HP Inc. Middle East, Turkey, and East Africa, today announced Vishnu Taimni as new Managing Director for the region effective February 1st.

Mr. Taimni will be responsible for managing and growing HP’s Personal Systems, Printing, industrial graphics and 3D printing businesses in the Middle East, Turkey and East Africa, as well as focusing on numerous education activities that HP drives in the region.

Mr. Taimni replaces Mathew Thomas, who has made the personal decision to leave the company to focus on personal and then other professional pursuits.

Speaking about the announcement, Charl Snyman, VP and Managing Director of HP Inc. in the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe, said, “We are pleased to welcome Mr. Taimni to the new regional role. Vishnu has been at the firm for the past 20 years and has an exceptional understanding of the organization, our business strategy and approach to sustainable development.”

“Over the last year technology has proven to be essential, keeping people productive and allowing us to continue working, learning, entertaining and communicating. I’m excited to lead HP business in the region of huge potential”, - commented Vishnu Taimni on his new role. 

With over 20 years’ experience in the technology industry, Vishnu has held a series of progressively senior management roles, including most recently Print Category Lead for the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe markets, and before that, Head of Home Printing Solutions in EMEA region.

Earlier in his career Vishnu was General Manager for HP’s Personal Printing Systems Group in Middle East, Mediterranean and Africa. He has also served as HP’s Consumer Channel Director in India, and between 2008 and 2010 he held various management roles and responsibilities in South and East Africa.

Vishnu’s career began with Compaq’s Computing Category division in 2000, which later merged with Hewlett-Packard in 2002.

Appointment underlines WPP’s commitment to creativity and transformative work for clients

WPP announces the appointment of Rob Reilly as Global Chief Creative Officer.

Rob – who is currently Global Creative Chairman of McCann Worldgroup – will join WPP in May, reporting to CEO Mark Read.

In partnership with Mark, and the CEOs and Chief Creative Officers of WPP’s agencies, Rob will champion creativity within and beyond the company, fostering a culture that delivers extraordinary work to WPP’s clients. He is also tasked with attracting and nurturing the best creative talent, driving inclusion and diversity in creative work and teams, and working with technology partners to fuel the creativity needed for their platforms.

Known for helping to create some of the most iconic ideas for the most impactful global brands, Rob has led McCann Worldgroup’s creative resurgence – overseeing highly-awarded work that has shaped culture in the wider world, including the “Fearless Girl” statue on Wall Street for State Street Global Advisors. McCann was also named Network of the Year at the 2019 Cannes International Festival of Creativity.

As well as winning numerous awards himself, Rob has chaired several industry award show juries, including Cannes Lions three times. He is a member of The One Club for Creativity Board and the Facebook Global Client Council.

Before moving to McCann in 2014, Rob was Partner and Worldwide Chief Creative Officer at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, which was named Advertising Age’s Agency of the Decade during his tenure.

Rob Reilly said: “Mark’s ambition is to make WPP the most creative company on the planet. For a creative person, that was impossible to resist. He is leading a complete reinvention of WPP and is committed to putting creativity at the center of everything the company does. I look forward to joining the talented team of people at WPP and helping its fantastic agencies continue to build on their success.”

Mark Read, CEO of WPP, said: “Rob is one of the world’s most celebrated creative leaders. He has been a transformative creative force wherever he has applied his considerable talent, and I know he will have the same impact at WPP. I am delighted that Rob is joining us as we look to make WPP synonymous with the world’s most creative, most effective and most forward-looking work – and at a time when this has never been more important to our clients.”

The Last Dance most in-demand global series debut of 2020

Parrot Analytics, the global TV analytics firm, today announced the winners for the 3rd annual Global TV Demand Awards as well as the Virtual Festival video series schedule. The 2021 Global TV Demand Awards: Virtual Festival format will bring together talent, creators and executives behind the world’s most popular shows in a daily video series.

The winners for the 2021 Global TV Demand Awards are:

World’s Choice (Most In-Demand TV Show in the World 2020): Game of Thrones

Most In-Demand Adult-Animated Series of 2020: Rick and Morty

Most In-Demand Anime Series of 2020: My Hero Academia

Most In-Demand Children’s Series of 2020: Spongebob Squarepants

Most In-Demand Comedy Series of 2020: Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Most In-Demand Documentary Series of 2020: The Last Dance

Most In-Demand Drama Series of 2020: Game of Thrones

Most In-Demand Series That Ended on a High Note of 2020: The 100

Most In-Demand Historical Drama of 2020: Vikings

Most In-Demand Horror Series of 2020: American Horror Story

Most In-Demand Korean Drama of 2020: Crash Landing on You

Most In-Demand Latin American Series of 2020: El Payaso Plim Plim: Un Héroe Del Corazón

Most In-Demand Reality Series of 2020: MasterChef Australia

Most In-Demand Series Debut of 2020: The Last Dance

Most In-Demand Superhero Series of 2020: The Flash

Most In-Demand Variety Series of 2020: Last Week Tonight With John Oliver

The winning series for each category was determined based on global TV demand data for the period January 1, 2020 – December 31, 2020.

The 2021 Global TV Demand Awards: Virtual Festival highlights what makes exceptional content stand out among a worldwide “sea of content” competing for audience attention, in a year which saw unprecedented media consumption at home. The conversations captured in the exclusive video series are candid, intimate discussions focusing on both the creative and business decisions that proved successful for each participant.

Confirmed speakers include Casey Bloys, Chief Content Officer at HBO and HBO Max; Matthew Ball, Managing Partner, Epyllion Industries; André Vargas, Head of Data, CAA; Jason Hehir, Director, The Last Dance; Alba Baptista, actor, Warrior Nun, and Simon Barry, creator and executive producer of Warrior Nun, Reality Distortion Field, Gregoire Gabalda, Sr. Director, Global Editorial Licensing, Ubisoft, Jason Altman, SVP, Ubisoft Film & Television, Stephanie Simard, VP of Marketing, Ubisoft Film & Television, Marty Benson, show runner, MasterChef Australia, Kee MinSoo, director of Good Doctor, Korean Broadcasting System, John Couling, SVP of Commercial Partnerships, Dolby, with additional speakers to be announced soon.

“We’re honored to share the conversations we’ve had with the visionaries behind the world’s most popular TV shows of 2020 to offer a unique perspective to executives seeking insights into what makes a show successful right now. The Global TV Demand Awards: Virtual Festival is unique in that all winners have been selected based on global demand data insights, without any judges involved” said Rebekah Zabarsky, Executive Producer of the awards and Marketing Director at Parrot Analytics. “Anyone interested in learning how to create, produce, distribute, market, and acquire exceptional content should tune in and learn from the best.”

The 2021 Global TV Demand Awards: Virtual Festival will stream free on demand for five consecutive days beginning Monday, February 1, 2021 through Friday, February 5, 2021 with new videos being published on each day. Viewers can find the full schedule for the Virtual Festival on www.globaltvdemandawards.com as well as the Parrot Analytics YouTube channel.

We’re kicking 2021 off with a bang .

This year’s line-up will surprise and delight cinephiles across the globe with films from Award winning filmmakers, including Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog), Paolo Sorrentino (The Hand of God) and Adam McKay (Don’t Look Up). We’re bringing you a year of films filled with more of the things we know our members love - zombies (Army of the Dead), cowboys (The Harder They Fall, Concrete Cowboy), and high school romance (including the culmination of the To All the Boys and The Kissing Booth trilogies).

We’re re-introducing you to teen screams (Fear Street trilogy, There’s Someone Inside Your House), turning your favorite books into films (The Woman in the Window, Munich, The Last Letter from Your Lover), bringing you more adrenaline-pumping blockbusters (Red Notice, Sweet Girl, Kate) and giving your family a reason to say YES to watching films together (YES DAY,  Back to the Outback, Finding ‘Ohana).

Netflix will bring you a new movie every week featuring the biggest stars including Leonardo DiCaprio, Sandra Bullock, Dwayne Johnson, Idris Elba, Meryl Streep, Zendaya, Jennifer Lawrence, Ryan Reynolds, Jennifer Garner, Gal Gadot, Dave Bautista, Naomi Watts, Jake Gyllenhaal, John David Washington and Octavia Spencer. And films from your favorite filmmakers like Zack Snyder, Nora Fingscheidt, Joe Wright, Antoine Fuqua, Shawn Levy, Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman and the directorial debuts from Halle Berry and Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Yesterday marked the first time that Wizz Air Abu Dhabi took to the skies in the UAE.

The eco-friendly aircraft, Airbus A321neo, departed from Abu Dhabi International Airport at 12.30pm local time bound for Athens, Greece.

Shareef Al Hashmi, CEO of Abu Dhabi Airports greeted Kees Van Schaick, Managing Director of Wizz Air Abu Dhabi as the plane prepared to depart.

dentsu confirmed its intent to integrate iProspect and Vizeum to create a new, future-focused, end-to-end global media agency under the iProspect banner.

By integrating these two award winning agencies, dentsu brings Vizeum’s media strategy and planning, storytelling, and brand building capabilities together with iProspect’s digital expertise, audience knowledge, and performance mindset. Clients will have access to the unique capabilities of both agencies, all from one integrated team leading the new territory of performance-driven brand building by delivering digital-first media strategies underpinned by data and technology at every touchpoint in the consumer journey. 

The new iProspect media agency will draw from the broader dentsu capability set, allowing clients the flexibility to seamlessly build bespoke and specialised teams with resources from across the network. Clients will gain access to expansive new audience insights, integrated and more effective strategies, market-leading planning and activation, and unparalleled business performance.  Carat and dentsu X clients will continue to access industry leading digital performance services through our dentsu Media Scaled Services.  

The new iProspect entity will be led by Global President Amanda Morrissey, bringing together more than 8,000 media and performance specialists across 93 key global markets. 

“iProspect is designed for clients at the intersection of brand and performance. We believe brand drives performance, and performance drives brand. We no longer exist in an ecosystem where these elements can be planned and bought separately. We must look at business and brand goals through a combined lens, bringing accelerated growth for our clients,” said Amanda Morrissey, Global President, iProspect. “By focusing on how consumers behave in their digital world and applying that to real world scenarios via a highly connected and creative use of all channels, we position our clients to combine the learnings from the short and long term to drive more effective business growth today and tomorrow.”

Peter Huijboom, dentsu international Global CEO Media & Global Clients, said, “At dentsu our goal is to help our clients to make meaningful progress and thrive in a world of change. Because we know people better than anyone else, we deliver human-centric solutions designed to drive growth for our clients and good in society. 

By bringing iProspect and Vizeum together we are creating a global digital-first, end-to-end media proposition. This will give our clients a scaled choice that sits alongside Carat’s brand-first approach and dentsu X’s experience-driven approach while also allowing greater access to our Creative and CXM service lines.”

“We believe focusing our business capabilities around the consumer is the greatest advantage we can give our clients,” Huijboom added.

The new agency will now be launched through a phased market plan over a three-month period with a target completion date of 31st March 2021. This integration is a proof-point of dentsu international’s strategy to simplify how it operates to deliver even greater agility and flexibility for clients through a more focused portfolio of six leadership brands.

To recognize the brightest minds in Digital Marketing in the UAE

Please visit http://www.digitalstallionsawards.com/UAE to register and nominate your work across 38+ categories of awards. Entry closes soon

Digital Stallions Forum, the premier network for Chief Marketing Officers and Digital Marketing professionals which launched its UAE chapter recently, partners with Resulticks, the global next-generation real-time marketing conversation cloud platform, to launch the first-ever ‘Resulticks Digital Stallions Forum UAE Awards’ 

The Resulticks Digital Stallions Forum UAE Awards is an exclusive platform meant to recognize and celebrate the innovation and extraordinary work of Chief Marketing Officers & Digital marketing professionals in 2020 from UAE. 

With awards across 38+ categories including Best Chief Marketing Officer, Excellence in Digital Marketing, Best Website, Excellence in Social Media Marketing and others, these awards have been classified into four categories of Single Awards, Holistic Awards, People Awards and Partner Awards to recognize the work of minds and mediums in the digital space. Nominations and winners will be judged by an eminent jury panel.

With over 75+ Members comprising Chief Marketing Officers & Digital Marketers from across 45+ Brands and industry verticals the Digital Stallions Forum UAE, has fast grown into the strongest networking platform for brands and agencies involved in Marketing & Digital Marketing in the UAE.

This exclusive forum plays a key role in enabling the networking of seasoned digital experts providing them with a secure platform to share their insights, ideas and expertise. Every year, digital marketers are setting new milestones while exploring the depths of the digital space with innovations and strategy. These awards are meant to recognize them.

Resulticks Digital Stallions Forum UAE Awards is a first of its kind award aimed at strengthening peer to peer connections, especially at a time when digital marketing is at the crux of every organisation’s marketing communication goals. 

The Digital Stallions Forum UAE is inviting entries for the Digital Stallion awards across 38+ categories, each of which will bestow much-deserved recognition to the awardees. Visit http://www.digitalstallionsawards.com/UAE to register and nominate your digital teams for the awards. 

Commenting on this initiative, Mr. Mani Gopalaratnam, CEO and CTO, Resulticks says, “We are happy to partner with the Digital Stallions Forum UAE to present the Resulticks BFSI Digital Stallion Awards. We would like to witness the innovative and exciting work done by digital marketers in the UAE and recognize their efforts through these awards. 

UAE has the highest penetration of internet users at 99%. In the UAE, people are spending more than 7 hours a day at an average on the internet while spending close to 3 hours a day on social media. This provides a great opportunity for brands to serve their customers in the digital space.

Resulticks is a global next-generation real-time marketing conversation cloud platform. Having served some of the leading brands in the US, SEA markets across industries, we understand the business requirements of the brands undergoing digital transformation across industries. We have a robust scalable solution encompassing three key pillars - Audience data platform, Channel orchestration, Conversion attribution, AI/ML & Deep Analytics offering strong data security with hybrid implementation option. With our increasing focus in the UAE market, we would like to serve brands in the region helping them to drive digital-led top-line business growth.”

Paurush Sonkar – Founder, BFSI Digital Stallions Forum, says “The Digital Stallions Forum UAE was established with a view to bringing together the people who have evolved with the ever-growing digital marketing industry. 2020 has shown us that we have truly evolved and adapted to digital innovation. It has been a learning curve for all of us and I am sure everyone has done phenomenal work by scaling new heights in digital marketing. I am excited and honoured to be spearheading the establishment of a brand new platform that recognises digital excellence and hope to see the cultivation of a tradition for the years to come. I invite you to share entries of your best and brightest - for there is no greater celebration than that of our collective achievements.” 

Nielsen announced its plans to launch a single, cross-media solution to drive more comparable and comprehensive metrics across platforms. Nielsen’s transformative cross-media solution, called Nielsen ONE, will evolve the current metrics that underpin the more than $100 billion video advertising ecosystem using a phased approach.

The company plans to launch its single measurement solution beginning in fourth-quarter 2022 with the intention to fully transition the industry to cross-media metrics by the Fall 2024 season.  

More so than ever, consumers today have virtually endless choice in terms of platforms on which to watch their favorite video content. Nielsen data shows that between March and August 2020, U.S. adults spent 12.2 trillion minutes with digital, 11.1 trillion minutes with linear TV and 2.8 trillion minutes streaming—and these numbers continue to exponentially grow. As audiences move seamlessly between linear, streaming and digital, advertisers are demanding a single, deduplicated view of their audiences across all platforms and mediums. Concurrently, publishers want to provide more ad options for buyers and improve the overall viewer experience.

“With the rapidly evolving landscape and on-going shifts in consumer behavior, it is no longer acceptable to take a siloed approach to our clients’ video plans,” said Doug Ray, CEO, Dentsu Media. “Cross-media measurement is paramount to maximize reach across platforms with the right frequency. We are encouraged by Nielsen’s commitment to a single measurement solution and unified framework that will drive comparability across TV and digital video so that our clients can better allocate dollars and maximize ROI.”

With Nielsen ONE, advertisers and publishers will be able to transact using a single metric across linear and digital that is trusted, independent and standardized across the industry. With a single, deduplicated number, marketers will have visibility into total video consumption regardless of platform or device. Marketers will also benefit from a better understanding of unique audiences, the ability to better understand frequency and reduce double counting, inflated metrics and advertising waste. Nielsen ONE will also underpin the company’s outcomes solutions, thus enabling the industry to optimize media plans and maximize performance across platforms. 

“With Nielsen ONE, we are delivering a single, comparable metric for TV and digital that will provide video consumption across all platforms, services and devices. For media buyers and sellers, this means better monetizing their assets and maximizing their investments,” said Karthik Rao, COO, Nielsen. “Today’s announcement marks a major milestone for Nielsen as we put our cross-media vision into motion. We’ve made significant enhancements over the last year to turbocharge the tech and data science required to make an industry wide cross-media solution a reality.”

“Cross-media measurement is a generational opportunity and one of the hardest challenges that our industry has had to solve,” said Ben Jankowski, SVP, Global Media for Mastercard. “There are tough technology issues, but also a very real cultural shift that needs to happen that encourages broadcasters, platforms and marketers to work closely together to drive better productivity across the board. With cross-media measurement, it’s even more important to have independent third-parties like Nielsen and auditors like the MRC to help us find one common source of truth in the sea of competing interests and navigate a very confusing landscape.”

Nielsen has already begun transforming its audience measurement solutions to increase resilience and flexibility. As previously announced, Nielsen is future-proofing its digital measurement, evolving its National TV currency to include addressable measurement and expanding connected TV (CTV) coverage to include additional smart TV manufacturers and digital video platforms in 2021. Starting in fourth-quarter 2022, Nielsen will release parallel cross-media ratings that will deliver metrics at subminute intervals for individual ads and content, providing greater comparability across platforms and ad models, along with expansive campaign reporting. Nielsen expects this measurement will ultimately become the foundation of the cross-media buying and selling process, succeeding the current form of TV and digital measurement no later than the Fall 2024 season.  

“Today’s fragmented measurement landscape makes planning, implementing, and validating cross-platform campaigns overly complex and increasingly less predictable,” said Adam Gerber, Global Chief Media Officer, Essence. “As we shift to addressable models, prioritize reach, and optimize to outcomes, it’s critical that we develop and adopt consistent, single-source measurement solutions. Nielsen’s new cross-media approach is an important step in delivering the confidence and transparency that advertisers require to support holistic campaigns.” 

“Any innovation that moves the needle on capturing true ROI across media, especially across platforms to create consistency in reporting so people aren’t grading their own homework, gets a thumbs up from IPG Mediabrands. We look forward to holding all media to the same standards of performance accountability and transparency as a result of Nielsen’s new product,” said Daryl Lee, Global CEO, IPG Mediabrands.

Nielsen has begun unifying its technology platform to help make its audience measurement products more interoperable, flexible and scalable.  This solves for cross-media measurement by embracing a “ONE” mindset to modernize its panels, platforms and products. 

ONE Platform: Nielsen has developed a unified, cloud-based platform that allows easy integration and normalization of big data sets including automatic content recognition (ACR) data and return path data (RPD), as well as direct integrations with digital platforms and CTV providers.  It will also be underpinned by a flexible technology stack which enables large scale models using machine learning techniques and algorithms to more quickly deliver true comparability and consistency across sources. 

ONE Panel: Nielsen will unify its gold-standard panels and meters into one single-source, geographically representative panel that will gather viewing across devices including TV, CTV, mobile devices and computers. The Nielsen ONE panel underpins its new ID resolution system to validate audiences and deduplicate exposures across ads and content.  

ONE Product: Nielsen is simplifying its TV and digital solutions portfolio into a single cross-media product that provides reach and frequency metrics by delivering a holistic, deduplicated view of both content and ad performance regardless of screen, device or platform. A key component of this solution is a new proprietary technology that will measure every single ad on linear TV at the subminute level to account for exact commercial minutes.

Nielsen has architected the backbone for delivering holistic, cross-media metrics across all video and continues to lay the foundation that will underpin outcomes measurement and help advertisers maximize ROI. With ownership of the technology stack and back-end infrastructure as well as access to broad data sets, Nielsen will swiftly launch new products, feature sets and data insights that maintain the quality and continuity of its measurement services and adapt to ongoing changes in the technology and privacy landscape.

From a greater adoption of sensors to a password-less future and closing the digital divide, 2021 will accelerate technologies that allow for more agility, resilience, and innovation

Cisco has revealed the top tech trends for 2021 and beyond with technologies that enable businesses to be more agile, resilient, and better prepared for unexpected challenges coming to the fore. In 2020, the arrival of future digital transformation occurred far faster than expected and research from Cisco expects this trend to continue during 2021.

“As the pandemic unfolded, we worked with our customers to move from business continuity to business agility. We also helped to deliver and scale innovative application experiences faster than ever before. With those changes in mind, we see six key trends defining the near future of the tech and IT industry” Said Reem Asaad, Vice President, Cisco Middle East & Africa. “As 2020 has shown, the pace of technological change moves very quickly, and we expect the same during 2021. The pandemic was a hugely challenging experience, but digitization has played a vital role in helping businesses, organizations and individuals through the crisis. I remain hopeful for the future and of the positive role technology is playing in our daily lives,” she added.

Here are the key tech trends Cisco expects to see during 2021:

Trend 1: Closing the Digital Divide

The internet enabled society and economic activity to continue for those with access to this invaluable resource. But that’s only about half of the global population and the pandemic underlined the urgent need to expand access. Currently only 35% of developing countries have internet access, compared to 80% in more advanced economies.

The introduction and expansion of 5G and WiFi 6 networks will improve bandwidth, speed, and latency, and reach areas where fiber is prohibitively expensive. As a result, frontline mobile workers, telehealth, manufacturing, and education will all benefit. This in turn will level the digital divide as these new technologies spur growth and innovation for millions.

According to PwC, bringing the internet to offline communities would add $6.7 trillion to the global economy and lift another 500 million people out of poverty.

Trend 2: Driving experience (and safety) through sensors

Sensors for both personal and workforce health, safety and wellbeing will take center stage in 2021. Patch-like sensors will be used to track health and well-being with sports sensors monitoring concussion. While fatigue sensors will be able to track alertness in ruggedized environments.

Data-based insights delivered by sensors will help provide a safer, healthier, and more productive environment in the workplace. Combined with WiFi 6, 5G, location technologies, and Collaboration solutions like Webex, they will identify underutilized or overcrowded spaces, while monitoring room temperature, humidity, air quality, and light.

According to the Cisco Global Workforce Study, 96% of companies can provide better work environments with smart workplace technology.

Trend 3: Keys to the future: app-enabled agility and resilience

The Cloud enabled organizations to quickly adapt in the early months of the pandemic. Ten months later and the applications at the heart of many businesses are highly distributed. Workforces are more mobile than ever before placing unprecedented demand on systems.

IT teams will need even greater agility going forward. By using observability solutions, teams can shift to monitoring the data and insights that matter. And as they continue to scale their ongoing transformations, insights and automation will be essential to future growth, competitiveness, and resilience.

According to Cisco 2021 CIO and ITDM Trends Pulse, 75% of CIOs and IT decision makers want to be able to utilize business insights better.

Trend 4: From customer experience to brand excitement

Mobile and smart devices have transformed daily life and mobile apps are available for shopping, banking, learning and more. During the pandemic apps became essential tools for tracking contacts. Mobile apps enable public and private-sector organizations to connect with users in unique ways with most business processes also running on applications.

The most advanced applications enable even more personal relationships, along with instantaneous responses. That demands the ability to quickly turn masses of real-time information from the network into actionable insights. Companies that employ such capabilities can respond to a customer even before they report an issue. It’s this combination of immersive, intelligence-based personalization and experience that will transform baseline customer satisfaction into deep customer engagement, excitement, and loyalty.

71% of CIOs and IT decision makers agreed that customer experience is about more than just satisfaction—it’s about delighting the customer.

Trend 5: Identity and a password-less future

Mobility, distributed work, and increased use of Cloud solutions has provided huge benefits in scalability and cost but has come with increased cyber threats. Zero trust methodology can address these challenges. Stolen or lost credentials remain the common cause of security breaches, a situation that has been exacerbated with the massive shift to remote work.

The use of technologies such as biometrics will be far more expanded as platforms, industry groups, and security providers work towards a password-free future for consumers and enterprises. Organizations need to begin preparing for this inevitable shift, where users no longer rely on a traditional password as their primary method of identification. 

According to 2020 Duo Trusted Access Report, 80% of mobile devices used for work have biometrics configured, up 12% the past five years.

Trend 6: Consumption models for the tech you actually need

Organizations have long invested in one-size-fits-all digital solutions often paying for features users did not need. Today, software as a service enables organizations to pay for the features they currently need. They can then quickly scale other services, when required.

Consumption models will continue to shift, especially as more features and capabilities are available via software, whether on site or in the Cloud. These pay-as-you-consume models are far too flexible and cost effective to ignore.

This shift to pay-as-you-consume spending gives organizations more flexibility and cost predictability to manage their IT spend — something that 85% of CIOs and IT decision makers agreed is important to their business (43% called it very important) in Cisco’s 2021 CIO and IT Decision Makers Trends Pulse.

Discovery Inc., the global leader in real life entertainment, announced a strategic partnership with STARZPLAY, the MENA region’s fastest-growing subscription video on demand service, to launch discovery+ – the definitive non-fiction, real life subscription streaming service – across the Middle East and North Africa. STARZPLAY subscribers can now watch discovery+ content  within a dedicated branded area across all existing STARZPLAY platforms.

The partnership was announced at a virtual launch broadcast from Dubai.

Recently announced as part of a global roll-out, the service to be launched in Middle East and Africa, features a wide range of exclusive content to the platform, original series across popular passion verticals in which Discovery brands have a strong leadership position. These include lifestyle and relationships; home and food; true crime; paranormal; adventure and natural history; as well as science, tech and the environment, and a slate of high-quality documentaries.

Kasia Kieli, President & Managing Director EMEA at Discovery Inc, said: “The launch of discovery+ across MENA represents a major step toward adding 18 additional countries and territories to the global expansion of the platform, giving customers options to access the content that they love and have come to expect from Discovery.”

Maaz Sheikh, CEO and Co-Founder, STARZPLAY, said: “The unprecedented growth of online streaming has driven the need for compelling content that provides real value for subscribers. As the region’s pioneering and homegrown SVOD platform, we have been building in strategic partnerships to offer more online content and varied choices to our subscribers. We are confident that the discovery+ add on will be welcomed by the MENA audience and we look forward to growing this partnership further.”

In the MENA region, discovery+ subscribers will enjoy new content added to the platform each month, featuring global franchises such as Shark Week, MythBusters, Gold Rush, Expedition Unknown, House Hunters International, 90 Day Fiancé, NASA’s Unexplained Files and Say Yes to the Dress available for anytime, anywhere viewing, as well as boxset binging.

STARZPLAY subscribers will have access to a wide range of exclusive discovery+ originals across popular passion verticals for which Discovery brands are known. Coming first are the exclusive series, The Impossible Row, Amy Schumer Learns to Cook (Uncensored), and JonBenet Ramsey: What Really Happened?

Additionally, discovery+ will offer the region’s favourite programmes from the home of Arabic cooking, Fatafeat, along with the definitive collection of environmental programming with access to BBC’s largest natural history library including Planet Earth and Blue Planet.

Francesco Perta, Senior Business Development and Distribution Director, Middle East, Africa, Turkey and North East Europe at Discovery Inc, said: “Our vast content library gives us a running start to serve fans directly in markets across EMEA, and the world, in ways that are relevant, compelling and tailored to each market.  Our partnership with STARZPLAY is another example of how we are scaling our DTC businesses by leveraging our combination of competitive advantages – content ownership, brand strength and the biggest global footprint in media.”

Now live everywhere MENA subscribers can access the STARZPLAY app, including via Apple TV, and enjoy thousands of hours of Discovery-owned content in a dedicated braded area for a small additional subscription, anytime, anywhere and from any device

Danny Bates, Co-founder and CCO of STARZPLAY, said: “As a leading regional video streaming service, our core strategic focus involves seeking out ways to drive customer satisfaction as we continue our growth trajectory across MENA. The decision to enter the content aggregation space adds to our proposition as a one-stop-shop for premium content, offering our subscribers quality, choice and convenience. Discovery offers the best-in-class real-life entertainment content portfolio and adding discovery+ to our offering continues to drive value to our platform.”