ZEE5 has introduced Zee5 Audience Platform (ZAP), an advertiser-focused platform developed in partnership with Saptharushi, a privacy-first audience intelligence and federated data collaboration company. The platform aims to help brands move beyond conventional demographic targeting by combining streaming insights with consented behavioural and transactional signals.
ZAP brings together ZEE5’s viewing and engagement data with signals from participating partners to create audience cohorts based on category relevance, consumer intent and purchase behaviour. Advertisers can use these segments to identify audiences that align more closely with their campaign objectives.
A key feature of the platform is its approach to data collaboration. Instead of transferring information between partners, audience insights are generated through consented queries while the underlying data remains within each partner’s environment. ZEE5 said the model is aligned with the principles of India’s Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) framework.
The platform will be available across ZEE5’s content portfolio, including Originals, movies, sports, Free 5, international entertainment and KidZ. ZAP will also explore co-branded attention and loyalty rewards, including reward-led formats around premium content and sports.
Tejkarran Singh Bajaj, Business Head – Zee5 India and AI & Innovation, said: “At Zee 5, we are constantly evolving our platform to keep pace with changing audience preferences and the growing needs of brands. Our focus is on building a comprehensive entertainment ecosystem that brings together diverse content, formats and experiences, while creating more meaningful opportunities for brands to connect with audiences.
Our offering spans premium SVOD content, Free 5, sports, KidZ, TV shows, Korean and Chinese dramas, anime, micro dramas, news, creator-led content and an expanded English movie slate across languages and formats, catering to varied interests and viewing occasions. With ZAP, we are taking this proposition further through an industry-first approach to audience intelligence and activation.
By combining Zee 5’s contextual understanding of viewing behaviour with consented behavioural and transactional signals from participating partners, we enable advertisers to move beyond conventional demographic targeting and build more nuanced audience cohorts aligned with their business objectives. By bringing content, scale and audience intelligence together, ZAP marks a significant step towards shaping the future of digital advertising, unlocking new possibilities for brands to connect with consumers in more meaningful, measurable and impactful ways.”
Prashant Shetty, Head – Advertisement Revenue, Broadcast & Digital, ZEEL, said: “What sets ZAP apart is its ability to translate audience insights into actionable advertising opportunities, while keeping privacy at the centre of the process. It empowers brands with greater flexibility to align campaigns with specific business objectives and engage more relevant audiences across media and campaign touchpoints.
The impact of this approach is evident in Saptharushi’s previous deployments, which have demonstrated a significant, multifold uplift in click-through rate (CTR) delivery over campaigns activated against a brand’s existing customer relationship management (CRM) audience. This reinforces the value of more intelligent, insight-led audience activation in driving stronger campaign engagement, improved media efficiency and measurable business outcomes.”
Gowthaman Ragothaman, Founder and CEO, Saptharushi, said: “Reach remains the foundation of every great campaign, and Zee 5 offers it across languages, genres and viewing occasions. The next frontier is making that reach addressable: knowing which viewers are genuinely relevant to a brand and reaching them with their permission. Audiences like these are scarce, and Saptharushi was founded on the belief that this scarcity can be solved without anyone giving up their data.
Our vision is an open audience economy in which publishers, data partners and brands build audiences together, while each keeps full control of what it owns. We are grateful to Zee 5 for the trust they have placed in us to bring that vision to life on India’s largest homegrown streaming platform. With ZAP, advertisers can build fresh, consented audiences from what people watch and how they buy, across the full breadth of Zee 5. Zee 5 brings the reach. Saptharushi makes it addressable.”
With ZAP, ZEE5 is extending its entertainment proposition into audience intelligence and advertising activation. The platform reflects a growing emphasis on connecting content consumption with consent-based audience insights, giving advertisers more focused ways to reach consumers while keeping data control and privacy central to the process.
