Execution

June 2012 - Developed ‘audio-fingerprinting based matching’ against a static database November 2012 - First gamified application based on our technology, developed an ‘ad hunting game’ October 2013 - Developed ability to fingerprint live television with TV guide application October 2014 - Switched to an SDK instead of our own application December 2015 - Ad serving SDK and platform March 2016 - Improved accuracy fingerprinting algorithms December 2017 - Improved matching capabilities across 200k hours of content - developed ‘Media Matcher’ 2018 onward: - Deployed proprietary signal processing algorithms, recognized as amongst the best in the world; as determined by the annual MIREX contest hosted by University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign - Improved matching capabilities across ~1 million hours of content; Capable of running on smartphones through the day, with minimal impact on battery or data usage - Developed and launched our ‘Music Matcher’ - Released ‘Brand Command Centre’, sharing with brands real-time analytics on brand ads airing on television and analysing competition - Working on ‘One Media’ platform to curate consumption across both online and offline media channels: Radio, Cinema, video-on-demand, TV, On-demand content - Scaled to over 100 million profiled users, making Zapr one of the world’s largest media-tech companies

The Campaign

Zapr’s solution was driven by the need for user-level, INDIVIDUAL data of offline media consumption previously nonexistent in India which has the world’s second largest TV market. This insight led to the development of ACR technology powered by proprietary algorithms that collect offline media consumption. The intention was to solve problems faced by media companies globally such as the lack of robust large-scale data; inefficient marketing across siloed ad mediums; inability to engage with target audiences individually. Zapr combines Big Data and Ad technology to create a real cross-screen experience across Television and Digital, that is precise and effective. While ACR technology and its unique applications have existed for many years, Zapr’s novel innovation utilizes ACR for TV content detection in a country like India prevalent with low smartphone quality (on average) and backward internet connectivity. Achieving 99%+ accuracy in such conditions for 60 Mn+ people is groundbreaking.

Creative Execution

Zapr maps TV consumption of 60+ million individual Android smartphone users across 650+ channels in near real-time. Zapr’s Software Development Kit (SDK) is integrated with devices via user opt-ins. Powered by Digital Signal Processing, audio fingerprints are created on user devices whenever media content is detected in ambient audio. These fingerprints are sent back to in-house servers hosted on AWS and matched with the fingerprints of TV channels at 99%+ accuracy. Zapr churns out more than 1TB worth data everyday without accessing Personally Identifiable Information on Mobile, and engages users across hundreds of publishers using in-house advertising technology. Over the years, Zapr’s technology has repeatedly proved its reliability and consistency with all major media players in the market. The company is currently in the stage of increasing its user-base to emerge the choice digital partner for all brands, and building exciting new products to address specific needs of brands, broadcasters and publishers. The same TV-content recognition technology has been taken to other platforms like Cinema, Radio and Music to engage niche audiences in very specific industries. With recent integrations and expansion in business, our technology has scaled across new geographies from India to the Middle east and now Southeast Asia.

The long-term outcome / vision at Zapr Media Labs is to create comprehensive offline media consumption profiles for individual users and engage them with the most relevant content while aiding marketers to gain integrated, deterministic reach across the entire advertising ecosystem (traditional to digital). With solutions that are easily scalable to multiple times growth in user-base across any geography, our success metrics have become industry currencies to solve intractable big media problems: 1) Bottom-of-funnel conversion determining promo-to-TV turnout for broadcasters 2) Cost savings (upto 60% of digital ad spends) through deterministic incremental reach and frequency building beyond TV ads 3) Optimizing marketing metrics like TVC exposure frequency, channel mix, primetime coverage etc. based on brand lift metrics of exposed TV audiences. Our industry relevance has been cemented by growing business (40% quarter-on-quarter growth on average) and breakthrough with funding from 21st Century Fox in mid 2017, alongside multiple angel investors.

Zapr is the only company globally which has been able to build a massively scaled media consumption repository, offering data analytics and engagement solutions to 150+ brands, media agencies, broadcasters and research outfits. Our Mobile SDK, launched in partnership with 60+ apps across the country, is the only product globally that can analyze offline media consumption data with negligible effect on phone battery and data usage, while maintaining user data privacy. Using inhouse Mobile advertising technology, we’ve created truly integrated, cross-screen experience that is unduplicated, measurable and based on deterministic data, unlike any other media or data company globally.