AD Agencies
GroupM’s introduces Live Panel to transform media planning
MUMBAI: GroupM has recently introduced Live Panel, a new consumer and media insight solution enabling its agencies to more efficiently develop precise and targeted media plans so advertisers can more effectively reach their audiences, measure outcomes and seize competitive advantage. Essentially the new too will help GroupM make better use of its own data.
With seamless access to a global panel of more than 5.5 million consumers in 30 markets, Live Panel delivers the actionable insights needed to inform media decisions for both global and local campaigns. The new platform connects with multiple data sources across Kantar’s market leading data and research assets and integrates with the bespoke planning tools of GroupM’s media agencies to accelerate the time from insight to planning to implementation.
“In an era of continually evolving consumer behaviours and media preferences across a wider array of channels, marketers who have the most intelligence are at a distinct advantage, and our unique knowledge of audiences worldwide sets us apart in the industry,” said GroupM Global chairman Irwin Gotlieb. “Leveraging WPP’s data and analytics investments, we know more about media use and consumption behaviours than anyone else. Live Panel operationalizes this knowledge to turn consumers into audiences and audiences into customers more nimbly and efficiently for our clients’ advantage.”
“GroupM’s use of our global Lightspeed consumer panels and the integration of a number of our unique data sources – BrandZ, TGI, Connected Life and Kantar Worldpanel ComTech – into Live Panel fully realizes the power of Kantar’s insights capabilities by embedding them into agencies’ media investment management tools,” said Kantar CEO Eric Salama. “This continues Kantar’s strategy of combining survey, panel and census data for the benefit of marketers by connecting us to the client rosters of the world’s largest media investment group.”
Live Panel is the latest tool in a growing portfolio of consumer and media insight planning tools that help GroupM’s media agencies, including Mindshare, MEC, MediaCom, Maxus and Motivator to build distinct marketplace offerings that leverage the best data available in regions worldwide.
GroupM says that Live Panel will also provide clients of its agencies connectivity and benefits such as understanding consumers and trends, evaluation of consumer purchase and retail behaviours, integration of brand equity data, development of unique audience insights and programmatic audience segments on the basis of consumer attitudes, product purchase and usage behaviour, balancing of plans with understanding of consumer media usage, creation of device-optimal strategies and tactics with understanding of mobile phone, tablet and quad-play ownership, usage and purchasing trends.
AD Agencies
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.
