Ad Campaigns
UK’s MirriAd concentrates on India after striking video ad deal in China
MUMBAI: Television or online viewers react badly to having their shows interrupted with ad breaks. They are uncomfortable when a battery of ads interrupts, also owing to the resurgence of high-value content.
A UK-based advertising company may soon enjoy the first fruits of a significant video streaming deal (VoD) with a group owned by Alibaba, the Chinese technology giant. The company MirriAd has now concentrated its efforts on the US, Brazil, Germany and India, but without signing up clients in the UK.
MirriAd is working with Alibaba after striking the deal with Youku, the Chinese streaming platform (OTT), which the Alibaba’s Jack Ma bought for around $4 billion.
Mark Popkiewicz, the CEO of MirriAd, which hired Google’s Bharat Vijay Zende as its general manager – India in July 2017, said the company was formed in response to the explosion in quality online television programming.
Mirriad, together with Alibaba, has announced the launch of native-in-video advertising (NIVA) CPM in China. Tangeche is the first brand to run a NIVA CPM campaign with Alibaba/Youku and Mirriad.
Youku viewers may soon be seeing programmes with brands, such as a realistic soft drink can on a coffee table, superimposed or digitally inserted episodes by MirriAd, in which India’s ZEEL wrote off its Rs 330 million investment in August 2016.
Running until January 30, 2018, the Tangeche campaign features signage and product ad unit insertions using the brand’s mascot. The first flight will cover approximately 300-500 episodes of a variety of dramas and variety/reality shows. The campaign will be managed for viewability and verification in partnership with third party tracking.
Tangeche parent Hangzhou Souche Automotive Services VP Chen Qi said, “Besides cost-effective brand exposure, Tangeche attracted the attention of younger users, and communicated a new way for buying cars, thanks to its subtle messaging in scenes that featured urban mainstream working and living.”
Mirriad MD – APAC Mike Rees says: “As a brand that typically purchases OOH, Tangeche is utilising NIVA as a supplement with powerful ad tech and tracking capabilities that feature high quality integrations that deliver high relevancy, reach and efficiency.”
Alibaba Digital Media & Entertainment Group – Youku COO Shen Wei said, “Advertisers can now leverage hot IPs for increasing brand exposure and enhancing brand association, as well as generating more opportunities for content marketing.”
NATIONAL: Amazon Ads has laid out a sharply tech-led vision for the advertising industry in 2026, arguing that artificial intelligence, streaming TV and creator partnerships will combine to turn brand building into a more precise, performance-driven business.
At the heart of the shift, the company says, is the fusion of AI with Amazon’s vast trove of shopping, browsing and streaming signals, allowing advertisers to move beyond blunt reach metrics to campaigns designed around real customer behaviour.
“The future of advertising is not about reaching more people, but the right people with messages that resonate,” said Amazon Ads India head and vice president Girish Prabhu. “By combining AI with deep customer insights, we help brands move from broadcasting campaigns to having meaningful conversations wherever audiences spend their time.”
One of the biggest changes, according to Amazon Ads, will be the collapse of the wall between media planning and creative development. Retail media, powered by first-party data, is increasingly shaping everything from brand discovery to final purchase, pushing marketers to design campaigns around audience insight rather than internal instinct.
AI is also moving from a support tool to a creative engine. Agentic AI, which automates and accelerates production, is expected to make high-quality creative accessible even to small businesses, compressing weeks of work into hours and giving challengers the ability to compete with larger brands on speed and scale.
Behind the scenes, AI-driven analytics will take on a bigger role in campaign optimisation, identifying patterns, spotting opportunities and recommending actions that would previously have required teams of analysts.
Streaming TV is another big battleground. With India’s video streaming audience now above 600 million and connected TV users at 129.2 million in 2025, advertisers are set to treat streaming not just as a branding channel but as a performance engine, measured increasingly by sales, sign-ups and bookings rather than just reach.
Finally, Amazon Ads sees creators and contextual advertising reshaping how brands tell stories. Creators will act less like influencers and more like long-term partners, while scene-aware ads on streaming platforms will allow brands to insert hyper-relevant offers into the flow of what viewers are watching.
Taken together, Amazon Ads argues, these shifts mark a move towards advertising that is both more human and more measurable, where AI handles the complexity, and creativity does the persuading.
