Protect digital business from legacy culture, key message at Digital Media India

Mobile Internet will be the game-changer, as smart phones and quality bandwidth become affordable.

The opening keynote by Torry Pedersen, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of VG, Norway, at Digital Media India 2016, the 5th annual digital media conference organised by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) from 22nd to 23rd February at Delhi, underlined the importance of protecting digital media business from legacy culture, which VG followed in Norway, and also became the central message of the roundtable discussion that followed in the conference’s concluding session. Pedersen presented how VG transitioned by thinking “digital first” and recruiting the right people to cope with the dynamics of transformation. He stressed that transformation requires new criteria for success, setting the tone for the conference’s deliberations.

Rajan Anandan, Vice President & Managing Director of Google South East Asia & India, who spoke following Pedersen at the opening session, said 65% of users in India access the Internet via mobile and the total number of Internet users is estimated to reach 500 million by 2017. He said online news requires new capabilities – web and app, video and Wi-Fi and localised content.

The panel that followed the opening session, joined by India’s leading news publishers, set “increasing engagement in mobile, online video and native advertising” as the common digital priorities for the year.

The conference focused on the theme “Engaging audience, monetising content,” included parallel break-out sessions on a) Social media growth b) Online video c) Digital advertising and d) Ad blockers.

Other key takeaways from the conference include:

• Journalism is not disrupted by digitisation, and it has only made it better than before.
• Power is in the hands of the audience (mobile, connected), go where they are.
• Robo journalism is a reality today.
• Improve the life of readers with trusted, compelling content.
• Revenue lost due to ad blockers in India is still less than the global average.
• Prepare for the long haul to make money in digital.
• Local language content online is a huge opportunity in future, but equally tougher to monetise. But India could leap frog the transition.

The conference, which drew 170 delegates, the highest number in the past 5 years and a growth of 35% from the previous edition, from more than 10 countries, concluded on 23rd February with a roundtable discussion on “Can digital pure players disrupt the news media industry in India?” The speakers at the roundtable – Gautham Pai, Group Managing Director, The Manipal Group, India (as the chair), Ritu Kapur, Co-Founder, The Quint, Siddharth Varadarajan, Founding Editor, thewire.in and Sruthijith K K, Editor-in-Chief, Huffington Post India – agreed that traditional media and digital pure players will co-exist, each playing to their strengths and filling the gaps left by the other. With the costs of smart phones and quality bandwidth becoming affordable, mobile Internet will be the game changer, but will come with a set of challenges. At the same time, technology will be a great enabler.

The conference was sponsored by Google, The New York Times News Service & Syndication, Locovida Digital Solutions, Quintype Technologies, Kreatio Software, Express KCS and joined by infotable suppliers – 4CPlus, Newstech and Datomata. WAN-IFRA’s News Publishing Focus and Asian News Publishing Focus were the official publications of the conference. The supporting publications of the event were All About Newspapers, GXPress, Indian Printer & Publisher and RIND Survey.