Category: Media

All modes of buying — impressions, clicks, conversions, views etc — are subject to fraud. There is SLVT or sophisticated invalid traffic. Advertisers have to use trusted third party tools to block all kinds of fraudulent inventory sources.

There are big content producers who are losing billions to pirate sites. In fact, pirate sites are earning money from advertisers in a way because ads end up showing on pirate sites as that is where they figure the audience is.

Digital fraud can be brought down to a single digit figure by brand safety companies. The technology exists to counter fraud

Programmatic has earned a bad reputation which is unfair. Automated buying is the logical way forward. Programmatic is about 10 per cent or less, but still there is fraud. Everything that can be bought programmatically will be. Advertisers have to learn to do it extremly well. In the US, after being talked about for years, programmatic finally realistically took two years to catch on. It will happen in India too. Publishers are probably worried about the yield from programmatic and so they hang on to what reserved media can offer to them. However, there will be a momentum that will tip the scale ultimately.

Publishers must respond to brand safety to get business from big brands.

Programmatic also adds several layers between the advertiser and the publisher. This empowers advertisers to be technologically efficient in reaching the audience. At the same time, it allows fraudsters to hide behind these several layers with very little risk of detection. However, it is incorrect to say all programmatic channels propagate fraud. There are reputed programmatic platforms that already have several tools to check fraudulent impressions such as MOAT, Double Verify and Forensiq.

Marketers too see the change in consumer behaviour. However, though they find the youngsters going digital, they are risk averse. An executive will not be fired for an ineffective TV commercial, but if money is placed on the new media and does not produce results, the executive will face music. This is changing slowly.

There is a lot of flexibility on digital platforms. There are digital tools to get insights and turn them into compelling stories. In some digital ads, the brand is put upfront, which could be a hook. As against this, in TV commercial the brand is put at the end. If the captioning is early on in the ad, that attracts the audience. If the sound is mute, the captioning can help people draw in. What tends to work best are the super-long form or super short, 15 to 60 seconds.

Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) proposes a phased roll out of its digital measurement service called EKAM. It is Sanskrit for One. A portfolio of products will be launched–Ekam Pulse, Ekam Beam, Ekam Stream, Ekam Ad Scan and Ekam Integra.

The first digital offering will be EKAM Pulse which will measure video ad campaigns.

EKAM Beam, the next product, will measure linear broadcast on a digital device. Linear broadcast is streaming of TV content on services like Jio TV. Similarly where TV content is available on a device other than TV set.

EKAM stream will measure non-linear and pure play digital content. N0n-linear broadcasts are offered on OTT platforms like Hotstar, Voot or Sony Liv. Here there is a library of TV content which can be viewed by a consumer at any time, not only when it airs on TV. Pure Play digital includes content on platforms like Netflix, YouTube or Facebook. It is not content created for telecast on TV.

EKAM Ad Scan will give an overview of digital ads in India. It will show where ad money is being spent and sectorwise contribution to ads.

EKAM Integra will give common robust, independent audience numbers and will provide accurate incremental reach figures.

BARC will integrate TV data and digital video data with single source panels.

It will be de-duplicated. De-duplication refers to the unique reach which can be achieved by combining multiple platforms. It eliminates duplicate viewers on multiple platforms. The final figure of reach is more reliable for advertisers.

Advertising planning is facilitated. An advertiser wishes to reach a niche audience. Such an advertiser can opt in for multiple platforms. An advertiser wants to reach a larger audience. He can study the overlap between platforms. He can add an additional platform to achieve video reach. It reduces advertising waste and spillage.

This is an old belief. It is not a well-defined axiom. To begin with content was never king. Differentiated content was king. There is competition between content and connections. There are connections among people, across products  and across functional initiatives. These connections are leveraged. Consumers may take to your product not because of quality or price but because it connects people with each other. Product connections are important too. When CD sales declines there emerged iPods and MP3 broadband internet and music concerts. The concerts were priced low as an incentive for people to go and buy the CD. Later, free music emerged. It was incentivising users to go to live events. This is an illustration of product complements. The value of a product goes up whenever there is a complement.

Apple, Facebook and Amazon gained success by connecting users or products. They now play in content space, but content is not their core business. It is a product complement. They would like to make it cheap and widely available.

Readers pay for content as long as it is differentiated. Readers do not pay for similar content. Still readers could be ready to pay for its complements. Young consumers are reluctant to pay for music, but are ready to pay for hardware, smartphones, live events and internet access.

The steep and continuous decline of high margin print advertising has led to significant financial challenges for most newspapers which are cutting costs and trying to find new revenue sources.

There should be a reduction in duplicative layers of article editing, and visual experts must play a primary role in covering some stories. It means more visual journalism. There should be focus on diversity within the manpower so as to reflect the audiences they seek. There is too much duplicative and low-value line editing. If this is removed, there will be reductions in editorial manpower. In print production, there is multi-layered editing in the newsrooms.

A typical newsroom for digital media is a lean structure. It is a smaller and more focused newsroom. Print media must reconfigure its newsroom accordingly.

Abroad, we have seen a decline of the print media owing to the emergence of the digital media. Media there was costly, bulky and was to be picked up from a news-stand as there was no home delivery. India has more than 895 million literate people, and there are only 301 million people who read a publication. Thus one can see the potential for growth. Print media here is aspirational. Written word has the respect. There is this facility of home delivery. Though India’s print media has digital presence, the bulk of its revenues come from newspapers and magazines.

Still, there is slow down in the growth rate of print media in India. Hindustan Times has closed down its Kolkata, Bhopal and Ranchi editions. Many papers are pruning their print runs. There is less recruitment and there is cost cutting. What is seen in the newsrooms of English papers is likely to spread to the vernacular papers. Though print remains the most profitable media segment, it has been losing share. Its share has fallen down from 31 per cent ( 2005 ) to 24 per cent ( 2015 ). Maybe, this slow down will compel the print media to diversify into digital and other formats seriously. India is the one of the last bastions of print media. Even here major national dailies are shutting editions, laying off staff, cutting costs and freezing expansions and investments.

Print media is the only industry in the private sector where government- appointed wage board fixes wages. The recent recommendation has bled a number of print companies to the point of sickness. At least non-journalist staff must be removed from its ambit. The very concept of print journalist no longer exists as journalists have become platform-agnostic, moving from filing for online to writing for print to appearing on TV, all in the course of a single workday.

Under the new GST regime, newspapers must be ensured of zero rating.

The main source of revenue of the print media is advertising. It has shown little growth in the last few years — 4 to 6 per cent as compared to TV’s 15 to 18 per cent and digital’s 35-40 per cent.

There is a sharp increase in overhead costs. The cost of newsprint has increased, especially the imported variety.

Despite all this, Indian newspapers have kept cover prices among the lowest in the world — Rs 3 to Rs. 5 per copy on an average so as to keep them affordable.

Media in general and newspapers in particular are at an inflection point today.

Header bidding has been integrated by Facebook on its platform. It allows mobile web publishers to collect bids and then select the highest offer. It improves upon the original programmatic auctions. Due to advance bidding technology, publishers can make more money and earn up to 10-30 per cent more revenues than programmatic advertising. Obviously, the cost of buying ads on the mobile web are set to go up.

Google’s Doubleclick has already adopted header bidding. Nearly 70 per cent of all publishers now use header bidding. It is a means to optimise yield, cut down on passbacks, increase transparency of inventory value. Doubleclick also eliminates Google’s favouritism for its for its own ad exchange AdX. Advertisers are given opportunity to bid on all available inventory and not just remnant inventory.

Movie outings are still popular but the digital revolution is changing the way entertainment is consumed by viewers. It is driven by internet connectivity and digitisation. Smart phones have become smarter. In fact, they have become the mainstream medium for entertainment. Previously, entertainment was a social engagement. It has become now an intensely personal experience. These two are at extreme ends, and yet they co-exist.

A smart phone can use AI to personalise the entertainment. There is a demand for content that can be consumed on-the-go. The data packages have become competitive. Telecom operators themselves also provide content libraries. There are content apps. Telcos and content apps brands are competing. The integrated services are called for which include content streaming.

Big screen magic still beckons the viewers. At the same time, a new eco-system is likely to emerge in the entertainment industry.

A short-hand communication marvel which conveys reaction to news immediately. Still it has failed to attract enough advertisers. It shows financial losses. Twitter is not comparable to Google or Facebook. It is a source of news. Just as The Washington Times survives digitally on being purchased by Jeff Booz, Twitter should get such financial support to survive. Twitter has no intermediary between one who tweets and one who listens to these tweets. According to Randall Stross, if journalism is the first draft of history, Twitter is the first draft of journalism. Twitter should have algorithms to filter unacceptable trolls. It should keep the hate speech out. Advertisers are repelled by the trolls. Consumers are today impatient, they prefer news snacks, rather than a full meal. Twitter should be supported by someone who valves its brevity.

IPL enters its 10th year in 2016. It coincides with the advent of 4G in Indian markets. There are digital platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Reliance Jio. They compete to acquire the digital rights of the IPL for a five year period starting from 2017. It clearly shows that there is appreciation of the fact that the way IPL will be watched in the future is going to change. This trend was visible in 2016 itself when fans watched 140 million videos on the Facebook pages of the IPL and the eight teams. There were 10.6 million tweets. IPL was the biggest social media event for a period of seven weeks it was played. Over the next few years, we can expect live content streaming off behind-the-scenes action, questions and answers with players and live tweets by players on social media platforms.

These matches could be live streamed by Facebook. They could be part of the Amazon Prime offering. It is a huge business opportunity. More people will watch the sporting events with the roll out of 4G. They may watch on smart phones and tablets. This could reduce the advertising revenue of the TV channels in future.

The BCCI can expect a windfall in the media rights for the next cycle of IPL starting 2018. A total of 18 companies have picked up tender documents by October 18, 2016. The application is a universal document on which the applicants can choose to bid for digital and/or TV rights for a chosen territory.