MAM
GroupM India assigns new roles to Vinit Karnik and Karthik Nagarajan
MUMBAI: In a bid to bolster its core leadership, GroupM India has elevated and assigned new responsibilities to GroupM business head – entertainment & sports practice (ESP) Vinit Karnik and Wavemaker India chief content officer Karthik Nagarajan.
Karnik will take over the new role of head – sports, esports and entertainment at the agency’s south Asia unit; Nagarajan will take on the additional charge of head of branded content at GroupM India.
In their new roles, Karnik and Nagarajan will report to GroupM south Asia CEO Prasanth Kumar.
“Disruption and evolution go hand in hand and it also brought in opportunities in the content, sports and entertainment space and it is consistently redefining the market place,” said CEO Prasanth Kumar. “While we will continue to build on advertising technologies that will add speed and scale, we are equally committed to enhance our creative process and enable larger solutions in the content space. These leadership appointments signify our commitment to the journey and I am confident in both Vinit and Karthik’s abilities and together we look forward to creating great solutions and opportunities for our clients as well as our partners.”
Karnik joined GroupM 14 years ago and has been at the forefront of some of the high profile, high-value sponsorship and consulting deals in the business of sports and entertainment. Under him, the agency witnessed the launch of thought leadership for Indian sports and entertainment reports titled ‘Sporting Nation in the Making’ and ‘Showbiz’ respectively. Before joining GroupM in 2006, he was a part of the film fraternity in Mumbai, heading the film production and distribution business of Padmalaya Telefilms and Prasad Film Labs post production studio.
“Today a brand has various means to reach out to its audience be it via sports, social media, esports, influencers etc,” said Karnik. “Hence by strengthening our offerings and by bringing together creative optimisation and data, we want to ensure that the brands get to reach their consumers with content, which is highly personalised, effective and relevant for them.”
Nagarajan spent a significant part of his early career in consulting, as a practice head for Frost & Sullivan in the US. Before joining GroupM in 2011, he set up Nielsen’s online division and was also the India country head for NM Incite, the joint venture between Nielsen and McKinsey for social media consulting in India. He set up the social media practice for GroupM India, which also included its foray into advocacy. Nagarajan also evangelised the data agenda for GroupM by building its social analytics practice, products like Radar and the command centre offering. In 2015, he conceived and launched Brew, which became the premier content up-front event for not just GroupM but the industry as well.
MAM
Madison World to launch AI platform M BrAIn for media planning
Agency group invests about $1 million as it shifts to AI driven growth planning.
MUMBAI: If media planning once ran on spreadsheets and gut instinct, the next chapter may run on algorithms and curiosity. Madison World is preparing to roll out the first version of its proprietary artificial intelligence platform Madison M BrAIn in early April, as the independent agency group accelerates its transition toward AI driven planning and product led media services.
The platform, expected to involve an investment of around $1 million, is designed to reshape how the agency approaches strategy by combining internal knowledge, external data sources and advanced AI models into a single intelligence ecosystem.
According to Madison Media, OOH and Hiveminds partner and group CEO Ajit Varghese the initiative forms part of a larger structural rethink within the organisation. “Traditionally agencies built frameworks around media planning and allocation. We are redesigning that structure into what we call a Growth Planning System (GPS),” Varghese said.
The shift reflects a growing belief that effective media strategy must begin earlier in the decision making process. Instead of jumping directly to channel allocation, planners must first decode the market itself identifying consumer barriers, purchase triggers and the core challenges facing a brand.
Once those insights are mapped, agencies can build clearer growth agendas for clients and design media strategies that connect more closely with business outcomes.
To support that approach, Madison has built Madison M BrAIn as what it describes as a human AI cognitive ecosystem. Acting as a central intelligence hub, the platform aggregates proprietary insights alongside external data sources and large language models, enabling planners to access deeper market intelligence before building campaign strategies.
Varghese said one of the core objectives is to democratise knowledge across the organisation. “In the past, this level of understanding was largely available to senior leaders or experienced strategists. With Madison M BrAIn, even a junior planner should be able to access the same intelligence and approach clients with a far more informed perspective,” he said.
The agency has already implemented the new planning philosophy internally and completed three months of testing for the AI platform, with early trials showing encouraging results in terms of learning capability and system performance.
While the first version relied on global large language models, Madison is now developing its own proprietary Small Language Model (SLM) to serve as the core of the M BrAIn ecosystem.
“The SLM will be able to read global LLMs, but the LLMs cannot read the SLM,” Varghese explained. “That ensures all the intelligence we build remains within the Madison ecosystem and strengthens our proprietary knowledge base.”
The first version of Madison M BrAIn is expected to go live in early April, with a more refined version targeted by the end of June. Over time, the platform will integrate additional external data streams and APIs including consumer insight platforms, social listening tools and client datasets.
These integrations are expected to enhance the system’s learning capability and enable it to generate increasingly sophisticated strategic recommendations.
Although the platform is currently being deployed for internal use, Madison sees potential for it to evolve into a licensable product in the future.
“At the moment, our focus is to stabilise and strengthen M BrAIn internally. But over time there is potential for this to become a product that could be licensed externally,” Varghese said.
The AI platform is also part of a wider technology transformation underway at the agency group. Alongside M BrAIn, Madison is building a broader digital infrastructure called the Catalyst operating system, which aims to integrate operational processes, data and product platforms into a unified ecosystem.
This broader technology stack could require an additional $1 million to $1.5 million investment over time, though spending will be phased and reviewed regularly.
“We are evaluating progress every three months and prioritising the most critical capabilities first,” Varghese said.
Madison expects the full AI and operating ecosystem to be fully functional within 12 to 18 months, positioning the agency to combine human strategy with machine intelligence as the advertising industry enters its next data driven phase.
