iWorld
Viacom 18 adds ThinkAnalytics personalized multi-language recommendations to VOOT
Pay-TV and OTT content discovery and viewer analytics vendor ThinkAnalytics™ today announced that Viacom18 in India has gone live with ThinkAnalytics on the ad-funded OTT service VOOT. VOOT’s 37 million monthly active users now have personalized recommendations in seven languages on the home screen, making it quicker and easier to find content they want to watch.
Viacom18 has also deployed the ThinkComposer UX engine and ThinkEditorial, integrated with the ThinkAnalytics Recommendations Engine, enabling its editorial team to automate and streamline content curation and promotions to better meet KPIs and business goals.
The ad-funded VOOT service offers over 50,000 hours of original, domestic and international content for free. Content includes: COLORS TV, MTV India, Nickelodeon India, a wide range of Bollywood movies, and VOOT Original shows.
The ThinkAnalytics Recommendation Engine uses machine learning and predictive analytics to understand individual viewer preferences and broader viewing trends in real-time and suggests new content, personalized to each viewer. As a result, operators see a substantial uplift in viewer engagement and loyalty.
Mohit Srivastava, Head – Product and Engineering, Viacom18 Digital Ventures, said, “When we saw the data showing how much ThinkAnalytics boosts viewer engagement, we knew it was the right service for VOOT and for our viewers. Having ThinkAnalytics intelligent search and personalized recommendations on the main UI makes it easy for viewers to discover more exciting programs from the wealth of content available on VOOT.”
Peter Docherty, Founder and CTO, ThinkAnalytics added, “ By adding ThinkAnalytics personalized recommendations to the VOOT home screen, Viacom18 is once again staying ahead of the innovation curve and offering its large and loyal customer base the ability to find suitable content fast. This represents the very best in personalized entertainment on a significant scale.”
For over 15 years ThinkAnalytics has grown to become the leader in content discovery and viewer lifecycle management. By applying advanced machine learning technology and analytics to content discovery, editorial curation, ThinkAnalytics increases viewer satisfaction, boosts engagement across all TV and video content platforms and increases operator ARPU. Viewers’ interests and previous viewing behaviour are analyzed using advanced AI and machine learning techniques to help them find new content they want to watch quickly and easily.
About Viacom18
Viacom18 Media Pvt. Ltd. is one of India’s fastest growing entertainment networks and a house of iconic brands that offers multi-platform, multi-generational and multicultural brand experiences. A joint venture of TV18, which owns 51%, and Viacom Inc., with a 49% stake, Viacom18 defines entertainment in India by touching the lives of people through its properties on air, online, on ground, in shop and through cinema.
About ThinkAnalytics
ThinkAnalytics’ flagship solution is the ThinkAnalytics Emmy® award-winning Content Discovery Platform, the most widely deployed real-time, personalized content and recommendations engine worldwide. More recently, the company has broadened its reach with ThinkInsight, the industry’s first Viewer and Video Insight Platform built specifically to meet the needs of TV operators. ThinkInsight incorporates the ThinkAnalytics Content Discovery Engine, ThinkBigData, ThinkCpmposer UX engine, ThinkEditorial and ThinkVoice marketing suite of products. It gives TV players a holistic view of their business, with full viewer lifecycle management enabling them to better address key industry KPIs that will help to boost loyalty, ARPU, customer experience and develop new revenue streams.
The company’s customer base of over 80 video service providers serves more than 250 million subscribers worldwide. Customers include: Liberty Global, BBC, Proximus, Cox, Rogers, Sky, Swisscom, Astro, Singtel, TataSky, Viacom18 and Vodafone. The ThinkAnalytics Content Discovery Engine now serves over 3 billion recommendations per day and is available as a cloud service or on premise.
ThinkAnalytics is a private, employee-owned company with offices in UK, USA, Singapore and India.
iWorld
Bill Ackman makes a $64bn bid for Universal Music Group
The hedge fund boss wants to list the world’s biggest record label in New York and thinks he knows exactly what ails it
NEW YORK: Bill Ackman wants to buy the world’s biggest record label. Pershing Square Capital Management, the hedge fund run by the billionaire investor, submitted a non-binding proposal on Tuesday to acquire all outstanding shares of Universal Music Group in a business combination transaction worth roughly $64.4 billion (around 55.8 billion euros).
Under the terms of the offer, UMG shareholders would receive 9.4 billion euros in cash, equivalent to 5.05 euros per share, plus 0.77 shares of a newly created company, dubbed New UMG, for each share held. Pershing Square values the total package at 30.40 euros per share, a 78 per cent premium to UMG’s closing price on April 2.
The deal would see UMG merge with Pershing Square SPARC Holdings, with the combined entity incorporating as a Nevada corporation and listing on the New York Stock Exchange. New UMG would publish financial statements under US GAAP and become eligible for S&P 500 index inclusion. Pershing Square says the transaction is expected to close by year-end, with all equity financing backstopped by Ackman’s firm and its affiliates, and all debt financing committed at signing. The transaction would cancel 17 per cent of UMG’s outstanding shares, leaving New UMG with 1.541 billion shares outstanding.
Ackman has a long history with UMG. Pershing Square first bought approximately 10 per cent of the company from Vivendi in the summer of 2021 for around $4 billion, around the time of UMG’s listing on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange. He has since trimmed that position, raising around $1.4 billion from the sale of a 2.7 per cent stake in March 2025, and resigned from UMG’s board in May 2025, citing new executive and board obligations arising from recent investments.
His diagnosis of UMG’s troubles is blunt. The company’s stock has fallen around 33 per cent over the past twelve months on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange, and Ackman lays out six reasons why. These include uncertainty around the Bolloré Group’s 18 per cent stake in the company, the postponement of UMG’s US listing, the underutilisation of UMG’s balance sheet, the absence of a publicly disclosed capital allocation plan and earnings algorithm, a failure to reflect UMG’s 2.7 billion euro stake in Spotify in its valuation, and what Ackman calls suboptimal shareholder investor relations, communications and engagement.
The Bolloré stake has long cast a shadow over the company. Cyrille Bolloré stepped down from UMG’s board in July 2025 as the Bolloré Group battled the French financial markets regulator over its stake in Vivendi, which holds a further capital interest in UMG. UMG had confidentially filed a draft registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in July 2025 for a proposed secondary listing in America, but put those plans on hold in March 2026, citing market conditions.
Ackman has kind words for UMG’s management, at least. “Since UMG’s listing, Lucian Grainge and the company’s management have done an excellent job nurturing and continuing to build a world-class artist roster and generating strong business performance,” he said. But he made his diagnosis plain: “UMG’s stock price has languished due to a combination of issues that are unrelated to the performance of its music business and importantly, all of them can be addressed with this transaction.”
In other words, Ackman believes UMG is a great business trapped inside a broken structure. If the board agrees, he intends to fix that, loudly and in New York.
