iWorld
Ad Suite designed to help advertisers meet business objectives: ZEE5’s Yogesh Manwani
MUMBAI: While digital advertising spend in India has been traditionally mostly concentrated with Google and Facebook, OTT platforms with their massive user base have also started attracting brands lately. ZEE5, with a huge library of catch-up content from its parent network, has been focusing not only on curating the library but also its Ad Suite offering to enable advertisers to effectively meet their business objectives.
In 2019, ZEE5 launched tools like INFONOMIX, Ampli5, Ad Vault, PLAY5 under its AD Suite which clearly indicated the platform’s aggressiveness to increase ad revenue. ZEE5 India head AVOD, SEO, news and stories Yogesh Manwani spoke on the relevance of Ad Suite and the increasing interest and investment of brands on OTT platforms in an interaction with Indiantelevision.com.
“Our attempt is to enable brand or advertising partners to leverage the platform to reach their consumers, get their brand message out and meet their brand and business objectives. At the consumer level, we are investing and we always say that it is the power of content and technology that will help us deliver superior,” Manwani said.
“At a consumer level we are using hyper-personalisation and using AI and ML. We are also deploying the same thing for advertisers. The idea is to leverage the best of content and technology to give our advertisers the ability to meet their goals and objectives. We designed this Ad Suite, which has a whole host of products that any advertiser, depending on their brand objectives, can choose,” he added.
Advertisers can pick banners, videos, live streaming and a host of other options. FMCG, consumer durables, mobile handsets and telecom partners are their largest clients. Regional brands are also showing interest along with national brands.
HSM is a large market but Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka are growing markets while Bengal is emerging as a strong one as well.
“We have one of the strongest AVOD content portfolios. We have content across 12 languages. We have strong characters people love and connect with and strong shows. We don’t have any plans to change that but we constantly look at how we allow consumers to discover and enjoy from old content as well,” he commented on the AVOD content strategy.
“The marketing approach to AVOD content, considering the distinction of duration, frequency and nature of content, is different. It is more from a curator’s perspective other than a creator’s. The tools we use may be similar in terms of whether you are doing performance marketing, social media marketing or digital marketing but the way you approach the product is creator vs curator,” he added.
The marketing mix also depends on the stage of the show. The platform also leverages the power of multimedia to create awareness for original offerings and to get consumers on the platform.
“Digital is a big medium because it allows targeting consumers with the help of Consumer Life Cycle Management Techniques. It is a multimedia mix but it completely depends upon the main goals and objectives that we want to achieve,” he added.
While many reports have predicted that the Indian OTT ecosystem will be skewed towards advertising revenue, there is no unified measurement system. Manwani said that a unified currency always works for all stakeholders and for it to work all stakeholders have to come on-board. But he mentioned that until that happens, they will work closely with their advertiser partners to ensure there is full transparency.
iWorld
Meta plans 8,000 layoffs in new AI-led restructuring wave
First phase from May 20 may cut 10 per cent workforce amid AI pivot.
MUMBAI: At Meta, the future may be artificial but the cuts are very real. The social media giant is reportedly preparing a fresh round of layoffs, with an initial wave expected to impact around 8,000 employees as it doubles down on its artificial intelligence ambitions. According to a Reuters report, the first phase of job cuts is slated to begin on May 20, targeting roughly 10 per cent of Meta’s global workforce. With nearly 79,000 employees on its rolls as of December 31, the move marks one of the company’s most significant workforce reductions in recent years.
And this may only be the beginning. Sources indicate that additional layoffs are being planned for the second half of the year, although the scale and timing remain fluid, likely to be shaped by how Meta’s AI capabilities evolve in the coming months. Earlier reports had suggested that total cuts in 2026 could reach 20 per cent or more of its workforce.
The restructuring comes as chief executive Mark Zuckerberg continues to steer the company towards an AI-first operating model, committing hundreds of billions of dollars to the transition. Internally, this shift is already visible: teams within Reality Labs have been reorganised, engineers have been moved into a newly formed Applied AI unit, and a Meta Small Business division has been created to align with broader structural changes.
The trend is hardly isolated. Across the tech sector, companies are trimming headcount while investing aggressively in automation. Amazon, for instance, has reportedly cut around 30,000 corporate roles nearly 10 per cent of its white-collar workforce citing efficiency gains driven by AI. Data from Layoffs.fyi shows over 73,000 tech employees have already lost jobs this year, compared with 153,000 in all of 2024.
For Meta, the move echoes its earlier “year of efficiency” in 2022–23, when about 21,000 roles were eliminated amid slowing growth and market pressures. This time, however, the backdrop is different. The company is financially stronger, generating over $200 billion in revenue and $60 billion in profit last year, with shares up 3.68 per cent year-to-date though still below last summer’s peak.
That contrast underlines the shift underway. These layoffs are less about survival and more about reinvention. As Meta restructures itself around AI from autonomous coding agents to advanced machine learning systems, the question is no longer whether the company will change, but how many roles will be left unchanged when it does.
