E-commerce giant Flipkart has launched a new ads platform in partnership with video streaming platform Hotstar. Developed by Flipkart,Shopper Audience Network will be used to float personalised video ads on Hotstar. It will use audience-based inputs along with Flipkart’s record of user purchase history to serve such ads to as many as 150 million users on Hotstar. The partners also expect the platform to provide a holistic view of their customers and give a better understanding of their digital ad spends. Hotstar thinks that their content, ad formats and audience with the help Flipkart’s consumer insights will make ‘Shopper Audience Network’ a success. The venture is largely motivated by Flipkart’s plan to dominate the online ad space. Earlier this month, Flipkart said that it planned to work on forming partnerships with advertisers to generate the sales required to meet their target revenue of $200 million to beat global online advertising leaders Google and Facebook. “Over the next few months, we will be forging some interesting partnerships with a number of brands from different sectors, as we start opening up our platform." said Prakash Sikaria, senior director, and head of monetization and growth at Flipkart. With this partnership, Flipkart gets access to Hotstar users (which Hotstar says is 350 million) who access the platform on a daily basis. Hotstar is facing tough competition at the moment with global video streaming platforms Netflix and Amazon Prime. Hotstar has an edge over both the platforms as it provides almost 80% (per CNBC) of…
