MAM
IAMAI introduces credit policy/accreditation process for digital agencies
MUMBAI: The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), the not-for-profit industry body, has introduced a credit policy and accreditation process for all agencies dealing with online advertisements.
The policy claims to have garnered the support of leading online publishers in India including Rediff.com, Yahoo! India, Indiatimes.com and Sify.com.
IAMAI president Dr Subho Ray is hopeful that the new policy will bring in some norms and standards to the relationship between online publishers and agencies which is currently bilateral and haphazard.
According to an official announcement the policy consists of three aspects:
a) A common credit policy for all accredited agencies
b) An accreditation process
c) A process of recovery of over due payments from agencies
Under the Policy, a 60 day credit would be extended by affiliated publishers to all accredited agencies with a 30 day window for negotiation, reconciliation and settlement. The process of accreditation has been deliberately kept simple and gratis to encourage agencies to be a part of this process. The policy comes into force from 28 March 2007 after the one-month window given to agencies for accreditation expires.
While the online advertisement business is very small as compared to other media, it has been estimated that dues over 90 days amount to 25 per cent of the revenues in some cases leading to a cash flow problem for online publishers. It was, therefore felt prudent to establish some basic “housekeeping” norms for the benefit of all the stakeholders in the value chain of online advertisement business, adds the release.
As it exists today, the policy would regulate the relationship and payment schedules between online publishers and agencies only much like the process followed by the INS. However, if the policy works out successfully in the first stage, IAMAI would seriously consider taking the next step of setting up certain norms supporting the agencies’ recovery from advertisers.
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Abhay Duggal joins JioStar as director of Hindi GEC ad sales
The streaming giant brings in a seasoned revenue hand as the battle for Hindi television advertising heats up
MUMBAI: Abhay Duggal has a new desk, and JioStar has a new weapon. The media and entertainment veteran has joined JioStar as director of entertainment ad sales for Hindi general entertainment channels, adding 17 years of hard-won revenue experience to one of India’s most powerful broadcasting operations.
Duggal is no stranger to big portfolios or bruising markets. Before joining JioStar, he spent a brief stint at Republic World as deputy general manager and north regional head for ad sales. Before that, he put in three years at Enterr10 Television, where he ran the north region for Dangal TV and Dangal 2, two of India’s leading free-to-air Hindi channels. The north alone accounted for more than 50 per cent of total channel revenue on his watch, a number that tends to get attention in any sales meeting.
His longest stint was at Zee Entertainment Enterprises, where he spent over six years rising to associate director of sales. There he commanded the Hindi movies cluster across seven channels, owned more than half of north India’s revenue across flagship properties including Zee TV and &TV, and closed marquee sponsorships across the Indian Premier League, Zee Rishtey Awards and Dance India Dance. He also handled monetisation for the English movies and entertainment cluster and the global news channel WION, a portfolio that would stretch most sales teams twice his size.
Earlier in his career Duggal closed what was then a Rs 3 crore single deal at Reliance Broadcast Network, one of the largest in Indian radio at the time, before that he helped launch and monetise JAINHITS, India’s first HITS-based cable and satellite platform.
His edge, by his own account, lies in marrying data and instinct: translating audience trends, inventory signals and client demands into long-term partnerships built on cost-per-rating-point discipline rather than short-term deal chasing. In a media landscape being reshaped by streaming, fragmented attention and AI-driven advertising, that kind of rigour is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.
JioStar, which blends the scale of Reliance’s Jio platform with the content firepower of Star, is doubling down on its advertising business at precisely the moment the Hindi GEC market is getting more competitive. Bringing in someone who has spent nearly two decades doing exactly this, across some of India’s most watched channels, is a pointed statement of intent. Duggal has spent his career turning audiences into revenue. JioStar is clearly betting he can do it again, and bigger.
