News Broadcasting
News Corp’s new ad network takes on Facebook, Google
MUMBAI: Training its guns at the digital-ad dominance of Google and Facebook, News Corp has launched a platform, News IQ, to let advertisers reach audiences across all of its online properties.
According to an article on Axios, News IQ will pull audience data from sites such as The Wall Street Journal, New York Post and Barron’s and give advertisers a way to reach specific audiences around safe content. The platform will launch globally over the coming months.
News Corp is the latest publishing company to launch a data-based advertising network to win back digital ad dollars from Google and Facebook. Disney, NBC and Vox Media, and Verizon and Oath have all taken similar steps. What they lack in scale, they are hoping to offer more brand-safe content at scale—a major selling point for advertisers spooked by terrorist content and suicide videos.
The product was built in Australia, where News Corp has a significant media footprint, and then brought to the US. The UK will be next.
The launch partners will include Douglas Elliman, Seabourn Cruise Line, Fox Broadcasting Company, and the Dentsu Aegis Network. The News IQ team will generate specific data on advertising impressions and traffic across all of the publishing properties.
News Broadcasting
Senior media executive Madhu Soman exits Zee Media
Former Reuters and Bloomberg leader says he leaves with “no regrets” after brief stint at WION and Zee Business
NOIDA: Madhu Soman, a veteran of global newsrooms and media sales floors, has stepped away from Zee Media Corporation after a short stint steering business strategy for WION and Zee Business.
In a reflective LinkedIn note marking his departure, Soman said his time within the network’s corridors was always likely to be brief. “Some chapters close faster than expected,” he wrote, signalling the end of a nearly two-year spell in which he oversaw both editorial partnerships and commercial strategy.
Soman joined Zee Media in 2022 after more than a decade abroad with Reuters and Bloomberg, returning to India to take on the role of chief business officer for WION and Zee Business. His mandate was ambitious: bridge the newsroom and the revenue desk while expanding digital and broadcast reach.
During the stint, Zee Business reached break-even for the first time since its launch in 2005, while WION refreshed programming and strengthened its digital footprint across platforms such as YouTube and Facebook.
But Soman suggested the cultural fit proved uneasy. Describing himself as a “cultural misfit”, he hinted at deeper tensions between editorial instincts shaped in global newsrooms and the realities of India’s television news ecosystem.
Before joining Zee, Soman spent more than seven years at Bloomberg in Hong Kong as head of broadcast sales for Asia-Pacific, expanding the company’s news syndication business across several markets. Earlier, he held senior editorial roles at Reuters, overseeing online strategy in India and managing Reuters Video Services from London.
His career began in television and wire reporting, including a stint with ANI during the 1999 Kargil conflict, before moving into digital publishing as India’s internet media landscape took shape.
Now, after nearly three decades in broadcast and digital media, Soman is leaving Delhi NCR and returning to his hometown, Trivandrum.
Exhausted, he admits. But unbowed. And with one quiet line that sums up the journey: he didn’t sell his soul — because some things, after all, are not for sale.
