Zee5 has partnered with Saptharushi, a specialist in privacy-first audience intelligence and federated data collaboration, to launch its proprietary Zee5 Audience Platform (ZAP). The new advertiser platform aims to help brands move beyond conventional demographic targeting by offering sharper audience insights, more relevant targeting and improved campaign engagement.

According to a Zee5 press release, ZAP combines the streaming platform’s audience scale and contextual understanding of viewing behaviour with consented behavioural and transactional signals from participating partners. The collaboration is designed to help advertisers identify relevant audience cohorts, make more informed media investments and deliver greater value from their campaigns, while keeping privacy and responsible data use at the centre.

At the heart of ZAP is a customisable audience intelligence layer that brings together insights into what audiences watch and how they engage on Zee5 with consented signals from partners across quick commerce, digital payments and other sectors. Instead of relying only on broad demographics or predefined segments, brands can build more precise audience cohorts based on their category, product and campaign objectives. These combinations of contextual and deterministic signals can help identify consumer intent, category relevance and purchase behaviour, enabling advertisers to activate campaigns against more relevant audiences while retaining the scale of Zee5.

Privacy remains central to the platform’s operating model. The underlying data stays within the respective partner environments, with collaboration enabled through consented queries rather than the movement of data between partners. The approach is aligned with the principles of India’s Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) framework, with consent, privacy and responsible data use built into the process. As the company puts it, “the data does not move; the query travels.”

Beyond audience targeting, the collaboration will also explore co-branded attention and loyalty rewards, opening up new opportunities for advertisers to engage audiences around high-interest viewing occasions. Across premium content and sports, brands can explore reward-led experiences that go beyond conventional ad exposure and create opportunities for deeper and more sustained audience engagement.

Speaking about the collaboration, Tejkarran Singh Bajaj, Business Head – Zee5 India and AI & Innovation, said, “At Zee5, 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.”

He added that Zee5’s offering spans premium SVOD content, Free5, 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 Zee5’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,” Bajaj said.

Prashant Shetty, Head – Advertisement Revenue, Broadcast & Digital, ZEEL, said ZAP’s ability to translate audience insights into actionable advertising opportunities, while keeping privacy at the centre, sets the platform apart. He said it gives brands greater flexibility to align campaigns with specific business objectives and engage relevant audiences across media and campaign touchpoints.

Shetty also highlighted the impact of 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. He said this reinforces the value of 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, while the next step is making that reach addressable by identifying viewers who 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 Zee5 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 Zee5. Zee5 brings the reach. Saptharushi makes it addressable,” he said.

ZAP adds a new layer of intelligence to Zee5’s evolving advertising proposition. With audiences engaging across premium Originals and movies, seven-language content, Free5, international entertainment, sports and KidZ, the platform offers advertisers access to a wide spectrum of consumer cohorts across languages, genres, price points and viewing occasions.

By combining this content breadth with privacy-safe audience intelligence, customised targeting and new engagement formats, Zee5 aims to create more precise opportunities for brands to connect with relevant audiences and improve the value of their media investments.