iWorld
ZEE5 introduces ‘PLAY5’ to help brands engage with customers through innovative and interactive experience
Mumbai: ZEE5, India’s fastest growing ConTech brand, has announced the launch of PLAY5 – a unique tool which will let brands engage with their consumers through innovative and interactive experiences. Fourth in line offering from the ZEE5 India’s industry defining ad-suite, it is designed to boost engagement and talk to segment of ONE in a brand safe environment.
Society is saturated with so much information, and users need an incentive that, among all this vortex, will help to awaken their interest and their desire to read more information about a topic beyond the title of a post or email. In other words, they need something essential that motivates them, that will surprise them and help them to focus all their attention on what they are doing. PLAY5 is tailormade to address these issues and engage with the target consumer in a hyper-personalised way.
The overall strategy rests on four key pillars that include customised gamification for the brands, branded polls, quizzes and tailored segment within ongoing reality show gamification. This integrated approach results in driving effective engagement and enhance consumer experience, seamless brand integration and visibility, segmentation capabilities to drive further engagement, leveraging brand legacy and advanced user profiling with insightful reports.
Taranjeet Singh, Chief Revenue Officer and Business Head, ZEE5 India said, “The viewer today is spoilt for choice and we are competing with media formats across the spectrum for their attention. With PLAY5, our endeavour is to engage with the audience through hyper-personalised and interactive formats. We are confident that through this offering, brands will be able to bring alive their offering before the audience rather than just target them. Our other offerings from ad-suite have been extremely well-received by our brand partners and we are confident that PLAY5 will be no different."
Some of the brands/shows who have successfully used PLAY5 are Colgate, Asian Paints, CEAT, Fortune Premium Kacchi Ghani Pure Mustard Oil for Dadagiri Season 8; Birla White Wallcare Putty, Goodknight, Kinderjoy, Bournvita for Dance India Dance – Battle of Champions to name a few.
In 2019 itself, ZEE5 has rolled out around 28 original shows across genres, and the platform is committed to launching 72+ shows by March 2020. It has crossed 70 million+ downloads since launch on the Play Store and recorded 9mn DAUs as of September 2019.
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.
