ITV

Tag: Content Monetisation

  • Harshit Sahni steps up as senior director at Warner Bros. Discovery

    Harshit Sahni steps up as senior director at Warner Bros. Discovery

    MUMBAI: Big moves, bigger responsibilities—Harshit Sahni has taken on a new leadership role as senior director – cluster revenue head for factual & lifestyle, eurosport, international business – south Asia at Warner Bros. Discovery. With over two decades of experience in media, advertising, and revenue strategy, Sahni is all set to steer the business into new territories of growth and innovation.

    Having already made an impact as cluster revenue head since September 2024, Sahni now takes the reins at a crucial time for the industry. With advertising dynamics shifting and digital transformation accelerating, he aims to push the boundaries of content monetisation and strategic partnerships in south Asia’s evolving media ecosystem.

    His track record speaks volumes. At Warner Bros. Discovery and previously at Discovery Inc., Sony Pictures Networks, and Star News, Sahni has consistently driven advertising revenue, built strategic partnerships, and spearheaded innovative sales models. From launching ad-sales operations in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives to securing 80 per cent market share in key partnerships, he has been a key player in shaping the industry’s revenue streams.

    A results-driven leader, Sahni has a history of crafting integrated advertising solutions, establishing new revenue streams, and pioneering business models that redefine commercial success. His ability to forecast trends, optimise advertising strategies, and execute high-impact campaigns makes him a force to reckon with in the world of factual entertainment and lifestyle content.

    The future of factual & lifestyle media in south Asia looks promising, and with Sahni leading the charge, expect innovative advertising models, strategic brand partnerships, and bold revenue strategies that redefine content monetisation.

  • Substack expands video capabilities amid Tiktok uncertainty

    Substack expands video capabilities amid Tiktok uncertainty

    MUMBAI: The social media landscape is shifting, and Substack is seizing the moment. With Tiktok’s future in the U.S. hanging in the balance, the San Francisco-based startup is doubling down on video, aiming to lure creators looking for new ways to monetise their content. On 20 February, Substack announced that creators can now post video content directly through its app and place videos behind a paywall.

    “There’s going to be a world of people who are much more focused on videos,” said Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie. “That is a huge world that Substack is only starting to penetrate.”

    One of those creators is Carla Lalli Music, a food content creator and cookbook author, who made a dramatic switch from Youtube to Substack. After posting nearly 200 videos, amassing hundreds of thousands of followers, and generating millions of views, Music quit Youtube. Why? The numbers didn’t add up. She earned almost $200,000 in revenue in just one year on Substack, a stark contrast to the losses she incurred producing videos for Youtube since 2021.

    “If I published four videos a month on Youtube, I’d earn about $4,000, but each video cost $3,500 to make,” Music said. “I was losing $10,000 a month.” Even with brand deals, the earnings barely covered production costs. Now, with her content behind a paywall, she’s focusing on writing another book, posting exclusive recipes, and selectively producing videos for Substack subscribers.

    Founded in 2017, Substack initially served as a newsletter platform where writers could charge readers a monthly subscription fee. The company raised $100 million, with its most recent valuation exceeding $650 million. Today, more than four million paid subscribers and over 50,000 creators generate income on the platform.

    With the uncertain future of Tiktok, Substack is aggressively expanding its offerings. Following Tiktok’s brief removal from Apple and Google’s app stores in January, Substack launched a $20 million fund to attract creators looking for a stable platform.

    “If Tiktok gets banned for political reasons, there’s nothing to do with the work you’ve done, but it really affects your life,” McKenzie said. “The only and surefire guard against that is if you don’t place your audience in the hands of some other volatile system who doesn’t care about what happens to your livelihood.”

    Now, Substack is courting video-first creators from competing platforms, offering them a place to own their audience without algorithms deciding who sees their content. Already, 82 per cent of Substack’s top 250 revenue-generating creators have integrated audio or video into their content.

    Unlike its previous video feature that only allowed clips in Notes-Substack’s front-facing feed—the new update lets creators monetise videos, track viewership, and measure revenue impact.

    For creators burned by unreliable earnings on other platforms, Substack’s paywalled video model offers a sustainable alternative. The company is betting that in a world where direct-to-fan revenue drives more than half of the $290 billion creator economy, the ability to monetise video will make its platform even more attractive.

  • Amagi Planner boasts more personalisation and monetisation features

    Amagi Planner boasts more personalisation and monetisation features

    Mumbai: Amagi, a global player in cloud-based SaaS technology for broadcast and connected TV on Monday launched the advanced version of its content planning and scheduling platform – Amagi Planner. Introduced in 2021, the product makes planning and scheduling of channel programming seamless and cost-effective for digital-first companies.

    Amagi Planner enhancements include flexibility in ad break scheduling, pattern-based or repetitive scheduling, alerts, and notifications for overruns, and more such features.

    Advanced tagging allows OTT platforms and end-users to access titles with ease through a feature-rich search option while unearthing data on audience preferences for personalised content scheduling, according to the statement. “Amagi Planner also enables its users to build ‘collections’ – short duration titles grouped together – with features that can be added on the fly, such as order of assets, automatic shuffling and pinning of assets, and more,” it added.

    The advanced version of the platform makes ad monetisation easier for content owners by facilitating automatic scheduling of fillers and ad breaks. The easy-to-use UI, with its drag and drop functionalities, and its daily and weekly calendars, is a bonus for content owners looking for truly comprehensive scheduling software.  

    “Amagi’s solutions have always had a two-pronged approach. We want our customers to derive operational efficiency while delivering an elevated viewing experience to their customers, said Amagi co-founder KA Srinivasan. “Amagi Planner is the very epitome of this concept, smoothly blending in automation and AI/ML efficiency to deliver a seamless user experience while offering value adds in the form of viewership insights that will benefit the end-user. We hope to see our customers thrive, and their audiences delighted, with our feature-rich solutions.”

    Amagi provides a complete suite of solutions for content creation, distribution, and monetisation  to its global clients including ABS-CBN, A+E Networks UK, beIN Sports, CuriosityStream, Discovery Networks, Fox Networks, Fremantle, NBCUniversal, Tastemade, Tegna, Vice Media, USA Today, and Warner Media, among others. The company will be showcasing its products at the NAB Show 2022 in Las Vegas.