Quantum Brief – Page 207

Microsoft could have closed the $69 billion Activision deal today. But that didn’t happen.

Calvin Klein in defence of their advertisement, stated that it was similar to the ads they've released in the UK for many years. (Representational image by Joshua Hoehne via Unsplash)

Microsoft has been constantly trying to win the approval of world governments to allow the acquisition deal to go through.

Storyboard18 Insider: Adland’s food influencer, cottage industry of Cannes Lions, and more

Catch all the inside industry stories and hot gossip on Storyboard18. (Representative Image: Birmingham Museums Trust via Unsplash)

Get your fix of sizzling hot gossip and inside stories.

Cannes Lions receives 26992 entries for 2023; 6 percent increase from 2022

Work from across the globe will be judged, awarded and celebrated during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, running from 17 to 21 June 2024. (Image sourced from Cannes Lions website)

The awards have seen an 18% increase in the number of entries directly by consumer product brand companies demonstrating the value being placed on creativity that drives business

SEBI, ZEE fund siphoning case: Punit Goenka’s plea to SAT ahead of NCLT hearing on ZEE-Sony merger

SAT to hear Subhash Chandra, Punit Goenka’s plea challenging the SEBI order on June 19; asks SEBI to file reply in two days. Goenka also alleged that SEBI has jumped to unwarranted conclusions.

Google has been operating an illegal advertising monopoly, says the EU

Social media users reprimanded Gemini as ‘absurdly woke’ and ‘unusable’ after requests to generate representative images for subjects prompted the creation of bizarrely revisionist pictures. (Representational image: Rajeshwar Bachu via Unsplash)

European regulators threaten to break up Google’s ad monopoly; Google charged with violating antitrust law in how it operates its suite of digital advertising technologies.

Mast & Meh: Adidas, McDonald’s, JioMart, Tata Sampann

Stills from the Mast and Meh ads this week. Take a look at unskippable commercials and the ones we wish we could have skipped

Find out who made the cut and who got cut in Storyboard18’s weekly picks of the best and boring ads.

Saregama partners with Jio TV to launch three music channels

The confusion arose because the data being referred to here was the Raw Level Data. However, it is actually the Respondent Level Data that is being shared with agencies and advertisers.

Saregama’ s vast music catalogue from Hindi, Telugu and Bhojpuri is now available on both Jio TV and Jio TV+.

Acquired at 40% discount, Ustraa says its valuation can increase 6X in 3 years

VLCC had filed its Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP) in August 2021, but the plans were shelved after Carlyle, the private equity (PE) giant, acquired a controlling stake in the New Delhi-based beauty and wellness chain. The PE firm bought VLCC for around $250-$300 million, as per reports, and was likely to revive VLCC’s IPO goals in the coming years. (Representative Image: Christoffer Engström via Unsplash)

Ustraa’s Rs 250 crore deal with VLCC also took some by surprise because The Good Glamm Group had put around Rs 490 crore on the table to acquire Ustraa last year, sources told Moneycontrol. The deal did not materialise because of internal reasons, they added.

Hip and happning: French dating app happn refreshes brand proposition

happn is going even further with Crush Points, which enables happners to meet singles who like and go to the same places as them. It builds trust and community by discovering people with shared interests.

For its 37 million Indian users, happn is launching its newest feature CrushPoints in multiple Indian cities, combining dating with social networking.

GroupM launches hyper-local audience targeting solution, Geo Granularity for addressable TV

Covering an expansive area of 26,000 square kilometres across India’s top cities, this innovative solution was developed using proprietary geo-spatial technology and is the country’s first ever initiative of its kind, offering unparalleled targeting capabilities exclusively designed for TV advertisers. (Representative Image: engin akyurt via Unsplash)

Geo Granularity, developed by GroupM Nexus’s Finecast, enables hyperlocal targeting in high quality broadcaster inventory for more precise audience reach that optimises ad spend