Category: Media

Marmik was born on August 13, 1960. It was a weekly that went beyond the traditional writing of the Sunday edition of Marathi newspapers.

It carried strong editorials, front-page and centre-spread cartoons by Balasaheb Thackeray and film reviews by Shrikant Thackeray. As you are aware, Maharashtra state was created in May, 1960. Marathi speakers were aggrieved that they were denied the jobs and outsiders, mostly from South, snatched them away. Marmik was born out of this injustice meted out to Marathi people. It published a list of non-Maharashtrians in public and private sector. This resonated well with the Marathi youth. To provide an organised form to vent these grievances, at the instance of Prabodhankar Thackeray, a political party called Shiv Sena was launched on June 19, 1966.

Balasaheb was 33 year old political cartoonist when Marmik was launched and he had left the Free Press Journal (FPJ). The cartoon weekly was planned on the lines of Shankar’s Weekly of K. Shankar Pillai.

Marmik was on the stalls on the Fridays, though dated for the Sundays. Shiv Sena’s first public meeting was announced on October 30, 1966 in Marmik. Later an eveninger Saanj Marmik was launched between 1967 and 1972. Raj Thackeray too drew cartoons for Marmik. Marmik took a back seat after they launched the Marathi daily Saamna (1998) and its Hindi version Dopaharka Saamna (1993).

Marmik is in its diamond jubilee year in 2020. It has been relaunched in a new avtaar with a decent print run. Rashmi Thackeray is the new editor of Marmik. It plans to have physical as well as digital editions, and will experiment with contents like memes. The cover price will be increased from Rs. 5 to Rs. 15.

Earlier they focused on stall sales. They would encourage subscription-driven sale now.

DD turned 60 in September 2019. It was its Diamond Jubilee. DD reached its acme in the 1980s and continued to attract audiences in the 1990s. Despite being a default choice as it was the only channel, it encouraged creativity, innovation and experimentation.

With the advent of satellite TV in the 1990s, talent shifted to it. Programming became a ballgame. Reality shows appeared one by one. All programmes were conceptually and texturally different. DD was not in a position to compete. It enjoyed a monopoly over news for decades as the public broadcaster. In the 2000s, it ceded space to other channels even in news transmission. Thus DD just became an instrument to air government’s viewpoint.

Even today DD has 67 studios, 1400 transmitters, 32000 employees, 7 national channels, eight state specific networks and seven regional state channels.

It has DD Free Dish as its DTH channel. No private broadcaster comes close to DD in terms of reach and infrastructure. DD could be made autonomous and can be left to compete with the private channels. It could become a world-class public broadcaster on the lines of BBC.

Beyond the monopoly or duopoly of the Facebook and Google, there are opportunities to leverage an equally effective mobile advertising platform. It is less costly than these other media. Mobile advertising uses RTB system to price their inventory. Platforms used by them command an unnecessarily high price simply because there is more demand than supply. There are always online publishers who are hidden gems allowing advertising to reach the desired audiences.

The second reason is that story-telling can be more diversified with new media. Google and Facebook formats  are standardised. Advertisers can combine mobile and internet to create very effective campaigns. The targeting can be more layered. There is location data and interactivity.

Google and Facebook are likely to become generic — just like TV and billboard in the long run. There is an element of consumer fatigue also. There is a tendency to skip the ad videos.

AltBalaji, the over the-top (OTT) video on demand platform has been launched by Ekta Kapoor in April, 2017. At the time of the launch, it featured five shows in Hindi and one in Tamil. Currently, there are 18 originals. Mukesh Ambani invested in Balaji Telefilms buying a stake of almost 25 percent in July, 2017. Their plan is to offer content that is neither cricket nor movies. It excludes these two popular genres. There are three buckets of content — Tenpole Properties with shows like Bose: Dead or Alive, digital shows with big TV stars like Ram Kapoor and Shakshi Tanwar in Karle Tu Bhi Mohabbat and classics like Devdas interpreted boldly. The shows are for the individual. They intend to give 150 hours of content in a year. They are waiting for their Kyunki moment for the OTT.

Making money in digital is going to take some time. The trditional media companies are not just competing with other media companies but also with telecom, digital, e-commerce and even taxi services. Media companies have the unique strength of consumer loyalty on the back of product (content). OTT’s success depends on how rapidly the consumption grows, which is a factor of cost and access to robust broadband and Wi-Fi. In near future, there will not be any impact on TV. Digital and TV collide on entertainment. Only sports have to be watched live. In entertainment, drama looks fresh even after 5 years. The freedom of digital does dent TV, but currently it is not reflected in numbers. TV is so cheap that digital still find it difficult to compete.

IRS has been released in January, 2017. It emphasises total readership which is usually three-to-four times more than the average issue readership (yesterday), which was the standard used by advertisers. It introduces three-day and seven-day readership metrics, separate metrics for the main paper and its variants. It cover almost 0.32 million Indians.

Average Issue Readership (AIR) is the standard metric buyers have used for decades. However, planning is more dynamic, and not everybody is reading a newspaper everyday. There is an option of looking at whether you read the paper yesterday, in the last three days, seven days or the last month. IRS gives different dimensions to data. The user can decide which one to use. AIR (yesterday) is accurate and relevant for what advertisers can expect to reach on any given day. The two — AIR and total readership — serve different purposes. AIR uses memory from day after reporting, while total readership does a month-long memorability. Total readership is an indication of the maximum reach of the publication, while AIR is a measure of regular readers. Advertiser puts money based on probability of a regular habit and hence expected view of the ad on any given day.

OTT is growing by leaps and bounds. In future, the focus would be on regional content. According Deloitte report, vernacular users will  be more than 2.5 times of the English Internet user base. Internet connectivity and mobile devices give a boost to such usage.

To begin with, OTT was about the TV on the go. Later original programmes were developed for the OTT platforms. Rural audience makes it necessary to develop programmes in multiple languagesfor multiple geographies. The medium may overtake TV as the preferred platform for movie premieres too. The time spent on mobile devices will increase too. It then becomes attractive as an advertising medium. There could be advertising-led model, as well as subscription supported model. There are hybrid models with a mix of free content and some content behind a pay-wall. Thre is growing preference for the medium among sports viewers. There will be a boost in fortunes of the live events industry.

As mobile screen are going to be the primary screen to see the video, many brands will invest in augmented reality (AR) to connect with the consumers. AR will overtake the figures of virtual reality (VR) platform. Slowly, both these platforms will merge into a mixed reality future. Pokeman Go used AR hugely. There are going to be AR games based on Harry Potter.This technology may become mainstream.

Data and insights it provides enhance the targeting capability. There is AI and machine learning. It allows us to focus on human side of marketing. It can be predicted what life stage the consumers are at. The messages can be customised.There is going to a shift to moments-led marketing.

Brands can be alighned to consumers’ special moments. Coke tried this. It was made possible by automation of the marketing systems.

Digital advertising enables advertisers to sculpt the advertising experiences. The ads can be individualised by using the big data and analytics.

Ideal marketing mix can be developed as digital works on pay per use model. Small amounts can be allocated to different digital campaigns out of the total budget. It is easier to analyse the success or otherwise of the campaign. Ideal mix of digital advertising tactics can be developed.

Distinguishing features in digital advertising which are easily identifiable. Digital efforts are audience-oriented marketing efforts.

Influencer marketing by using celebrities online and by using digital leaders.

Better targeting by using psychographic and behavioral targeting.

Granular analysis enables digital advertisers to have access to numerous tools and tests to measure the effectiveness of the digital campaigns. The testing could be across key words, digital ads and sponsored posts. The whole data is trackable, scannable, traceble and analysable.

Of the total digital advertising in India of Rs.9490 crore in 2016, almost 50 percent is contributed by mobile advertising. In the years to come, mobile specific advertising will dominate the digital advertising space.

There are multiple ad formats of mobile advertising. Yahoo rolled out Tiles in 2016. InMobi launched video ad suit in 2016. mCanvas introduced recently Streambox.

Banner ads have been widely used since the introduction of online promotion. This is the horizontal ad you see at the top or bottom of the page. It promises visibility and high recall value. It is not intrusive too. It has minimal production cost. Users can interact with it by clicking.

Interstitial ads are the ads which cover the entire mobile screen. This is full-screen advertising after loading or closing an app. It is sponsored by advertisers. To contiue, either the user watches the ad or purchases the ad-free version of the app.

Rich media ad is expandable ad which could be seen as a combination of banner and interstitial ads. It seamlessly integrates call-to-action and other interactive measure to engage the viewer with the advertisement. It combines text, images and video.

Native advertising works seamlessly with the content of the website or app.

(In-app) Video ads uses HD videos targeted at a demography of users to gain maximum impact. It has been steadily gaining traction in India. With the advent of OTT and mobile gaming there is a remarkable growth in video ad spends by marketers.

Aprt from the format, what matters is the placement of the ad. Placement is a function of viewability of the ad, its ability to keep content consumption unhindered and the context of the content.

The challenge the marketers face here is the skip option. Another challenge is the standardisation of ad measurements across the platforms.

Though ad blocking is a bane in the longrun, it will improve the quality of online ads.

In measuring effectiveness, the metrics used were reach, impressions, time spent, frequency, video views. These days there are  third party tools which provide insights beyond reach, CPMs, CPCs and CPIs.