MAM
AAAI to Celebrate Platinum Jubilee in 2020
MUMBAI: Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) is proud to celebrate its Platinum Jubilee year during 2020.
The premier national organisation for advertising agencies in India was set up in Calcutta in 1945. Four agencies from Calcutta – D J Keymer, General Advertising Agency, J Walter Thomson Co. and Press Syndicate along with three agencies from Bombay – Adarts, Lintas and National Advertising Service were the founder members of the AAAI.
Over the years, AAAI has stood the test of time and strengthened relations with the government and various industry bodies viz Indian Newspaper Society (INS), Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF), Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA), Indian Outdoor Advertising Association (IOAA), Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), Association of Radio Operators in India (AROI) et al.
Initially only Full-Service Agencies were members of AAAI and in 2008 AAAI opened its doors to Media and Creative Agencies as well. Recently it has opened its membership to Digital agencies and very soon it will open its membership to PR, Events and Outdoor agencies too.
Elaborating on this AAAI President, Ashish Bhasin said “AAAI was formed to promote advertising as a professional activity. From its humble beginnings with a mere seven agencies, AAAI has grown manifold to its present strength of more than 100 Advertising Agencies, who contribute more than 80% of the total ad budget of the country. Initially the total size of the advertising industry was Rs 5 crore, the advertising industry stands at over Rs. 70,000 crores in 2019 and is expected to grow up to Rs 1 trillion in the next few years. I am delighted to announce that the Executive Committee of AAAI has unanimously chosen Sam Balsara as Chairman of the Platinum Jubilee Celebrations Committee.”
In this connection Sam Balsara commented, “We hope to mount Celebrations in keeping with this momentous occasion. I look forward to the cooperation of my Colleagues in the Industry to make this a memorable occasion.”
The Platinum Jubilee Celebrations Committee will soon announce more details to celebrate AAAI’s 75th Anniversary during 2020.
The Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) is the official, national organization of advertising agencies, formed in 1945, to promote their interests. The Association promotes professionalism, through its founding principles, which uphold sound business practices between advertisers and advertising agencies and the various media. The AAAI today is truly representative, with a very large number of small, medium and large-sized agencies as its members, who together account for almost 80% of the advertising business placed in the country. It is thus recognized as the apex body of and the spokesperson for the advertising industry at all forums – advertisers and media owners and their associations and Government.
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.
