MAM
Digiday: Cheetah wins ‘Best Mobile Marketing Platform’ award
MUMBAI: Cheetah Ads, a mobile advertisement platform of Cheetah Mob, has been awarded as the Best Mobile Marketing Platform of 2017 by Digiday Signal awards.
Cheetah Mobile will be honored alongside other Digiday Awards winners in a ceremony in New York City in November, 2017.
Cheetah Mobile GM ad sales APAC Morden Chen said: “Our innovative app has the power to transform ads into experiences that are desirable and a delightful for users and brand advertisers.
Cheetah Ads received this award for their successful campaigns for Samsung on the occasion of Flipkart’s Big Billion Day sale, by creating 0.5 million page visits. The other campaign was for Bollywood comedy film Jolly LLB 2, to create a huge buzz on the day of its release and generate high CTR using the ad platform of Applock. AppLock ads offer a wide range of creative possibilities, providing brands with an interactive way to increases brand awareness like providing vertical video, GIF, full-screen and half-screen formats. With 400 million daily impressions worldwide (40 million US), AppLock allows brands to reach the right audience, at the right time, in the right format.
Cheetah Ads offers diverse, global reach with over 600 million users from 200+ countries across Cheetah Mobile’s owned and operated inventory, including News Republic, Live.me, Clean Master, and CM Security.
The Digiday Signal Awards honors the technology platforms that brings efficiency, effectiveness, and creativity to the media and marketing processes for brands, agencies and publishers. Digiday honors the best marketing and advertising technology, from publisher-centric tools to analytics dashboards for digital platforms.
MAM
Paramount set to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in $81 billion deal
Shareholders back merger, combined entity could reshape streaming and studios.
MUMBAI: Lights, camera… consolidation, Hollywood’s latest blockbuster might be happening off-screen. Shareholders of Warner Bros. Discovery have voted in favour of selling the company to Paramount in a deal valued at $81 billion rising to nearly $111 billion including debt setting the stage for one of the biggest shake-ups in modern media. The proposed merger, still subject to regulatory approvals, would bring together a vast portfolio spanning HBO Max, CNN, and franchises such as Harry Potter under the same umbrella as Paramount’s own heavyweights, including Top Gun and CBS.
At the heart of the deal is streaming scale. Executives have indicated plans to combine HBO Max and Paramount+ into a single platform, potentially creating a stronger challenger to giants like Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Video. Current market data suggests HBO Max holds around 12 per cent of US on-demand subscriptions, compared to Paramount+’s 3 per cent, together still trailing Netflix’s 19 per cent and Disney’s combined 27 per cent via Disney+ and Hulu.
Paramount CEO David Ellison has signalled that while platforms may merge, HBO’s creative identity will remain intact, stating the brand should “stay HBO” even within a broader ecosystem.
Beyond streaming, the deal would redraw the map for film production. Combining two of Hollywood’s oldest studios Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros., the new entity aims to scale output to over 30 films annually, while maintaining a 45-day theatrical window. Warner Bros. currently commands around 21 per cent of the US box office, compared to Paramount’s 6 per cent, underscoring the strategic weight of the acquisition.
But scale comes with scrutiny. Critics warn that fewer players could mean reduced consumer choice, rising subscription costs, and potential job cuts as the combined company looks to streamline overlapping operations while managing billions in debt.
The news business, too, faces a reset. CNN would join forces at least structurally with Paramount-owned CBS, raising questions about editorial independence and positioning. The merger has already drawn political attention in the United States, particularly given perceived ties between the Ellison family and Donald Trump, though the company maintains that newsroom autonomy will be preserved.
If approved, the deal would mark another milestone in Hollywood’s consolidation wave shrinking the industry’s traditional “big six” studios to a “big four”, with Paramount joining Disney, Universal, and Sony at the top table.
In an industry built on storytelling, this merger may well become its most consequential plot twist yet.
