iWorld
Facebook partners with VivaConnect to scale-up its ‘Missed Call’ ad unit business
MUMBAI: Keeping in tune with trends of emerging markets, Facebook has launched ‘Missed Call’ ad unit business in the feature phone heavy Indian market. To scale-up its reach over mobile devices, Facebook has partnered with VivaConnect for its missed call platform. VivaConnect holds India’s largest infrastructure for voice and missed call services.
The ‘missed call’ advertisement is Facebook’s first foray into mobile service to empower advertisers effectively reach their consumers in developing markets. India, the second most populated country in the world is quickly catching up to the US as Facebook’s biggest market. In last April, Facebook had announced the crossing of 100 million users in India and thus expects higher revenue from this emerging market.
The new missed call ad format comes in action as around 66 per cent Indians access Facebook on mobile devices of feature phone segment and a whopping 95 per cent of India’s mobile subscriber base has a pre-paid connection. A country where it’s a common norm among family and friends to dial a call and hang up after a ring expecting a response in return, the missed call ad format will definitely bolster brands advertising over Facebook, happening on mobile.
“Consumer behavior in high-growth markets is changing very rapidly and we are poised to respond to that as quickly as possible. We see brands delivering useful and entertaining content like sports scores, news, or celebrity messages that people find valuable enough to take the time to listen to and interact with. There is also a good tie-in for direct response advertisers who can use the missed call unit as lead generation, where a person is essentially raising their hand and expressing interest in a good or service,” said Facebook product marketing manager for emerging markets Maxine Schlein.
When a person sees an ad on Facebook they can place a ‘missed call’ by clicking the ad from their mobile device in the return call, the person will receive valuable content, such as music, cricket scores or celebrity messages, alongside a brand message from the advertiser, all without using airtime or data.
The combination of user’s social data assembled over Facebook and the reach offered by VivaConnect’s missed call platform, together will allow brands to effectively target their consumers with the right kind of advertising. Content will be personalised effectively, matching up the highly diverse Indian user base. Also, mobile access will grant an individual reach for retargeting consumers in brands subsequent activities.
“Facebook has been a hot trend over mobile in India and so have been missed call services. Together they would be a perfect solution for delivering an enhanced brand experience over Mobile. Missed calls offer an instant way to spark the conversations,” said VivaConnect managing director Vikram Raichura.
Facebook’s ‘Missed call’ advertisement is a harbinger of great things to follow leveraging brand-consumer connect over mobile.
iWorld
Arafta Season 2 greenlit as YouTube hit crosses 850 million views
GoQuest, Rains double down on global Turkish drama success story
MUMBAI: GoQuest Media and Rains Pictures have greenlit Season 2 of Arafta, riding on the runaway success of its debut season that has clocked over 850 million views on YouTube and secured licensing deals across 19 territories.
The upcoming season, already in production, will span 100 episodes and continue with a YouTube-first release strategy, a model that has proved to be a quiet disruptor in global content distribution. Season 1, which premiered in November 2025, built a strong digital following before translating that traction into international deals.
The series is currently licensed to platforms including Amazon MX Player in India, Kanal 7 in Turkey, and Vidio, along with several markets across Europe such as Romania, Hungary and Latvia. Across five language channels, the show has amassed more than 2.5 million subscribers, signalling growing global appetite for Turkish storytelling.
Notably, many of these licensing deals were struck after the show had already aired on YouTube, flipping the traditional distribution model on its head. Instead of competing with broadcasters, the digital-first strategy appears to be doing the heavy lifting in building awareness and audience demand.
GoQuest Media managing director Vivek Lath said, “Arafta is proving out what we believed about the make-to-sell model. A YouTube-first release does not compete with licensing. It builds the asset that licensees are buying.”
Season 1 wrapped on April 17 with a globally streamed finale that drew over 102,000 concurrent viewers, setting the stage for the next chapter. Lead actors İlsu Demirci and Emin Günenç will return, with the narrative continuing to explore themes of love, vengeance, sacrifice and fate.
Rains Pictures executive Sevda Kaygısız said the decision to move quickly into Season 2 was driven not just by success, but by the depth of the story still to be told. “Arafta is not just a successful project for us; it reflects our belief in powerful storytelling and building a genuine emotional connection with audiences,” she noted.
As Turkish dramas continue to travel beyond borders, Arafta’s success underscores a larger shift in how global hits are made and sold. In this case, the small screen found its big moment online first, and the world followed.
