Chennai-based Brand Portrait Consulting has appointed Rajesh Ananthasubramanian as CEO for their operations in the US and Canada. Prior to joining Brand Portrait Consulting, he was CEO of India Plaza, an online Indian shopping portal.
Behavioral targeting is poised for a $1.5 billion year, according to eMarketer. And it makes sense: While the medium is seeing an influx of new dollars, there's a finite amount of premium contextual inventory for marketers to buy. Behavioral targeting is a way to sell more people-targeted advertising online and better use nonpremium inventory that may not have a natural commercial context.
In what signals an emerging battle among small car manufacturers, Hyundai Motors India Ltd (HMIL) has asked the country's apex auto association to act against moves by “some pressure groups” to change the definition of a small car.
Reliance Communications and Yahoo! India have joined hands to offer Yahoo! Instant Messenger (IM) for Reliance Mobile customers across India. With this first of its kind initiative, Reliance Communications will be offering Mobile IM across Java, BREW and WAP phones on a mobile operator network.
Big FM has announced the launch of their Bikaner and Jhansi radio stations, thereby taking its tally of stations to 11 across the country. While the first launch phase of stations saw Big FM launching in metros, the second phase will have stations coming up in mini-metros.
Can’t get a day off to watch cricket at home? Watch it online. Neo Sports, in an alliance with their distribution partner STAR India, has launched Neosports.in, where visitors can watch the live video streams of the ongoing India-West Indies cricket series.
Shrinivas Sinha, Media Group Head at TBWA\India’s Delhi office, has put in his papers. He is joining Media Direction, the specialist media services group of R K Swamy BBDO, as Associate Media Director. He will be reporting to Shan Jain, GM – North, Media Direction.
Time Warner’s Internet unit AOL has promoted Maneesh Dhir as its International Operations Head. He will now be responsible for the company’s overseas business opportunities in Europe, Asia and the Americas. Dhir will report directly to AOL President, Ron Grant. Dhir will be working from the company’s Bangalore office.
Baderwals Infraprojects has forayed into realty and the company has appointed Carat Media as the media AoR and Latitude 23 as the creative agency. The account size is expected to be in the region of Rs 20 crore.
Anoop Sequiera, CEO, Pizza Corner, has put in his papers. He will be joining Starbucks as CEO on February 21 and would be based in Delhi. Starbucks Corp, the world’s biggest coffee-shop chain, is all set to enter India in partnership with Pantaloon’s Kishore Biyani and V P Sharma, head of the US company’s Indonesian franchise.
Prasoon Joshi has been chosen as one of the judges for Spikes 2007, which will be held at Bali on April 25-27. Spikes, aka the Asian Advertising Awards, have also announced a 20 per cent increase in entries received by the first entry deadline compared to the same period in 2006. The last date for submission of entries is January 26.
There has been a change of guard at Rediffusion DY&R’s Mumbai office. The company has appointed Bimal Nair as Executive Vice-President, after Deb Sen left for Malaysia to manage the Kuala Lumpur office. Nair, currently Vice-President and Branch Manager of Contract, Chennai, will be joining Rediffusion from the beginning of next month.
In response to the ban imposed by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting on the distribution of AXN in India, the channel has issued a formal apology to the Government of India for alleged violations of Indian content restrictions.
Starcom MediaVest Group has launched their first ever sector vertical consulting unit, curiously named ‘C’, for lifestyle marketing and communications. The unit, headed by Anjana Sharma, will also have an expert advisory board comprising acknowledged trend spotters and lifestyle domain specialists along with a 60-member Lifestyle Test Panel.
In a bid to emphasise its brand name and its commitment to creating an integrated, streamlined global organisation, VNU has announced it is rechristening itself as The Nielsen Company.
aMap has thrown a big opening for KBC-SRK and even as this has no reflection of what can be expected from TAM Media Research numbers, it mirrors the high expectations that the industry has from KBC-SRK. The show managed a jump of 91.5 per cent for the ratings of STAR Plus. Almost all channels and genres got impacted due to the show.
The Delhi High Court has ordered Nimbus to share the feed of the ongoing India-West Indies cricket series with Doordarshan with a delay of seven minutes. All India Radio has also been given the permission to air commentary on the matches.
Paul Aiello, acting CEO of STAR India, arrived in India on January 23 to take stock of the situation following the recent top level upheavals here. He had his first meeting with STAR India’s staff and senior management where the agenda was to motivate them. Aiello faced some questions that STAR officials have had for a long time, unfortunately he did not have many answers.