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WPP and InMobi Group enter into a multi-year strategic partnership to co-build unique benefits for marketers
Bangalore: WPP and InMobi Group have entered into a long-term strategic partnership to build unique benefits for marketers. Leveraging the best of expertise from InMobi Group and WPP agencies, including GroupM and Kantar, the partnership aims to simplify complexity for Indian marketers.
The collaboration between WPP and InMobi Group will enable brands to create personalized consumer experiences at scale. Through this partnership, brands will be able to translate up-to-the-moment insights into timely marketing action.
WPP will provide in-depth expertise and a creative approach through four pillars – content, media, data and research. WPP’s GroupM will provide data-driven marketing and media planning with end-to-end audience insights integration and will also be sharing its unique engagement approach for in-app mobile content marketing. This partnership will also benefit from Kantar’s research insights, including recommendations that combine delivery, engagement and impact measures through media.
InMobi Group will provide deep, mobile-first expertise across marketing software and media, data and consumer platforms. As a result of this partnership, brands will gain insights on and access to 200+ million mobile users in India through the InMobi Marketing Cloud, the only mobile platform to synthesize adtech and martech platforms. The InMobi Marketing Cloud includes Pulse, the world's leading mobile research platform and InMobi DSP, its in-app programmatic buying platform. Through Glance, the world's first screen-zero platform, brands will be able to reach more than 36 million Indian smartphone users on their lock screen.
CVL Srinivas, WPP country manager for India, said: "WPP's partnership with InMobi will simplify marketing processes for businesses. We recognize the challenges associated with managing and translating data insights into timely and relevant brand activity. Today's consumers are inundated with brand messages and we want to enable marketers to cut through the noise to provide their consumers with meaningful connections."
"User journeys in a mobile-first world have become increasingly complex, and brands need an end-to-end solution that helps them to uncover and drive insights into action seamlessly," said Naveen Tewari, Founder & CEO of InMobi Group. "InMobi and WPP's strengths in technology and marketing expertise mean that we are best positioned to take the guesswork out of complex data and provide integrated solutions for brands to help them drive real connections with consumers."
“WPP and InMobi have had a long-standing successful relationship,” said Abhay Singhal, Co-founder of InMobi Group and CEO of InMobi Marketing Cloud. “We are thrilled with the evolution of this relationship into a strategic arrangement. We hope to co-create value for the entire ecosystem through innovation that leverages data, technology, media, and content.”
India represents one of the largest and fastest-growing consumer markets globally. WPP and InMobi Group's partnership will see both companies co-building more innovative mobile-first products for the future, to help position businesses ahead of the marketing curve.
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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.
