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Tag: PubNation 2020

  • PubNation: How print players expanded digital operations amid Covid

    PubNation: How print players expanded digital operations amid Covid

    MUMBAI: The process of the digital transformation of the print industry has been ongoing for a while now, but the Covid2019 crisis accelerated the need for news publications to realign their objectives and operational model, and to look toward creating new avenues to diversify offerings. More than ever, media businesses will have to act now in order to capitalise on this current growth and ensure success in this new landscape and beyond. 

    Different news organisations came forward to discuss the effect of pandemic and how it accelerated their business at the two-day-long summit – PubNation (print and digital), organised by Indiantelevision.com in partnership with Quintyoe Technologies and Gamezop. The panel was moderated by Omdia content strategies senior principal Tim Westcott and included ET Online editor Deepak Ajwani, Moneycontrol editor Binoy Prabhakar, HT digital streams chief content officer Prasad Sanyal, Amar Ujala Ltd state editor Uttrakhand Sanjay Abhigyan, The Hindu strategy & digital editor Sriram Srinivasan and Mathrubhumi assistant editor-online K A Johny.

    During the pandemic a lot of publications were forced to take the digital route to stay in business. As the movement of people, transport and delivery came to a complete halt owing to lockdown, and readers unsubscribed due to economic constraints or risk of contracting the virus off of newspapers, the e-paper played an important role in these tough times.

    Starting off, Srinivasan revealed that The Hindu was among the first few publications to go digital and adopt a subscription-based model two years back. It is also among first few organisations to launch a paid version of the website. He added, “We have an e-paper, we provide dozens of newsletters. So, everything that is required for a digital publication is there. Then there are our sister publications also, including Business Line, political magazine Frontline and a sports magazine.”

    Amar Ujala, which has a very strong presence in Hindi heartland and is among the top five newspapers in the country, has shifted its focus towards creating digital content. The organisation is present in eight to nine states with more than 250 print editions. Amar Ujala has a very vibrant digital presence in the form of a website, YouTube and Facebook. 
     
    Echoing the sentiment, Sanyal mentioned that Covid20919 has accelerated the digital journey for Hindustan Times and the brand is looking forward to expanding its offering. “All the three outlets Hindustan Times, Hindustan and Live Mint are digitally present. During the pandemic, the company has launched three new segments HT automobile, HT tech and HT Bangla,” he added.

    A large number of media groups were already digital first and working towards ensuring that the customer experience is right and they were abreast with the content trends. Ajwani revealed that in March 2020, ET doubled its viewership. Said he: “We were effective, productive and were making a difference with whatever content we were producing from home. A lot of technology, collaboration with our print team has been around for the last three-four years. We have been connected with each other via multi-modes of technology. So, using our feet on the ground, and the skills of technology and the skills we have built online, we have had a very integrated approach from day one.”

    He further added, “Somewhere in the month of July, we saw that Covid2019 pandemic has accelerated our offerings. I believe there is no transition from print to digital. They both work in synergy. It is an omnipresent world, we are present wherever the reader wants us to be.”

    When the novel Coronavirus arrived in India, it came with more than its fair share of misinformation and fake news. People were in desperate need of verifiable, trustworthy news and they turned to print publications and their digital arms for it. In this regard, Prabhakar mentioned that Moneycontrol was focused on reaching out to its audiences and providing all the necessary information related to the pandemic. “Seeking viewer attention was never a problem for the organisation. Today, the lockdowns have been lifted and many of our readers have gone back to their daily routines, now the challenge once again is to how to seek the user’s attention,” he rued.

    The brand had diversified its offering to acquire and retain new users by expanding into the regional language space. It has three subscription-based products — Moneycontrol Pro, Moneycontrol Hindi and Moneycontrol Gujrati. 

    HT is also doing something similar, said Sanyal, and offers products for Gujarati and Hindi speaking audiences. The network closely works with all partners to deliver content.  

    K A Johny disclosed that it has a very powerful presence in both print and TV. He also shared that the driving force for Mathrubhumi is the trust of people. Covid2019 has only revived things for the organisation. Irrespective of the medium, he thinks that a platform of trust and credibility is the need of the hour.

  • PubNation: The ink shall never dry

    PubNation: The ink shall never dry

    NEW DELHI: Newspapers in the developed world have long lost their sheen in the face of alternative media. Print businesses, both in terms of readership and ad revenues, continue to decline there. However, the scenario in India is quite different. Despite many challenges that loomed on the horizon for print players here, the media has only continued to grow and is expected to reach Rs 338 billion by 2021 (FICCI 2019 report). 

    It definitely wobbled on its feet a little in 2020 because of the pandemic and the speculations around papers being a carrier of the virus, but if experts are to be believed, things have started going back to pre-Covid days, both in terms of subscriptions and ad revenues. The prime reason: the credibility of print media. 

    The point was raised by a distinguished panel of experts speaking on the topic of “Advertising on Ink & Its Future” on day two of the recently concluded PubNation (print & digital) virtual conference. Moderated by Bennet Coleman & Co Ltd SVP & head – creative strategy & planning, trade marketing & innovations Malcolm Raphael, the panel was graced by Dentsu Impact Pvt Ltd president Amit Wadhwa, Zenith India COO Jai Lala, VLCC Personal Care Ltd CBO Manish Jha, and Forevermark India director – marketing Toranj Mehta. 

    Starting off, Raphael pointed out that the low of early 2020 had filled the entire print industry with doubt and uncertainty. Their approach was of cautious speculation in dealing with the situation. However, the past three months have pushed the medium on a path of accelerated recovery. 

    Lala noted, “These were absolutely unprecedented times and very challenging. But we realised that there were a lot of opportunities too. Personally, for us, we hosted a number of internal forums with the editors of these newspapers and started understanding the market. Secondly, the willingness to innovate and look beyond things helped us.”

    He illustrated with an example: “One of our clients Hero has always maintained print as the bedrock of their marketing strategies. And we researched a lot for them to find out how to turn print from an insertion medium to an engagement medium. Because brands today are willing to buy more engagement and not more media space.” 

    However, another important factor that remains at the heart of media planning for any brand, is the credibility of the medium. 

    Mehta stated that Forevermark is always very careful in picking the media they want their brand to be present on. “The credibility of the media also impacts how the consumer perceives your brand.” 

    She insisted that digital media still hasn’t been able to create that amount of credibility and trustworthiness. That’s why the brand sticks to advertising on print media. “Starting Akshay Tritya and all the way through Diwali, we advertised on print media and are continuing to do so. We had to negotiate hard for the ad rates, but we are very much present on the print.”

    As per an Ormax Media research report, print remains the most credible medium of information for Indians, scoring 62 per cent on the news credibility index, followed by radio with 57 per cent and TV news with 56 per cent.

    Wadhwa reflected that credibility for print was never an issue, but it got highlighted very recently with all the fake news gaining traction because of “dangerous level of consumption on the digital medium.” 

    Now, it is the responsibility of the brands and marketers to make better use out of this information, he stressed. “The medium will stay here for a long time. People trust every word that is written in print. The industry has to let go of the set notions and mindset that they have towards print that it is only good for a big announcement or a launch and use the medium more effectively.”

    Jha agreed and added that it is never about print versus digital, but using both mediums cautiously and smartly with a focus on ROI. No brand would want to be present on a medium that doesn’t deliver good ROI. “My observation is very clear — that ink shall never dry.”

    Raphael highlighted that Times Group is already working on a number of solutions with their in-house teams to make print a more ROI-driven advertising instrument, and technology like QR codes are helping achieve that. “With our in-house teams, we have also inspired many brands to change or modify their piece of communication and helped them achieved better results.”

  • PubNation: Are paywalls the future of digital news?

    PubNation: Are paywalls the future of digital news?

    MUMBAI: Covid2019 has impacted industries across the board but it also gave a massive fillip to digital adoption. People are using digital more than ever for most of their requirements – from buying groceries, to reading news, and seeking entertainment.

    The massive change in consumption habits has not gone unnoticed by media organisations and while some may think that the print industry is on the cusp of a digital revolution, the truth is that they have been preparing for this for a while now; upgrading their capabilities by investing in technology, video, content formats, creating properties and, most of all, training editorial teams. 

    In order to understand the new form of print media, its relevance as an advertising medium, the content that will define print publications in future, and technology that will shape the copies of tomorrow, Indiantelevision.com is hosting a two-day-long summit – PubNation (print and digital) in partnership with Quintyoe Technologies and Gamezop.

    One of the virtual panels focused on the convergence of print and digital, and how news will evolve and be consumed in the next three years. The panel was moderated by Omdia content strategies senior principal analyst Tim Westcott and included ET Online editor Deepak Ajwani, Moneycontrol editor Binoy Prabhakar, HT digital streams chief content officer Prasad Sanyal, Amar Ujala Ltd state editor Uttrakhand Sanjay Abhigyan, and Mathrubhumi assistant editor-online K A Johny.

    Abhigyan opened the session by sharing that till recently, Amar Ujala was known as a print maven, but the organisation has adopted digital at a rapid speed. It has a vibrant online presence in the form of a website, YouTube and Facebook pages. In current times, content diversification is of utmost importance, he stated. 

    But going digital also raises the question of modes of monetisation. Will the future of the digital news content be obscured behind paywalls?  

    The Hindu strategy & digital editor Sriram Srinivasan shared that the group was one of the first ones in the country to figure out that getting into a subscription model was inevitable. “We identified it a few years ago, before we even did it. We all saw where the online advertising was going and a lot of publishers were struggling to make it as a main source of revenue and it is still a problem. There is a limit to which the online advertising can support a publication,” he said.

    Prabhakar mentioned that Moneycontrol has a subscription product – Moneycontrol Pro, which has been around for the last two years and has managed over three lakh subscribers in the last 18 months. “We have been doing this because our business ambitions and editorial objectives were clearly aligned.” 

    Ajwani, who was representing one of the biggest publishers of the country, mentioned that for the last two years, ET Prime was running without any ads. However, they were the first website in the realm of business mulling to go the subscription route. Initially, the print team was helping them with great paywall content. Then they started with video content, deep-dive stories and experimenting with formats and graphics. Covid2019 further hastened the process of segueing from partial to complete paywall.

     “Initially we put out three articles with in-depth analysis and graphics behind the paywall on ETPrime.com. This July we integrated it into the ET platform and it became the membership platform for us. We redesigned an integrated website, launched a paywall mechanism, and a lot of changes were made and all this was done from home,” he detailed. 

    During the conversation, K A Johny disclosed that Mathrubhumi is planning to go behind a paywall and the teams are working towards this end. 

    Westcott wondered how these industry giants were going to make readers pay for their digital platform, to which Prabhakar admitted that building a subscription-based model is not easy. There are also hefty production costs to contend with. To make the content look worthy enough so that the readers pay for it, the organisation uploads weekly stock results and in-depth investigative reports.

    Adding to this, Ajwani said that it is important to make the user-experience more hassle-free and enjoyable. "I think both science and content are the subscription mantra." Sanyal agreed, chiming in with the reveal that the organisation is aware of what audiences read, and discovery of the kind of content that will be run on the site is driven by algorithms and not individuals. 

    It will be interesting to see how the content strategies of these platforms unfold in the long run and how willing users will be to pay for the content.

  • Over 60% of BBC APAC’s revenue is from native advertising: Alistair McEwan

    Over 60% of BBC APAC’s revenue is from native advertising: Alistair McEwan

    NEW DELHI: When native advertising had entered the marketing world, just a few years ago, many questions were raised regarding its feasibility for both advertisers and publishers. From people not trusting sponsored content to it diminishing the credibility of a news publication, doubts loomed large over its future. However, the much-maligned ad format has risen above all that, and how. Forecasts from BI Intelligence, IAB and eMarketer show that global native advertising has grown by 213 per cent in 2020 as compared to 2016. Another report by ADYOULIKE, a leading in-feed native advertising technology, indicates that it will further grow by 372 per cent from 2020 to 2025, reaching a total global value of $402 billion. 

    In a recent virtual fireside chat with Indiantelevision.com founder, CEO, & editor-in-chief Anil Wanvari, BBC Global News SVP – commercial development for Asia & ANZ Alistair McEwan claimed that around 60-65 per cent of the organisation’s commercial revenue in the Asia Pacific region is driven by native advertising, which they’ve dubbed “commercial content marketing solutions.”

    McEwan was speaking on day one of Indiantelevision.com’s virtual conference PubNation (digital & print), organised in partnership with Quintype Technologies and Gamezop. 

    “We are either producing content directly with and for the brands, or we are commissioning advertiser-funded editorial programming. The sponsorships are thus a very significant amount of our output. But we create this content with the same editorial standards that we do for our other editorial outputs. And actually, that’s why we have seen this enormous growth in branded content,” he elaborated. 

    McEwan, who had joined the conference from Sydney, added that he is seeing a massive growth coming from India too. 

    He also highlighted that to tap the full potential of the Indian and global market, when it comes to native advertising, BBC has also put in place its in-house content agency called BBC Content. “We launched in India two years ago and we are now producing a lot of branded content for different organisations, both in public and private sectors.”

    PubNation (print & digital) is a two-day-long virtual confluence of the leading publishers, advertisers, and agencies across India. Launched on 9 December 2020, it will dissect hot-button issues including advertising opportunities, the content that will define the future of publications, and technologies that will aid that. You can watch the event live on Indiantelevision.com and its social media handles. For more information, visit (https://www.indiantelevision.com/pubnation/index.html). 

  • PubNation: Decoding the future of print & digital industry

    PubNation: Decoding the future of print & digital industry

    NEW DELHI: The print industry is at a Rubicon moment; the process of digitalisation has opened up new avenues of information dissemination and advertising, although concurrently, there is room for newsprint to flourish. While convergence still remains at the core of it, the aftershocks of the Covid2019 crisis could entirely upend this fragile equilibrium.

    To discuss the new form of print media, its relevance as an advertising medium, the content that will define print publications in future, and technology that will shape the copies of tomorrow, Indiantelevision.com will host PubNation 2020 (print & digital), in partnership with Quintyoe Technologies and Gamezop, on 9-10 December. 

    The two-day virtual conference will have industry leaders discussing a host of topics, including how they dealt with the pandemic, the current and future scenario of ad rates on print, programmatic advertising, subscription growth, and the role of influencers.

    The panellists who will be speaking at Pubnation 2020 (Print & Digital) are Punjab Kesari group of newspapers director Abhijay Chopra, Dentsu Impact president Amit Wadhwa, BBC Global News SVP – commercial development for Asia & ANZ Alistair Mcewan, The Washington Post director – global agency partnerships Baldeep Singh, Moneycontrol editor Binoy Prabhakar, Gamezop co-founder Gaurav Agarwal, Mirror Now managing editor Vinay Tewari, among others. 

    For more information and registration, visit here (https://www.indiantelevision.com/pubnation/index.html).