In this weekly segment, ExchangeWire sums up key industry updates on ad tech from around the Asia Pacific region – in this edition: ZEE5 partners with leading AI Video enhancement startup Minute.ly to boost watching experience for tens of millions of users in India and around the world; Alibaba and WPP among the leading companies in GlobalData's internet advertising theme for the advertising sector; and Mindtree joins Hyperledger to accelerate blockchain development.

ZEE5 partners with leading AI Video enhancement startup Minute.ly to boost watching experience for tens of millions of users in India and around the world

Minute.ly, a leading AI-driven video enhancement company, has announced a strategic partnership with ZEE5, the first ever OTT platform to offer customisable Indian content, to personalise their front-end user experience. With 76.4m monthly active users globally, ZEE5 offers Indian and international movies, TV shows, live broadcasts and original content to an international community of viewers. The video giant has integrated Minute.ly’s AI tool to enrich its platforms’ video content – maximising user engagement, improving overall video views and site traffic, and expanding ZEE5’s reach.

With Minute.ly’s AI tool, ZEE5 can predict user engagement using artificial intelligence which will ultimately affect their video revenue. The company’s patented video optimisation algorithm automatically identifies peak moments from any video on site by analysing the visual content and its performance. It also provides invaluable insights regarding user interests – empowering publishers to know exactly what viewers want to see and what content they connect with most. By replacing static thumbnails with automated dynamic video preview thumbnails (APVs) using one of Minute.ly’s AI tools, ZEE5 has increased its overall click-through-rate (CTR) by 37% and extended its reach as users browse for more content on the premium publisher's site.

Speaking about the association, Rajneel Kumar, Business Head Expansion Projects & Head of Products, ZEE5 India said, “India is a unique market in terms of the audience demography and the preferences that run through the length and breadth of the country. At ZEE5, our core focus is to get the best of technology, data and content to culminate into an enriching personal viewing experience for a consumer. With Minute.ly’s AI tool, we will only better our understanding of a consumer’s video consumption pattern and serve them with the best of content anytime, anywhere.”

Alibaba and WPP among the leading companies in GlobalData's Internet advertising theme for the advertising sector

Alibaba, WPP and Comscore are among the leading companies in the Internet advertising theme, according to the latest Thematic Scorecard for the advertising sector from GlobalData.

All three companies gained the highest Thematic score (5 out of 5) for the Internet advertising theme in GlobalData’s Thematic Scorecard for the advertising sector. A Thematic score of 5 out of 5 indicates that the company’s competitive position in this theme will significantly improve its future performance.

Also identified as dominant players in this theme are Yahoo Japan, Channel Advisor, Criteo, and the Rubicon Project.

On their tail, with scores of 4 out of 5, are Adobe, Dentsu, Omnicom, Publicis, Interpublic, Baidu, Alliance Data Systems, Angie’s List and Marchex.

GlobalData’s Thematic Scorecard ranks companies within a sector on the basis of overall leadership in the ten themes that matter most to their industry, generating a leading indicator of future performance.

Mindtree joins Hyperledger to accelerate blockchain development

Mindtree, a global technology services and digital transformation company, has announced that it has joined Hyperledger, an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. Joining as a general member enables Mindtree to accelerate the development of its capabilities around Hyperledger and offer industry-specific blockchain solutions to prospective clients.

Hosted by the Linux Foundation, Hyperledger is a multi-project, multi-stakeholder effort that includes 14 business blockchain and distributed ledger technologies. Hyperledger enables organisations to build industry-specific applications, platforms and hardware systems to support business transactions by creating enterprise-grade, open source distributed ledger frameworks and code bases.

"Enterprises are seeing strategic value and want to adopt Blockchain to reimagine some of the current process areas and implement futuristic solutions. With this membership, we will be able to assist our customers in realising their vision in implementing these solutions," said Madhusudhan KM, chief technology officer, Mindtree. He added, "Joining the Hyperledger community is a further extension of Mindtree's effort to build a strong domain expertise around enterprise Blockchain-based solutions that deliver enhanced transparency, security and traceability for our clients across many industries including retail, manufacturing, banking, insurance, airlines & hospitality."