, though representing a smaller share of spends at 4.5 per cent grew significantly by 32.4 per cent.
Macro sectors contributing to the growth include FMCG, which saw a 5.9 per cent increase in ad spending for the year-to-date, and Industry & Services, which grew 11.3 per cent.
The period also saw a slight improvement in Europe, with the market down just 0.4 per cent in Q3. Nielsen notes that the region’s ad market appears to be bottoming out. Indeed, Italy and Spain, among the hardest hit, may have the worst behind them, the report notes, and Greece saw its ad revenues gain 10.3 per cent.
In the US the market was up 1.7 per cent by the end of September, even though it fell 1.3 per cent in the third quarter itself. And in Latin America, the year-on-year change was 13 per cent.
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Smytten appoints Shishir Varma as CEO of Pulseai Research
Rebranded AI platform scales with 150 plus clients and 30 million users.
MUMBAI: In a world obsessed with what consumers say, Smytten is betting on what they actually do. The company has appointed Shishir Varma as chief executive officer of Pulseai Research, signalling a sharper push into AI-led, behaviour-driven consumer insights. The move comes as Smytten rebrands its insights vertical from Smytten PulseAI to Pulseai Research, marking a shift away from traditional, project-based research towards a more continuous, intelligence-led model.
Varma brings over 30 years of global experience across APAC markets, including India, China and Japan. Most recently managing director, Insights at Kantar Japan, he has built and scaled consumer insight businesses across geographies, including playing a key role in establishing Millward Brown in India. His mandate now: turn Pulseai into a category-defining platform in a space still dominated by surveys and static reports.
The pitch is straightforward but ambitious. Instead of relying on claimed responses, Pulseai Research taps into observed behaviour leveraging Smytten’s ecosystem of 30 million users built over a decade of product discovery, trials and purchases. The idea is to close the long-standing gap between what consumers claim and how they actually behave.
The numbers suggest early traction. In under 18 months, the platform has onboarded over 150 enterprise clients across sectors, pointing to growing demand for faster, more reliable alternatives to legacy research models.
Under the hood, the platform blends behavioural data with AI and large language model-led analysis to deliver real-time sentiment tracking, scalable qualitative insights, faster quantitative studies and always-on brand intelligence. In practical terms, that means compressing research timelines from weeks to days without sacrificing depth.
The ambition extends beyond FMCG. Pulseai Research is positioning itself as a cross-category intelligence layer, spanning auto, education, gadgets and emerging consumer segments anywhere behaviour-rich data can sharpen decision-making.
For Smytten, the leadership hire is less about optics and more about direction. With Varma at the helm, the company is leaning into a simple but powerful premise: in the age of AI, insight isn’t just about asking better questions, it’s about watching more closely.
