Yesterday’s Marketing Conclave held at Le Meridien was a grand success. Here’re a few people who have worked in the background to make this a huge success…
Key Organizers, Kalyan Biswas and Gaurav Chopra (2nd and 3rd from the left respectively) with delegates…
The live blogging team:
In the front: Shrinidhi Hande, behind (blue shirt)- Sujoy, next to him is Chanakya and the right most is Faiz Askari, Executive Editor, Thinkingalound.in. The live blogging was executed by BusinessBlogging, Social Media Partners for IAMAI.
The registration counter:
The tech team:
Sounds, lights and visuals.. Well supported by these guys…
Our Emcee…
There’ve been many more invisible hands who’ve helped making this event a success. We thank our sponsors, partners, speakers, media and delegates for their wholehearted support in making the Marketing Conclave a remarkable success…
Audience of yesterday’s marketing conclave, close to 300 of them, were highly interactive. Though time for Q&A sessions were limited, audience made the best use of it and asked several interesting questions, which panel answered efficiently…
Here’re some photos of the esteemed participants..
For complete coverage of Marketing Conclave, Click here
SN Bhaduri, Country Manager, consumer media of Thomson Reuters, moderated this panel discussion which was a deep dive into the performance, outlook, and issues like privacy for mobile and online advertising.
As the only publisher in the panel, Mr Bhaduri mentioned how difficult it is to be a publisher. The past decade we heard about CPM, now we hear CPL and CPC, and many other measures.. But the fact is that while a lot has been attempted for new media to break into traditional media’s dominance of vehicles of advertising, but similar to the DTH industry’s challenge that Mr Kaushik in previous panel had mentioned, the publishers too find it very difficult to be profitable.
The mobile industry, with its large consumer base, is still searching for the right model, and the compelling killer application. We should not loose focus on this goal of reaching the rest, while getting excited about the innovations. With that he opened up with introducing the other panelists.
Key Notes from the Panel Discussion
Moderator: R Sukumar, Editor, Mint
Question: 1. Is there going to be a tipping point?
2. Are we (media houses, publishing cos.) doing all we can, in terms of technology needed, to create a Hybrid (Print& digital) model?
Session1 – Panel Discussion
Divya Gururaj, Managing Director, Mediacom
The Internet penetration in India is still low at 51Mn active users
Another 30Mn. use internet via mobile phones
The Digital growth is veryunorganic in nature; difficult to assign a multiplier; DTH has risen from 2Mn. to 20Mn. in 2 yrs
As far as marketing for Mass products are concerned, Print & TV would still be preferred over digital media but digital scores when it comes to industries like recruitment, education, etc
The market research in India is poor; Difficult to know what customers want
To grow, understanding of the different media is critical
In digital media, action changes at a much faster pace than print which goes in favour of Digital
If Economic Times can give the advertisers an option to buy space for newspaper which automatically provides space for e-newspaper as well; others need to follow suit
They need to integrate their different (Print, TV & Digital ) service verticals
More media/publishing companies need to integrate their services team combining Print, TV & Digital
Mitya New, Managing Director, Dow Jones India
Internet Penetration is low; Mobile offers an alternative platform for Internet
The key to the success of print and digital is the relationship between the VALUE offered and the PRICE charged for it
Indian consumer is a sophisticated customer; If they see value, they are willing to pay for the service
We see 40,000 downloads p.m.of our applications which is promising
Transition from print to digital media is dependent on the needs of the people; The content needs to fit into people’s workflow; This concept needs to be need to be addressed seriously
An advertiser cannot blindly follow the 360 degree media approach; The ads/content need to be more focussed and targeted well
Mohit Hira, President www.training.com, NIIT
The Transition from print to digital is happening but at its own pace; kids still read books on the move;
Given India’s population size, it would be in perpetual transition
The tipping point would come; Hybrid model is already there and companies are doing a good jobh out of it
The fact that news companies can break a news in 140 characters makes you want to pick up the newspaper and read details
The customer and marketers are integrating the various media but publishing houses also need to join in quickly
Ads in E-papers are a great way of directing focused customers to company websites and portals; This is going strong
Print is my 1st love but digital is the new seductress on the block
T K Arun, Editor, Economic Times
A very important factor for Digital media is POWER/ELECTRICITY
India is short of electricity & power
The power infrastructure & capacity in India is improving by the day and soon,power shortages in India will be the thing of the past
In Gujrat & West Bengal – One can be put behind bars within four hours of stealing electricity
Another factor affecting the digital growth in India is the TELECOMMUNICATION Infrastructure
At present, Indian companies are not investing in manufacturing of Telecommunication equipments (Except mobile phones); they are dependent on companies like Siemens, Cisco and the likes
Once Indian companies start investing in Telecom equipment, things would improve substantially
The advertisers need to adopt hybrid model as they move ahead
R Sukumar, Editor, Mint
Feel that 3% advertisement spend as a percentage of total Ad-Ex is shocking; It is not in syn with anything; It doesn’t justify the investment in digital media, recurring expenditure, no. of users, etc
We are still using Cost-per-thousand(CPT) matrix to judge the value of customers
CPT for digital does not seem to be a viable model
New matrix needs to be developed/used if we really want to measure customer value and ROI accurately
Mr Gangadhar, who heads an agency that is from the Group-M family, started with a bold assertion that the boundaries between traditional media & new media are now so diffuse that today it is just “medium” without needing to make that distinction.
While the numbers are strong – with more than 550 million subscribers in India, and timespent online almost same as time spent on TV, TV viewership is still growing at 15% YoY which is no mean feat. From the marketer and advertiser perspective, it is easier to invest in a known horse like TV, because it is easier to evaluate how the medium has performed. While votaries of digital medium vouch for the advantage of their metrics, the fact is that on digital world, there is no robust common currency.
Also, online medium delivers to a predominantly made audience, or at least is perceived to be so. This pushes away marketers who don’t want to miss out of the rest of the segments. Another reason marketers are not putting their money on digital more whole-heartedly is because the benchmarks are not clear. If you are planning a TV campaign, for a telecom client for example with Sharman Joshi as the celebrity, and promoting a new offering, you can define an X% GRP as benchmark of success. On the other hand , for a digital campaign, if you get 5 Million hits, it isn’t clear if that is actually a good or a bad result.
Mr. Gangadhar gave some interesting numbers on mobile TV. Post-IPL there is a fairly good critical mass for this genre. IPL saws 5 million Mobile TV viewers. The onset of 3G will see this explode. With consumers used to paying for VAS offerings, mobile-TV has the opportunity to make money , which is great compared to the expectation of free on online content. This will also result in shift from the Opportunity to See(OTS) to the Opportunity to Engage (OTE).
With internet content, there is also the challenge of IPR. Content owners selling the rights to the content separately for TV, internet & mobile, it is not easy or simple to take content of TV directly to deliver on mobile or internet.
With IPL matches broadcast on Youtube seeing the amazing numbers like average timespent / game of 43 minutes and 17 million Unique viewers, this experiment has paid off. Of course IPL was a mega event and quite platform agnostic, so the real test will be the online numbers of other events – sporting or otherwise.
With IPL 4 with 96 games will be a different game, so the jury is still out. A subsequent speaker, Vikram Kaushik of Tata Sky did a show of hands on how many saw IPL on their mobile/internet even when the chance to see on TV was available, and attempted to prick the hype on this new kid on the block.
Atul Phadnis (CEO, What’s on India) talked about outlook for television industry, focusing on the overload of channels and challenges in selecting right content…
What’s on India is India’s first TV guidance channel. No. of Tv channels has grown from 60 channels to 200+ channels… How do people chose programs to watch? Almost 70% of TV watching in India is unplanned. That’s where TV guidance channels come to help.
Key areas: Content creation, search, consumption, distribution effects and IPR
First aspect is Democratization of Content production. Content creation is becoming easier and cheaper-both for TV and print fields. Web is making it even simpler. Lowering entry barriers and niches-is the second aspect.
Traditional workflows are under stress. We’re moving towards Universal newsrooms – same content is fed to TV, web, mobile and so on… This is bringing traditional and new media closer.
We facilitate viewers to find content of their choice. Clearly there is a content and information overload… There’s fragmenting viewership, creating thinner slices. TV content can be categorized into 3: Premium paid content, middle layer which is funded through advertising and paid subscription and 3rd is free.
There’s very poor targeting. Mobility and Malleability are 2 new traits in a digital world. Devices are changing the mode of media consumption.
Trend is shifting from scheduled consumption to anytime consumption. Ratings for hit programs are falling due to too many channels. In 2002, 16% of India watching the show would make you No. one program. Today if 6% watch you are no 1…
Regulator and govt are not geared quick enough. Viewer is not getting the controversial content on tv but he turns to internet for the same. Speed of regulation and understanding of governance on old and new media are the topic of discussion.
Suman is also very active on twitter. You can follow him at @suman7…
Digging further, I also found that Suman had spoken at an earlier IAMAI event, 4th Conference on Digital Marketing, wherein he spoke about video advertisements…
The Marketing Conclave, coming up next week in New Delhi has an impressive list of speakers. We did a bit of googling to know more about the speakers, going beyond their corporate profiles…
Here’s what we found about Ravi Kiran, Chief Executive Officer-South East & South Asia, Starcom MediaVest Group..
