MAM
Shamsher Singh named managing editor for Times Group’s Hindi & vernacular languages
Veteran TV journalist set to steer Hindi and vernacular news strategy
NEW DELHI: Shamsher Singh, a seasoned face in Hindi television journalism, has been appointed managing editor for the Hindi and vernacular language publications of the Times Group, marking another prominent chapter in a career that has spanned nearly three decades in Indian newsrooms.
Singh brings with him a deep well of editorial experience shaped across some of the country’s most recognisable media brands. Most recently, he has been serving as consulting editor at Network18 Media & Investments Limited since September 2024.
Before that, he was editor in chief at India Daily Live from April 2023 to February 2024, where he oversaw the channel’s editorial direction during a period of rapid expansion in the digital news space.
His newsroom leadership journey includes a stint as managing editor at Zee Media Corporation Limited between December 2020 and November 2022. Prior to that, he held the same role as managing editor at Republic Bharat from November 2018 to November 2020, guiding the Hindi news channel through a fiercely competitive broadcast landscape.
Singh’s earlier roles also reflect his long-standing engagement with political and current affairs coverage. At Zee Media, he served as editor for national affairs from 2017 to 2018, while at India TV he was editor for current affairs between 2013 and 2017.
Much of his formative editorial work took place at Aaj Tak, where he spent more than 15 years as deputy editor from April 1998 to October 2013, shaping coverage during a transformative era for Indian television news.
An alumnus of Patna University, Singh holds a master’s degree in journalism.
With his latest appointment at the Times Group, Singh steps into a role that sits at the intersection of legacy media and India’s fast-evolving regional news ecosystem. His task now is to sharpen the editorial voice and expand the reach of the group’s Hindi and vernacular platforms in a market where language journalism continues to command vast and loyal audiences.
MAM
Stagwell expands Trade Desk tie up to deploy Koa Agents globally
AI agents to automate planning buying optimisation and measurement.
MUMBAI: Media buying may soon need fewer hands on keyboards and more prompts on screens. Stagwell has expanded its global partnership with The Trade Desk, becoming the first global marketing network to adopt Koa Agents, an alpha-stage, agentic AI system designed to overhaul how digital advertising campaigns are run.
At its core, Koa Agents flips the traditional workflow. Instead of manually configuring campaigns step by step, marketers can simply describe their objectives, with AI agents executing, optimising and refining campaigns in real time. Tasks that once took days from audience segmentation to performance analysis are now automated and continuously adjusted as conditions shift.
The integration will connect Koa Agents with Stagwell’s proprietary media ecosystem through The Trade Desk’s Open Agentic Kit, effectively stitching together planning, activation, measurement and optimisation into a single, automated loop.
The first phase of deployment will focus on two key areas. For audience planning, traders can define target segments while Koa Agents identify high-value consumers, activate campaigns across premium inventory and optimise performance dynamically. On the supply side, the system introduces deeper transparency, using quality signals such as ad-to-content ratios and refresh rates to prioritise inventory, while offering clearer visibility into pricing and margins during live campaigns.
The rollout will also introduce a conversational interface, allowing traders to query campaign performance in plain language, why it is underperforming, what is driving results, and what to change receiving real-time, actionable recommendations.
Stagwell plans to make these capabilities available to select clients in a closed beta later this summer, with a broader roadmap aimed at automating the full campaign lifecycle, including setup, troubleshooting and predictive optimisation.
The move builds on an existing partnership between the two companies, including Stagwell’s adoption of Unified ID 2.0, The Trade Desk’s privacy-focused identity framework. Combined with Koa Agents, this is expected to sharpen audience targeting, streamline cross-channel activation and improve measurement accuracy.
As advertising grows more complex behind the scenes, both companies are betting that the front end can become radically simpler where campaigns are less about clicks and controls, and more about outcomes and intent.
