ZEEL Dissolves Its Specialized Ad Sales Vertical Zee Unimedia

Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited (ZEEL) has dissolved its specialised advertising sales platform Zee Unimedia which was formed in 2016, with an aim to consolidate the network sales function under one umbrella. The broadcast network had plans to sell package deals that will harpe on all the media platforms, across all channels of the network. The aspiration was to take this platform to a level where it will also be able to handle sales functions of other media houses – both TV and print players.

Ashish Sehgal, formerly Chief Sales Officer for the network was named as the Chief Operating Officer for Zee Unimedia. Now, as the vertical gets dismantled, Sehgal becomes the Chief Growth Officer for ZEEL.

However, the market experts never felt the difference of a centralised ad sales unit, even when Zee Unimedia was formed. A senior hand at media planning and sales shared his view , on condition of anonymity, “When Zee Unimedia was formed, to my mind, the only thing that changed was the email ids. All the people, the structure and the hierarchy that I was interacting with, remained the same. For the bigger clients, any hiccup would lead to a call to Ashish (Sehgal) and that remained pretty much the same. May be, they were able to grab few smaller advertisers, but I don’t see that making any significant change either.” – Ad Age India