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.”

Despite concerns over the global economic outlook, demand for quality CTV inventory has never been higher, and advertisers are eager to tap into greater flexibility when it comes to purchasing this highly coveted inventory. However, even with advertisers’ and publishers’ desire to harness the benefits and revenue inherent in programmatic CTV buying, the pace of adoption hasn’t kept pace with the levels of enthusiasm.

So, what’s needed to take programmatic CTV buying and revenue to the next level? The answer is a simple one: transparency. Fortunately, the technology needed to drive greater transparency in CTV buying is already available in the form of content object data signals. Let’s talk about why these signals are so important and how they’re going to change the trajectory of programmatic CTV adoption for advertisers and publishers alike.

What Are Content Object Data Signals?

When advertisers buy inventory on linear TV, they know precisely where it will appear – the network, show, ad slot, genre and rating of the content, you name it. This transparency enables complete confidence in the brand safety of content, and it’s one of the primary reasons linear TV spend has remained so strong, despite heavy shifts in viewership to streaming channels.

So, what about programmatic CTV? How do we bring this level of transparency into this fast-growing space? That’s where content object data signals come in. Content objects are information that publishers can pass through the bid stream to give advertisers valuable information on the inventory they’re buying. These signals can include network, show, genre, ratings and other key pieces of information that allow advertisers to know precisely where their ads will be running.

Content objects are a vital tool that publishers and advertisers can use to enhance contextual targeting, and buyers are able to leverage the information gleaned from content object signals for better attribution and optimization. In other words, they’re the missing piece of the puzzle when it comes to bringing the incredibly desirable transparency of linear into the programmatic CTV space. So why isn’t the use of content objects ubiquitous?

Barriers to Content Object Data Signal Adoption

One of the main reasons content object signals aren’t pervasive in programmatic CTV buying today is a simple lack of awareness. In fact, a recent study found only about half of US and UK advertisers are familiar with content object signals and use them to purchase CTV and OTT video ad inventory. 

In terms of inventory, there are also simply not enough publishers passing these valuable insights into the bidstream yet. This is more than a lack of awareness of the option to do so. Rather, some publishers harbour the misconception that passing content object signals into the bidstream will lead to too much advertiser cherry-picking on inventory and, thus, a lack of scale. But indeed, research shows quite the opposite: 62% of U.S. brands and 82% of UK brands say they would increase their spends with partners that provide data such as content object signals, and a majority of advertisers say they are willing to pay a premium for the transparency that content object signals afford them.

Benefits of Greater Transparency in Programmatic CTV

Overall, there’s a tremendous amount of value to be unlocked within the programmatic CTV space, for buyers and publishers alike, and content object data signals hold the key.

These include the following:

Scale: Many of today’s advertisers feel that they need to buy with big-name publishers if they want to get brand-safe inventory in the CTV space, but that’s simply not the case. By passing inventory details via content object signals, small and mid-size publishers will open up a tremendous amount of inventory to advertisers that wouldn’t have otherwise considered such purchases (and instead favoured direct, hard-to-scale deals with publishers).

Flexibility: Programmatic CTV buying enables advertisers to buy the inventory they want, when they want it, and at the price they want. At present, a lot of brands and agencies that desire this flexibility are abstaining from programmatic CTV due to a perceived lack of transparency and brand safety. By removing these perceived dangers, publishers will be able to welcome a whole slew of new, eager brands into the CTV buying fold.

Continuity across buys: Content object signals enable CTV buys to harness the strengths of both the linear and digital worlds – rich content information on one side and strong impression-level data on the other. In doing so, programmatic CTV can help campaigns that span linear TV and digital video become more cohesive across channels.

With greater transparency comes greater adoption. In this regard, content object signals hold the key to unlocking the tremendous advertising value and revenue potential from programmatic CTV that advertisers and publishers have been long awaiting.