MAM
WPP’s Wunderman acquires Bridge Worldwide
MUMBAI: WPP Group’s Wunderman has acquired marketing and interactive agency Bridge Worldwide (‘Bridge’), which is a Cincinnati-based interactive relationship marketing agency specialising in Fortune 100 consumer packaged goods and healthcare.
The acquisition of Bridge enhances Wunderman’s online and healthcare expertise and continues WPP’s strategy of developing its networks in fast growing markets and sectors.
AdMedia Partners, a New York investment bank specialising in mergers and acquisitions advisory services to the advertising and marketing, media, and related online and information services businesses, represented Bridge Worldwide in the acquisition.
“Bridge pioneered the use of the internet to establish active ongoing relationships between major consumer brands and their customers. The acquisition reflects Wunderman’s understanding of the importance of this new way to serve CPG clients, said Seth Alpert, one of the investment bankers who led Bridge’s deal team.
Leveraging the Internet as the hub of many of its programs, Bridge Worldwide’s results-driven creative has built consumer relationships for some of the world’s best known brands, including the CPG leader Procter & Gamble.
Bridge Worldwide will have access to the diverse resources of Wunderman’s global network; however, it will operate as an independent unit of Wunderman. Terms of the financial agreement were not disclosed.
“Bridge Worldwide’s depth of online and healthcare experience complements Wunderman’s, and we both share the same philosophies about the power of customer relationships and online dialog,” said Wunderman chairman and CEO Daniel Morel.
Bridge Worldwide, headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, employs more than 120 people and was named as one of the fastest growing companies in the city.
Bridge Worldwide president and CEO Jay Woffington said, “We are very excited to join WPP and be affiliated with a world-class organization such as Wunderman. This move allows us to tap into the expertise and the global scale of the network while maintaining our entrepreneurial culture and our flexible creative and strategic approach for our clients.”
Bridge’s audited revenues for the year ended 31 December 2004 were $10.2 million with net assets at completion of $1.8 million.
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.
