MAM
The Trade Desk launches new media trading platform Solimar
MUMBAI: Global advertising technology company, The Trade Desk (NASDAQ:TTD) announced Thursday the launch of its new trading platform, Solimar that will help marketers optimise their digital advertising campaigns across the open internet.
Designed in response to a rapidly evolving digital marketing environment, the platform enables marketers to unleash the power of their valuable first-party data, drive greater precision in their digital marketing campaigns, while advancing consumer-conscious privacy, the tech company said in a statement.
The result of more than two years of product development, Solimar addresses key concerns for today’s marketers. This includes easy and secure onboarding of first-party data; the need to connect marketing performance to business growth goals; an increasingly cross-channel digital media environment including the fast-growing world of OTT and CTV; and a rising focus on digital identity.
“We are at an important moment in the evolution of digital advertising. Marketers are eager to address a wide range of emerging opportunities, from the once-in-a-generation shift in TV consumption to proving the connection between their campaigns and business growth, and driving advances in consumer-conscious privacy,” said The Trade Desk co-founder and CEO Jeff Green. “And we are launching Solimar at this moment so that marketers can fully embrace those opportunities on the open internet. The transparent cross-channel precision and measurement capabilities of Solimar stand in strong contrast to the limitations of Walled Gardens.”
In a rapidly evolving identity environment, marketers increasingly want to activate their own first-party data – data they have gathered about their most loyal customers, often through years or decades-long relationships. Solimar enables marketers to upload this data easily, and leverage advances in internet identity, such as Unified ID 2.0, in order to nurture more loyal customers. At the same time, other major first-party data owners, such as retailers and offsite measurement companies, are increasingly making their data available to advertisers in Solimar’s measurement marketplace. This enables advertisers to track the performance of their campaigns to actual consumer actions.
Commenting on how Solimar would add value to marketers in India, The Trade Desk India’s GM Tejinder Gill said, “Modern marketers are looking to manage their entire omnichannel strategy (mobile, audio, OTT/CTV) under one roof aligned with their goals at every stage of their campaign. Solimar helps Indian marketers focus on achieving their goals while capturing the fast-growing opportunities on the open internet. As the industry’s most sophisticated programmatic platform, Solimar solves for the complexity of the thriving open internet by enabling marketers to plan, track and measure their digital spend easily across all digital advertising channels on the open internet.”
“Solimar is the result of more than two years of engineering work, and represents a breakthrough in surfacing the most important decisions for today’s marketers,” said The Trade Desk co-founder and CTO Dave Pickles. “That means traders can focus on their strategic priorities, and rely on Solimar to handle everything else. That’s because by adding planning and decisioning into every aspect of the buying cycle, Solimar acts on information in real-time, ensuring all decisions are data-driven. In this way, Solimar embodies everything I’ve learned about media buying over the last 15 years.”
The Trade Desk unveiled Solimar at a launch event on 7 July in New York City, featuring The Trade Desk CEO Jeff Green, GroupM’s Wavemaker executive director, head of Investment & Activation Vinny Rinaldi and the Washington Post chief revenue officer Joy Robbins.
Digital
Content India 2026 opens with a copro pitch, a spice evangelist and a £10,000 prize for Indian storytelling
Dish TV and C21Media’s three-day summit puts seven ambitious projects before an international jury, and two walk away with serious development money
MUMBAI: India’s content industry gathered in Mumbai this March for Content India 2026, a three-day summit organised by Dish TV in partnership with C21Media, and it wasted no time making a statement. The event opened with a Copro Pitch that put seven scripted and unscripted television concepts before an international panel of judges, and by the end of it, two projects had walked away with £10,000 each in marketing prize money from C21Media to support development and international promotion.
The jury, comprising Frank Spotnitz, Fiona Campbell, Rashmi Bajpai, Bal Samra and Rachel Glaister, evaluated a shortlist that ranged from a dark Mumbai comedy-drama about mental health (Dirty Minds, created by Sundar Aaron) to a Delhi coming-of-age mystery (Djinn Patrol, by Neha Sharma and Kilian Irwin), a techno-thriller about a teenage gaming prodigy (Kanpur X Satori, by Suchita Bhatia), an investigative crime drama blending mythology and modern thriller (The Age of Kali, by Shivani Bhatija), a documentary on India’s spice heritage (The Masala Quest, hosted by Sarina Kamini), a documentary on competitive gaming (Respawn: India’s Esports Revolution, by George Mangala Thomas and Sangram Mawari), and a reality-horror competition merging gaming and immersive fear (Scary Goose, by Samar Iqbal).
The session was hosted by Mayank Shekhar.
The two winners were Djinn Patrol, backed by Miura Kite, formerly of Participant Media and known for Chinatown and Keep Sweet: Pray & Obey, with Jaya Entertainment, producers of Real Kashmir Football Club, also attached; and The Masala Quest, created and hosted by Sarina Kamini, an Indian-Australian cook, author and self-described “spice evangelist.”
The summit also unveiled the Content India Trends Report, whose findings made for bracing reading. Daoud Jackson, senior analyst at OMDIA, set the tone: “By 2030, online video in India will nearly double the revenue of traditional TV, becoming the main driver of growth.” He noted that in 2025, India produced a quarter of all YouTube videos globally, overtaking the United States, while Indians collectively spend 117 years daily on YouTube and 72 years on Instagram. Traditional subscription TV is declining as free TV and connected TV gain ground, forcing broadcasters to innovate. “AI-generated content is just 2 per cent of engagement,” Jackson added, “highlighting the dominance of high-quality human content. The key for Indian media companies is scaling while monetising effectively from day one.”
Hannah Walsh, principal analyst at Ampere Analysis, added hard numbers to the picture. India produced over 24,000 titles in January 2026 alone, with 19,000 available internationally. The country now accounts for 12 per cent of Asia-Pacific content spend, up from 8 per cent in 2021, outpacing both Japan and China. Key exporters include JioStar, Zee Entertainment, Sony India, Amazon and Netflix, delivering over 7,500 Indian-produced titles abroad each year. The top importing markets are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, the United States and the Philippines. Scripted content dominates globally at 88 per cent, with crime dramas and children’s and family titles performing particularly strongly.
Manoj Dobhal, chief executive and executive director of Dish TV India, framed the summit’s ambition squarely. “Stories don’t need translation. They need a platform, discovery, and reach, local or global,” he said. “India produces more movies than any country, our streaming platforms compete globally, and our tech and creators win international awards. Yet fragmentation slows growth. Producers, platforms, and tech move in different lanes. We need shared spaces, collaboration, and an ecosystem where ideas, technology, and people meet. That is why we built Content India.”
The data, the pitches and the prize money all pointed to the same conclusion: India is not waiting for the world to discover its stories. It is building the infrastructure to sell them.
