Audible, a creator and provider of premium audio storytelling, has signed an exclusive deal for 10-audio dramas with Nikhil Mirchandani’s Hoop Entertainment.

Hoop Entertainment will produce 70 hours of original, multi-character, audio series content, across mythology, drama, history, true crime and horror genres, creating a “theatre of the mind” experience that will be exclusively distributed on Audible.

The 10 new shows produced by Hoop will be available free for all listeners, exclusively on Audible.

Shailesh Sawlani, VP and Country Manager for India at Audible, said, "We are incredibly excited to collaborate with Hoop Entertainment to bring captivating content to all listeners for free on Audible. We are constantly seeking new and innovative ways to provide our listeners with best-in-class content, and Hoop Entertainment's expertise in producing audio dramas across a variety of genres perfectly aligns with our vision. We are confident our shared passion for storytelling will help us to continue to deliver an immersive experience for our listeners."

Nikhil Mirchandani, Founder, Hoop Entertainment, said, “We're thrilled at the opportunity to produce a multitude of audio series across genres for Audible. The stories, narrative, performances, and sound design will create a ‘theatre-of-the-mind’ experience. Audio is the next entertainment frontier, and our audiences are ready for complex storytelling and personalized audio experiences. We thank Audible for trusting & enabling us to explore this medium to the fullest.”

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has said that the company needs to eliminate about 9,000 more positions from AWS, PXT, Advertising and Twitch.

He made the announcement via a blog post.

The company has concluded its second phase of the operating plan, Jassy said.

"This was a difficult decision, but one that we think is best for the company long term," he wrote in the post.

e4m has collaborated with Lodestar UM, one of India’s leading media agencies and a part of the Mediabrands India network, to create “Generational Zeitgeist” – a six-part Podcast Series that peeks into the Indian Gen Zers’ mindset.

Based on multiple sources of learning including a three-part pan-India study with 1100+ GenZ respondents, Generational Zeitgeist covers a wide range of topics.

Each episode is a conversation between Aditi Mishra, CEO, Lodestar UM, and Kulanath Kaushik, one of the contributors to the study from Lodestar UM’s strategy team.

About the fourth episode

Aditi Mishra and Kulanath Kaushik discuss how has GenZ's media behaviour has changed over time.

“In today's digitally empowered media world, there is an endless choice of content and media, and the influx of influencers on social and video platforms has made it more democratic. Viewers have more power, and platforms like Discord and Patreon have harnessed the power of community,” said Mishra.

She added, “With so much content, choice, and engagement, time spent by GenZ audiences has increased. However, with this fragmentation, brands need to adapt to the dynamic media landscape and GenZ's changing habits.”

Technology has accelerated the speed of change, with innovative developments emerging every six months, such as the recent buzz around ChatGPT, Mishra opined. 

The two discussed 'Growth of Modern Brands' amongst the GenZ and how it is important for Brands to 'Enable Experiences', to have 'Dynamism & Agility', be 'Authentic & Transparent' and get the Brand's 'Core Promise Right'.

“The GenZs value authenticity and purpose-driven brands that deliver on their core promise, enabling them to sail through tough times. Brands that are adaptable, agile, and keep pace with the dynamic and fast-moving GenZs can create a pull,” says Mishra.

She further noted, “The pandemic presented an excellent opportunity for brands to demonstrate agility by pivoting to new services, as exemplified by Zomato/Swiggy's entry into grocery delivery and Amazon Prime Video's introduction of Watch Party. Thus, brands should empower GenZs to be part of their progression by being dynamic and agile.”

After working in digital marketing for over two decades, Vivek Bhargava, head of Dentsu Performance Group, moved on to the software space with his new venture ProfitWheel in 2021. 

ProfitWheel is a global consumer intelligence SaaS start-up, co-founded by Bhargava, Gautam Mehra and Aman Khanna. 

For Bhargava, making such switches is nothing new. He himself comes from a family that’s in the business of selling the musical instrument sitar. He decided to do something new and set up a digital marketing company in 1997, at a time when most people neither had the internet nor had heard of digital marketing. 

In less than two years’ time, ProfitWheel bagged several large enterprises as clients, including Fortune 500 companies and has been helping them take decisions on media buying, content creation, creative strategy, influencer selection, etcetera, globally with the help of actionable insights on their first-party data. 

In an interview with exchange4media, Bhargava shares his learnings from his early entrepreneurship days and experiences he gained at dentsu group and how it all helped him get quick success at the new venture. 

Calling Artificial Intelligence (AI) the “biggest emerging trend in SAAS,” Bhargava highlighted how it is the core of his platform that taps into a multi-modal AI integrated with ChatGPT, Bard and Cohere among others. “Generative AI is re-setting the entire world. With it, we have mapped 1.2 million interests of Facebook to 200,000 categories on YouTube further to 1,20,000 interests on Programmatic to further 17,000 interests on TikTok and 600 on Snap.”

He added, “We have also mapped audiences across the globe, so those with interested in cricket in India will be interested in formula one in the UAE, while a similar psychographic audience will have interest in ice hockey in Canada and soccer in the UK.”

While it’s become almost trite to say that India’s digital landscape is growing by leaps and bounds, the daily uptick in consumer numbers is what is keeping brands, agencies, analysts and sundry excited about the topic.

And one of the key driving forces of this growth is the increasing ease of access to video.

In India, the potential of video advertising is tremendous, with a predicted 512 million viewers by 2025, even as other reports pitch for even larger numbers.

Keeping pace with the evolving market has been vital to advertising brands across the spectrum. Remarking on the same, Taranjeet Singh, Managing Director, South APAC at Criteo, points out that it has evolved from being a single solution company to a multi-product commerce media platform.

According to a recent report by Redsteer Strategy Consultants, Indians spend an enormous amount of time on their smartphones, with an average of 7.3 hours per day spent on online messaging, social media, YouTube streaming, OTT content, and short-form video.

With more time spent online combined with the increased bandwidth and low latency provided by 5G, this combination of factors further enables businesses to create real-time communication and provide personalized customer support by delivering rich media experiences.

And Singh says that as more and more Indians turn to digital channels for their shopping needs and entertainment, it is crucial for brands and retailers to have a strong presence in various channels, including video and retail websites.

This means it is essential for marketers to build effective, full-funnel advertising propositions that enable them to engage with existing and potential customers at every shoppable moment and become part of the consumer's journey to build a presence, and achieve meaningful commerce goals.

Singh asserts that Criteo is committed to helping brands take advantage of this trend towards direct video advertising through their video advertising solution, which offers access to over 600 premium video publishers and unique audience metrics that can drive measurable outcomes for brands.

“Our combined video advertising and performance solutions cover multiple touch points and leverage audience-first ad solutions, including in-stream and out-stream video, mobile app, web traffic, consideration, and retargeting,” he says, adding that by partnering with Criteo, brands can increase their awareness, drive traffic, and optimize their sales and marketing goals.

“Additionally, our recent acquisition of Brandcrush, an Australia-based company whose platform enables the buying and selling of omnichannel retail media, including offline media channels, allows Criteo to provide a holistic omnichannel monetization solution for retailers,” he says.

Given the growing pivot towards Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Singh says his company’s core technology has always been the Criteo AI Engine.

“Criteo’s advanced AI algorithms analyse data in real-time from the Criteo Shopper Graph, with insights from 750 million daily active users, and 4 billion product SKUs and 3,500 product categories,” he says, concluding, as this engine learns from real shopper behaviours, it continuously adapts to brands campaign objectives and powers predictive bidding, product recommendations, dynamic creative optimization (DCO+), and look alike finders.

Amazon is believed to be in advanced talks to acquire Times Internet-owned OTT platform MX Player, sources have told exchange4media.

In 2018, Times Internet surprised the world by acquiring MX Player for an estimated sum of $140 million or Rs 1,000 crore then.  

The move was considered a bold move by the Times group, especially since the company’s previous OTT venture — BoxTV.com — had shut down in 2016 only, after four years of existence. 

Four years down the line,  Times Internet, the digital arm of media conglomerate Times Group, has decided to sell MX Player, one of the largest OTT platforms in India.

“Amazon is set to acquire MX Player to expand its entertainment business in one of largest consumer markets in the world. The deal will be closed soon”, sources privy to the matter said. 

The US-based giant has reportedly roped in a leading consulting firm for due diligence over the deal. 

“The deal size is roughly $100 million, $40 million less than what Times Internet invested in Mx Player at the time of acquisition,” sources claimed. 

e4m can’t independently verify the claims. 

Times Internet did not respond to a questionnaire sent to them in this regard early this week despite repeated requests. “We have no comments to offer,” the group representatives told e4m. Amazon's response is awaited.

If the deal really goes through, then Amazon Prime Video is set to grow four times bigger in terms of consumer acquisition. Amazon has an estimated 28 million users in India while MX Player has nearly 78 million users. 

This high-profile deal has the potential to make India’s OTT war intense, especially since the Reliance group has thrown its hat in the game. Viacom18 has played a big gambit by streaming IPL for free over JioCinema for users across all telecom networks in a bid to acquire a maximum number of users, even as it has shelled out Rs 24,000 crore to acquire IPL’s digital media rights for five years. 

Incidentally, MX Player was ranked as the 3rd Most Downloaded OTT App Globally in 2022, in the State of Mobile 2023 report by Data.ai. In India, MX Player was the most downloaded app surpassing Hotstar, Zee 5, Jio TV and Jio Cinema.

MX Player launched as a video player on 18 July 2011 in Korea. In 2019, it was relaunched as an OTT platform with original programming.

Open AI, the San Francisco-based company which has revolutionized the world of artificial intelligence with its AI-powered chatbot product, has now launched the latest iteration model of its GPT series, GPT-4. This opens a world full of new features for brands to use for innovative marketing and leverage it for other growth strategies. Experts from the tech and business field say GPT-4 can help in brand building, but surely with caution.

GPT-4 brings in newer features, such as being able to do creative and technical writing tasks, accepting images as inputs and generating captions, classifications, and analyses and handling long form content creation ranging over 25,000 words of text.

This version has already been incorporated by a bunch of companies including Duolingo for its new subscription-based platform called Duolingo Max, matchmaking application Keeper, virtual assistance app for the visually impaired called Be My Eyes and edu-tech firm Khan Academy. Microsoft’s Bing also confirmed the usage of GPT-4. The number of companies around the world that are partnering with Open AI for GPT-4 is continuously growing.

So, what is making brands jump on the bandwagon?

How can brands use GPT-4?

Niraj Ruparel, Head of Mobile & Emerging Tech - GroupM India Emerging Tech Lead - WPP India, shares, “As a language model, ChatGPT-4 could be used for a wide range of natural language processing tasks, such as text completion, translation, summarization, and question-answering. It could also be used in chatbots, virtual assistants, and other conversational AI applications to provide more accurate and natural responses to user queries.”

Kiran Capoor, Head of Technology of Schbang, says GPT-4 can be a good tool to help brands personalize and target their audience better. "GPT-4 can be used by brands to analyze and understand customer preferences and trends, creating content that resonates with the target audience, ultimately driving more traffic and engagement. Alternatively, if you run an e-commerce business, you could leverage GPT-4 to improve customer experience and satisfaction by analyzing customer feedback and reviews, identifying common issues and pain points that customers face when interacting with the business. AI can be used in marketing to provide personalized user experiences, product recommendations based on a user's browsing history, conversational chatbots, predictive marketing analytics, "try-before-you-buy" models, and more."

Karan Taurani of Elara Capital says it’s still early days for marketers to use GPT-4, but once it kicks off, it should see a lot of ad spends. “I think it's still some time that they get into the advertising segment or the advertisement monetization model. I think this is more a user-led thing. If we look at social media also, initially, they started off with no ads, but then introduced ads five to six years later. So, the point is that I think it's very early days to say in terms of how brands will leverage features of GPT-4 to make best use of it. But yeah, once the traffic of this kind of app increases, you will see advertising dollars flowing on them.”

Ashray Malhotra, CEO and co-founder of Rephrase.ai believes the broader knowledge base of GPT-4 can be a game changer in customer service and content creation. “Brands can leverage the features of GPT-4 to create engaging and personalized content for their customers, such as product descriptions, reviews, ads, social media posts, emails, chatbots and more. GPT-4 has a broader general knowledge and deeper understanding of various domains than previous models, which means it can generate more relevant and accurate content for different audiences and contexts. GPT-4 is also multilingual and can answer multiple-choice questions with high accuracy across 26 languages, which opens up new possibilities for global marketing and customer service.”

Hareesh Tibrewala, joint CEO Mirum India, says, "Brands can use it for generating campaign ideas as well as the actual content for the campaigns. Right now simple things like generating multiple subject lines keeping best practices in mind for a email campaign or key word stuffed article for SEO purposes to more complex things like writing video scripts keeping in mind specific brand tonality and requirements. I think it has multiple possible applications. "

Industries which can benefit the most from GPT-4
Ashray Malhotra says that any industry that relies on communication and creativity can benefit from this AI tool. “For example, e-commerce, media, entertainment, education, healthcare, finance and more. GPT-4 can help these industries create more engaging and personalized experiences for their customers, as well as streamline their workflows and reduce costs.”

Karan Taurani sees the consumer industry as a big market for GPT-4. “I think in terms of industry, if you look at majorly in terms of AI, a lot of the consumer industries will actually see a big boost. Consumer traditional companies like Auto, FMCG, these are verticals which are very large in terms of size and scale.”

Treading steadily but cautiously towards AI
Experts believe AI should be a go to for every brand but they need to use it responsibly.

Niraj Ruparel gives examples of how his team has made a bunch of successful uses of AI but he says marketers and brands need to be aware of Responsible AI. “My teams have built multiple solves for brands using the power of AI. WPP teams helped create Young Sachin, Bret Lee Thumbs up Stumpcam wicket se cricket dekho, SRK not just a Cadbury ad among other things. While industry standards in this area are still maturing, there is widespread recognition that product architecture and development should be based on appropriate ethics. Responsible AI considers the technology’s impact not only on users but on the broader world, ensuring that its usage is fair and responsible.”

Ashray Malhotra, who works on AI on a regular basis, says brands need to be mindful of the way they are using it. “I think brands need to look at new AI features as opportunities to innovate and differentiate themselves from their competitors. AI is not a threat but a partner that can help brands achieve their goals faster and better. However, brands also need to be mindful of the ethical and social implications of using AI tools like GPT-4. They need to ensure that they use them responsibly and transparently, respecting the privacy and preferences of their customers.”