MAM
Nielsen names Johnson as head of reach solutions in SE Asia, N Asia & Pacific
MUMBAI: Global performance management company Nielsen, has appointed Craig Johnson to head up its Reach portfolio in Southeast Asia, North Asia and Pacific, including television audience measurement (TAM), radio audience measurement (RAM), Consumer & Media View and advertising measurement (AIS) with immediate effect.
Prior to joining Nielsen in 2006, Johnson spent a number of years working for one of Australia’s national broadcast media owners. During his time with Nielsen he has worked with a broad cross-section of clients around the world including television and radio broadcasters, media agencies, brands and industry bodies. Most recently he has been leading Nielsen’s Watch business in South Africa.
Johnson will relocate to Sydney, Australia.
In his new role, Johnson will focus on driving Nielsen’s leadership in the areas of TAM, RAM, Consumer & Media View and AIS. With a number of major media industry tenders currently under consideration in key markets such as Singapore, Johnson’s extensive TAM experience and expertise will be invaluable in ensuring Nielsen’s ongoing success.
Johnson said, “I am truly excited to be taking on this new opportunity with Nielsen. Rapidly evolving media habits are bringing about significant shifts in how we measure media consumption, and I look forward to leveraging Nielsen’s world-class audience measurement solutions to help our clients in this part of the world to understand and harness these shifts.”
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.
