“Thinking Aloud Podcast with Haresh Nayak”

Dr. Subho Ray, President, IAMAI, speaks with Haresh Nayak, a media and advertising industry veteran and entrepreneur, on the rapid evolution of media, technology, and consumer behaviour over the past two decades. The conversation explores how technology, digitalisation, and AI are transforming media planning across television, digital, out-of-home, cinema, and rural marketing, while emphasising the continued importance of human expertise and local insights. Haresh discusses his entrepreneurial journey and the development of Immersive, an agentic AI platform designed to bring greater transparency, efficiency, and localisation to media planning by leveraging multiple AI agents, location intelligence, inventory data, and first-party data. The discussion also examines digital advertising hygiene, automation, opacity, bots, and the need to balance AI-driven optimisation with human judgment. Highlighting changing consumer behaviour across rural and urban India, the episode explores how digital adoption, location-based intelligence, consumer cohorts, and data-driven planning are enabling brands to better understand audiences and improve marketing and distribution strategies. The conversation underscores the potential of AI to empower media professionals, organise traditionally fragmented markets, and create more effective connections between brands and consumers.