MAM
Mindshare adds apna.com, Launch My Career & Winzo to client roster
Mumbai: Mindshare North has started the year with several business wins across consumer internet and data-technology category. This includes professional network site apna.com, online career guidance platform Launch My Career and social gaming app Winzo.
“The new wins go on to demonstrate client’s confidence in Mindshare’s capability to deliver not just highly visible award-winning campaigns, but deliver across the funnel by driving awareness, consideration, and eventual conversion as well for brands,” said the statement. “The ability to wrangle data, capitalize digital, leverage content and most importantly deliver outcomes, is what has driven differentiation in the market for Mindshare.”
The agency has been focusing its efforts to leverage data, digital and content space in the last few years as part of its growth strategy. Mindshare has continued investments in products, platforms and people and built a future-ready team to partner with clients for their data, digital and content transformation and growth journey.
“Several wins across a sector like consumer-internet and data-tech is a testament to the client’s trust in our work,” said Mindshare North and East India senior vice president client leadership Ruchi Mathur. “Brands today are looking for a strategic partner who can co-create communication with smart data and tech to deliver efficient campaigns and brand messaging. Clients are increasingly opting for agencies who have the capability to deliver full- funnel solutions and we are fully capable of delivering on these requirements. We are proud to have won these accounts in these emerging categories and we are confident of delivering the best to the clients.”
“These wins contribute to our vision of growth,” said Mindshare South Asia CEO Parthasarathy Mandayam. “While Mindshare continues to deliver in the traditional media space, there is increased focus on performance, data, tech, content as well. It is a privilege to see our teams continue to work hard and adapt to these difficult times and an honour to have clients put their trust in us, this is what makes Mindshare. These wins show that the team’s hard work and our strategy is paying off.”
MAM
ASCI study uncovers how Gen Alpha navigates ads in endless digital feeds
‘What the Sigma?’ ethnographic report maps blurred boundaries between content and commerce for 7–15-year-olds.
MUMBAI: Gen Alpha isn’t scrolling through the internet, they’re living rent-free inside its never-ending dopamine drip, and the ads have already moved in next door. The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) Academy, partnering with Futurebrands Consulting, has published ‘What the Sigma?’, an immersive ethnographic study that maps how Indian children aged 7–15 (Generation Alpha) consume, interpret and live alongside media and commercial messaging in a hyper-digital environment.
The research draws on in-home interviews, sibling and peer conversations, and discussions with parents, teachers, counsellors, psychologists, marketers and kidfluencers across six cities. It examines not only what children watch but how algorithms, content creators, peers and parents shape their relationship with the constant stream of shorts, vlogs, gameplay, memes, sponsored posts and ‘kid-ified’ adult material.
Five core themes emerged:
- Discontinuous Generation, Gen Alpha is not growing up alongside the internet, they are growing up inside it. Cultural references, humour, aesthetics and language sync globally in real time, often leaving adults functionally illiterate in their children’s world. A reference that lands instantly for a 10-year-old in Mumbai or Visakhapatnam feels opaque or disjointed to most parents.
- Authority Vacuum, Parents and teachers frequently lose cultural fluency in digital spaces. The algorithm responsive, inexhaustible and perfectly attuned to preferences becomes the most attentive presence in many children’s daily lives. Rules around screen time feel increasingly difficult to enforce when adults cannot fully see or understand the content landscape.
- Digital as Society, Online and offline no longer exist as separate realms, they form one continuous reality. The phone is not a tool children pick up; it is the primary social environment they inhabit.
- Great Media Mukbang, Content flows as an ambient, boundary-less, multi-sensorial stream. Entertainment, advertising, commerce, gameplay, memes and vlogs merge into one undifferentiated feed. The line between active choice and passive absorption has largely collapsed.
- Blurred Ad Recognition, Children aged 7–12 typically recognise only the most overt advertising formats. Influencer promotions, gaming integrations and vlog sponsorships often register as organic entertainment. Children aged 13–15 show greater ad literacy but remain highly susceptible to narrative-integrated, passion-driven and emotionally resonant brand messaging. Discernment remains low across the board in a non-stop stream.
ASCI CEO and secretary general Manisha Kapoor said, “ASCI Academy’s study is an investigation into the content life of Generation Alpha not to judge them but to understand them. Their cultural reference points seem disjointed from those of earlier generations. Insights on how they perceive advertising is the first step towards building more responsible engagement frameworks, given that they are the youngest media consumers in our country right now.”
Futurebrands Consulting founder and director Santosh Desai added, “While earlier generations have been exposed to digital media, for this generation it is the world they inhabit. This report explores not only what they watch but how they are being shaped by algorithms, content and advertising.”
The study proposes four adaptive, principles-led pathways:
- Universal signposting of commercial intent using design principles that make advertising recognisable even to young audiences.
- Ecosystem-wide responsibility shared among advertisers, platforms, creators, schools and parents.
- Future-ready safeguards built directly into children’s content experiences rather than as optional background settings.
- Formal media and advertising literacy embedded in school curricula to teach age-appropriate understanding of persuasion and commercial intent.
In a feed that never pauses, Gen Alpha isn’t merely watching content, they’re swimming in an ocean where entertainment, commerce and identity swirl together. The real question isn’t whether they can spot an ad; it’s whether the adults building the ocean can agree on where the lifeguards should stand.
