Category: Opinion – Archives

By Indrani Sen

The shadow of gloom cast by Covid-19 on our newspaper industry has not yet shifted and most of our newspapers are still struggling to revive their circulation, readership and revenue. During June and first half of July, I have come across very few articles on Indian print/ newspapers and all of them either had a negative connotation or provided  an advisory for revival of the sector. An article published in www.scroll.in  on June 25, 2020, related to the unique last mile delivery system of Indian newspapers, illustrates the negativity syndrome (https://scroll.in/article/964158/hard-times-after-the-lockdown-a-newspaper-vendor-in-mumbai-is-losing-clients-to-online-media) and an article published in www.policybazar.org on June 23 is an example of an advisory issued to the print industry at large (https://www.policycircle.org/economy/industry/change-or-perish-indian-newspapers-stare-at-a-crisis-of-their-own-making/).

The press release on TAM AdEx report published last week treated print and eadio like Corona-positive patients and avoided touching the trends in the AdEx.  Against such a backdrop, during this regime of Coronavirus, it was really refreshing to listen to the speakers of the webinar ‘Go Dakshin: Print Emerging Stronger Post COVID 19 organised by Exchange4media on July 7, 2020. The webinar panel had representation of publishers covering all southern states and was ably moderated by Kishan Kumar Shyamalan, VP, Wavemakers. He began the webinar by commenting that print in South India is different in many ways for their counter parts in North, West and East India and requested the panellists to share their experiences during the lockdown and post lockdown.

KRP Reddy, Director Advertising & Sales, Sakshi Group opened the panel discussion admitting that they lost 25% circulation in urban areas during April after the lockdown, but in rural areas their circulation was not affected. After unlocking, they have recovered in smaller towns and now are working harder to regain their lost circulation in large cities. Suresh Balakrishna, Chief Revenue Officer, The Hindu Group, agreed by saying that Hindu is still under pressure in large towns. He reiterated that April was really bad. It was like “holding on to a hand break of a car coming to a screeching halt”. In May, Hindu had revived 89% of its circulation in Tamil Nadu and Kerala and 75% in Andhra, Telengana and Karnataka. Balakrishna added that being relevant and being agile helped The Hindu Group to navigate this critical period successfully. The magazines Sportsstar and Frontline were converted to digital magazines during the lockdown and did not stop publishing.

Verghese Chandy, VP Marketing & Advertising Sales, Malayala Manoroma Group said they were better prepared to deal with the crisis after experiencing other health crisis and multiple floods in the past. In the early days of the pandemic, they managed to convince their people that hard copies of newspapers do not carry the virus and lost a very small percentage of their circulation during the lockdown. Circulation revenue helped Malayala Manoroma Group to survive when advertising dried up during the period of lockdown. Abhinav Khare, CEO, Asianet said that Kannada Prabha took a hit initially in April and had 18% de-growth, but started recovering from May and the trend is continuing in June. Eshwar N, CMO, Casagrand said he is one of the biggest spenders on Print in Tamil Nadu and Kerala and were one of the first to start advertising their real estate projects after lockdown. Their advertisements got a good response comparable with pre-Covid time.

In response to the question of the moderator Shyamalan “How can Print re-emerge now?” Balakrishna said 10 years ago, when the realisation began that digital is here to stay and Hindu began its digital journey, the pandemic has fast-tracked the process. The Hindu Group had collapsed its traditional and digital sales team into one seamless team and the editorial team had also evolved digitally. Their pricing policies had changed over the time and all their digital offerings were behind the pay wall by the time pandemic hit. The economics of the business had started changing for them and COVID 19 just fast tracked the transition. Reddy, however felt that traditional Print is still considered to be most credible and would continue to grow in next decade.

Chandy felt both the traditional and digital formats of newspapers will co-exist and grow for some time and readers can choose the format they like to read. He argued that the pandemic exposed the shallowness of the digital media and the legacy media re-emerged as the more trusted one. He gave a couple of post lockdown examples of readers’ response to ads from the automobile and film industry in print to support his arguments.  Khare said traditional print would need to make their formats more interesting to attract younger readers who have started reading news digitally. Balakrishna gave the example of “Singapore Straight” and said that cover prices would increase and become hard and balance between advertising and circulation revenue would be restored. He argued that readers would gradually get used to paying for digital content. The webinar ended with the participants requesting advertising agencies to support Print during this period of Covid-19.

By Indrani Sen

We are all feeing the fallout of the Covid-19 crisis in our lives and livelihoods. According to a report by World Economic Forum, global poverty is expected to increase for the first time since the 1998 Asian Financial Crisis and unemployment rates are going to increase across developed as well as developing countries of the world.  No business sector is immune to the effects of the pandemic, but Media & Entertainment (M&E) Industry is among the few sectors which are likely to be affected more.

We have not yet seen any report on how the Indian M&E Industry has fared during the first two quarters of the current year by the agencies who regularly publish such reports annually.  There was a report “Media and entertainment post Covid-19: The best and worst of times” released by KPMG in April, 2020 which touched on the broad trends. Brand Equity reported in an article published on May 12, 2020 about the predictions by Crisil, the global analytics company, predicting a 16% decline in the revenue of Indian M&E Industry in FY 2021 (https://brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/media/media-entertainment-sector-revenue-could-take-16-pc-hit-in-fy21-crisil/75687403).

While we wait patiently for mid-year reviews from FICCI-EY, KPMG, Group M, Pitch-Madison, etc, let us take a quick look at what has been happening around the globe. I read three reports in www.emarketer.com during last week and would like to share a few findings with our readers. On July 6, 2020, an update on Global Digital Ad Spending Q2 2020 was published which highlighted that “…every market we cover will experience a decline in ad spending except China. Google will see its first ever contraction in digital ad revenues, as search advertising will struggle compared with display….Overall ad spending will decline by 4.9% worldwide this year, a significant drop from last year’s 6.3% growth and from our pre-pandemic 2020 forecast of 7.0% growth” (https://www.emarketer.com/content/global-digital-ad-spending-update-q2-2020).

On July 8, 2020, there  was an article on UK predicting sharp declines across traditional media will drag total ad spend down by 7.5% in 20202 (https://www.emarketer.com/content/uk-sharp-declines-across-traditional-media-will-drag-total-ad-spend-down-by-7-5-2020?ecid=NL1009). The report also predicted recovery of the media industry in 2021 with a healthy growth rate of 15.3%.

On the same day, there was another article on US, predicting a substantial fall in TV Upfront ad spending in the 2020-2021. “US upfront TV ad spending will decline 1.4% in the 2019-2020 season to $20.28 billion, and drop a substantial 27.1% in the 2020-2021 season to $14.78 billion….”( https://www.emarketer.com/content/tv-upfront-ad-spending-will-fall-5-5-billion-2020-2021-season?ecid=NL1009). The UK economy is officially in a recession and there is a Huge uncertainty about investment in advertising by most advertisers.

It would have been wonderful if similar reports could have been generated for Indian media industry showing the advertising revenue of the first two quarters, January to March, 2020 and April to June 2020. In absence of such information, we can use the above global trends in making some estimates about the Indian Media industry.  It can be safely said that we are also going to see a decline not just in the growth rate, but also in the size of our media industry across traditional and digital platforms.

By Indrani Sen

Covid-19 has enforced an existential crisis on FM Radio Industry in India. The industry is totally dependent on advertising and ground events-related activities tied up with social media deals as their sources of revenue. All ground events came to a sudden halt after the attack of coronavirus and advertising expenditures dried up as sales took a nose drive. The economic slowdown of last financial year had already impacted the FM Radio industry in FY20 and there was a fall in the revenues of all major companies operating in the segment. According to FICCI EY Report on Indian M&E Industry 2020, revenues of FM Radio Industry grew 5% in the first half of 2019, but fell by18 % in the second half.

Due to the decrease in advertising support thanks to lack of business activities during COVID19 followed by the national lockdown, FM Radio industry revenue fell by 80% in April, 2020 and 90% in May 2020 compared to last year. It is estimated that during the first two months of FY21 (April and May) the industry has suffered loss of INR 200 crores and by September, 2020 the loss will mount up to INR 600 crores. The unpaid past dues of DAVP and MSMEs has added to the financial crisis of the various companies owning different brands of FM Radio.

Association of Radio Operators of India (AROI) approached the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in March, 2020 with a concrete proposal asking for immediate short term financial support and long term changes in policies. AROI asked the Government for moratorium in license fees and other charges, waiver on interest for delayed payment for a period of one year, clearance of dues from DAVP pending for more than a year and restoration of Government advertising on FM radio channels.  MIB has so far allowed only three months’ extension of licence fees payment without interest which hardly offers any financial relief and is in fact a very small concession offered by the Government who has in the past ripped good financial benefits through auctioning of private FM stations and continue to earn annual revenues from the industry.

How has the FM radio industry been dealing with the pandemic in their content? Most of the stations stepped up their programming for educating their listeners about the virus and safety measures and various ways of dealing with home quarantine. Government policies stopped them from making their own local news, but they carried health bulletins from various hospitals and other local government organisations free of cost. A large portion of their content shifted from entertainment to information. Red FM and Magic FM launched a programme “Care Karona” on their channels encouraging their listeners to become facilitators of correct information by educating their maids, drivers and everyone who is in direct contact with people to contain the ripple effect of virus. My FM from the Bhaskar Group introduced a programme “Real Ya Na Real”for busting fake news. Radio City, Mumbai raised donation off INR 8 lakh through their programme “Dabbewale Ka Dabba Bharo” for helping Mumbai’s dabbawalas affected by the lockdown. A recent article in The Print (https://theprint.in/features/how-fm-radio-spread-positivity-and-created-a-sense-of-community-during-the-lockdown/437111/) has praised the way FM Radio spread positivity and created community feeling during the lockdown.

What about the listenership of FM radio during Covid-19?  As per the Indian Readership Survey, listenership of radio remained stable across the last three studies at 20%. Urban radio listeners are almost twice (28%) the size of rural listeners (15%) base (listened during last 1 month). However, the findings most likely relate to total radio listeners (AIR channels as well as Private FM Radio channels) and no separate estimate is available regarding the contribution of the Public and Private radio channels in the radio listenership. There has been a lot of speculation during the pandemic about the listenership of FM Radio going down during the lockdown as people could not listen to their car radios and at home had to compete with TV and Digital Media for attention.

A recent article in www.moneycontrol.com  referred to a research done by AZ Research during the lockdown showing daily listenership of Radio has gone up during the Pandemic. “Radio is one of the very few mediums that are currently offering you new and fresh content. That has helped increase the listenership for radio by three million to 51 million listens a day post-lockdown, according to a study by AZ research.” (https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/trends/entertainment/coronavirus-impact-more-people-listen-to-it-now-but-radio-is-still-struggling-5232061.html)

The online version of Deccan Heard referred to the same study done by AZ Research in details in an article published on April 9, 2020 ( https://www.deccanherald.com/national/coronavirus-lockdown-radio-listenership-increases-by-23-per-cent-study-823395.html) “The study, commissioned by the Association of Radio Operators for India (AROI), also said radio industry has witnessed a  listenership of 51 million people, which is nearly as much as television’s reach of 56 million and social media’s reach of 57 million.” AZ Research conducted the study across a sample size of 3,300 people across India in selected cities having FM Radio channels and found that 82% people have been tuning in to radio during the lockdown period.  As per the study, FM radio has a credibility score of 6.27, second only to the internet which is at 6.44, while TV has a score of 5.74.

As per the Pitch Madison Advertising Report (PMAR) 2020, the Top 5 categories of Radio ADEX in 2019 were Real Estate, FMCG, BFSI, Auto and Telecom accounting for only 39% of the total while in case of TV   the top five categories contributed to 78% of the total ADEX.  FMCG accounted for only 9% of Radio ADEX as against 49% of TV Adex. As we gradually unlock the lockdown and our economy limps back to “new normal”, advertising of various goods and services have started reappearing in TV and Print. The advertisers should try to consciously support FM Radio Industry by allotting a small part of their investment to the medium; my assessment is they would not be disappointed with the return on their investment.

By Indrani Sen

An article in www.emarketer on January 21, 2020 shared a chart of the proximity mobile payments users of different countries showing that in 2019 India featured in the “very high category” bucket in terms of adoption of mobile payments along with Denmark, Sweden and South Korea.

While, India still has to go a long way before catching up China’s rate of penetration among smartphone users—81.1%, there are other evidences which show that the rate of growth of cashless payments in India has been faster than that of China during the period 2015- 2018 as shown in the chart below on the left (https://qz.com/india/1746910/cashless-payments-growing-faster-in-india-than-almost-anywhere-else/).

In an article on May 9, 2019, SP Global Market Intelligence showed that during 2016 to 2018 mobile payments in India has been growing at a faster rate than card payments as shown in the above chart on the right (https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/blog/mobile-payment-apps-driving-fintech-frenzy-in-india). Wall Street Journal affirmed the growth of mobile payments in India in their article tiled Cash May Be King in India, but Google Is Prince of Mobile Payments on September 19, 2019 showing how millions of Indian mobile users were using Google Pay to pay for their transactions.

In another article Will India’s payments ever be fully mobile? published on September 23, 2019 Edd Gent wrote “But while that expansion sounds impressive, industry consensus is that digital payments still only account for 10 to 15 per cent of all retail merchant transactions, says Vijay Mani, partner at Deloitte India, with mobile predicted to play second fiddle to cards, at least in terms of value.” He further argued that “only a quarter of Indians own a smartphone with the capabilities to use banking apps and popular payment services such as PayTM, Google Pay and PhonePe, though with 40 per cent of Indians under the age of 18, the percentage of adults using them is likely to be considerably higher” (https://www.raconteur.net/finance/mobile-payments-systems-india).

Global Advisory KPMG published an highly informative report in August last year Fintech India- Powering mobile transactions covering Indian Mobile payment ecosystem in the backdrop of global mobile payments ecosystem, key learning and  major challenges. The report claims that digital payments in India are growing at a CAGR of 12.7 per cent in the number of non-cash transactions through mobile phones (https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/in/pdf/2019/08/Fintech-in-India%E2%80%93Powering-mobile-payments.pdf).

The window of mobile payment is a reality which advertising and marketing industry cannot afford to ignore. The FMCG industry particularly needs to explore the opportunities of communicating with their customers through this window as an extension of their mobile advertising. KPMG report listed the emerging business services provided by Mobile Payment Service Providers (MPSPs) as Financial Services, Mobile Marketplaces, Utility & Bill Payments, Payment Containers and Government Enablers and there can be innovative opportunities of associating with some of these services as well as mobile wallets.

In the report, KPMG had given recommendations for transforming India into a leading payment ecosystem to all the stake holders, the Government, financial institutions, regulators and merchants. In the Union Budget announced on February 1, 2020 the only consideration given to digital payment is the Government’s Aadhaar-enabled payments system which is subject to various other financial arrangements and security considerations. The wish list of the digital industry, particularly related to incentives for digital payments has not been considered. It seems that the Government has put its vision of Digital India on a back burner and has definitely not considered the recommendations made by KPMG and other such advisory bodies.

By Indrani Sen

In 2016, television viewership measurement body Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India announced plans to measure digital viewership and going beyond audience measurement of broadcast media. In April 2017, BARC launched its plan of providing the industry with a single platform for all measurement products, across TV and digital through “Ekam” in a phased roll-out over 18-24 months. Partho Dasgupta, then CEO of BARC India, detailed out the five products which were designed based on specific needs of the industry: Ekam Pulse, Ekam Beam, Ekam Stream, Ekam Ad-Scan and Ekam Integra.

To recap the memories of readers, Ekam Pulse, the first product to be rolled out, is for measuring video ad campaigns while Ekam Beam will be measuring linear broadcast that is viewed on a digital device and Ekam Stream will be measuring both non-linear and pure play digital video content. Ekam Ad-Scan, as its name suggests, will give an overview of digital ads in India from different perspectives and Ekam Integra will provide the industry with independent audience numbers enabling calculations of reach and frequency. BARC also announced that its TV data will be integrated with Digital Video data with the help of Single-Source and Digital Booster panels.

A month later in May, 2017 BARC announced that Nielsen India will be its primary digital measurement partner. Nielsen will develop India-specific adaptations for digital measurement based on its global experience. We did not see any publicity of Ekam from the side of BARC for some time, but had assumed in good faith that BARC would deliver as promised based on their tack records of TV audience measurement. In June, 2018 when Economic Times reported that BARC’s digital measurement system would get delayed by one year, ), we did not comprehend all the complications which BARC was encountering in the process of developing Ekam. ( https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/advertising/barcs-digital-measurement-system-to-get-delayed-by-another-year/articleshow/64759655.cms?from=mdr )

The above report quoted Nakul Chopra, then Chairman of BARC: “The new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that came into effect in the European Union from May 2018 has sparked similar discussions around privacy issues in other countries as well… Our government has appointed the Srikrishna Committee. These developments have implications for the content ratings that will be part of Ekam. We need to be sure that the entire Ekam piece is compliant with the prevailing and likely data protection norms. So, while we are still pushing for an earliest possible launch, we are currently recalibrating our plans in light of these new developments.”

The Srikrishna Committee submitted its report along with the draft of Data Protection Bill in September, 2018. Based on the Committee’s recommendations “The Personal Data Protection Bill 2019” was tabled by the Minister of Electronic and Information Technology in Parliament on  11December , 2019 and was immediately sent for further analysis by a Joint Parliamentary Committee. Under the present political climate in our country which is causing frequent black out of internet in select areas, it would not be surprising if the PDP Bill 2019 gets lapsed before it gets a chance to be registered as an Act.

But the real reason of the delay in the process of launching Ekam is not compliance or lack of compliance with regulations of Personal Data Protection. In late 2018 there were rumours in the market that Nielsen had not been able to provide a suitable solution acceptable to all stakeholders. There was a very low key announcement in May, 2019 that BARC is evolving its own mechanism for digital audience measurement as its association with Nielsen has come to an end. Obviously, this was a major setback to the entire process as BARC might have to start developing the system from the scratch unless it has developed a parallel system on its own.

Apart from the technology of digital measurement, BARC has also has to resolve another serious issues of participation by Google and Facebook in their measurement survey. Though BARC has not made any official announcement, yet by now it is widely known in the industry that Google has refused to participate in the digital measurement survey proposed by BARC by citing their global policies related to third party measurement of their content and data privacy agreement with their users. The Indian digital video content producers/ OTT platform owners are willing to participate provided BARC gets Google and Facebook included in the survey. It has become a real Catch 22 situation with no immediate solution in sight.

In January 2019, BARC exhorted Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to “empower” it to be the uniform measurer of audience and other data related to TV, and OTT and digital platforms.    (https://www.indiantelevision.com/television/tv-channels/viewership/barc-india-exhorts-trai-to-empower-it-as-digital-measurer-190114) It was a smart move to counter competitors like Comscore, etc. who enjoy patronage of Google. However, till date TRAI has not responded to BARC’s petition.

During January and February 2019, www.bestmediainfo.com carried a few provocative articles by Niraj Sharma exploring the reasons behind the delay in Ekam. The articles speculated on the lack of support Ekam was getting from ISA and why Google was not cooperating with BARC and allowing them to measure both ad and content viewership on their platforms. While I do not agree with all the points made by Sharma, I concede that if ISA as a body could take an uniform stand, then Google might have to reconsider their decision regarding participation in Ekam. Both Google and Facebook consider India to be an important market for their future growth and value the business which they get from Indian advertising industry.

The question which BARC needs to address now is how to revive and kickstart Ekam in 2020. Apart from the technological needs, there seems to be the need of a master negotiator for solving the participation issues with Google and Facebook. BARC can simplify their offerings for doing a survey of only ads across all digital media platforms followed by a survey of digital contents minus Google and Facebook content. Will Sunil Lulla, the new CEO of BARC, find a solution acceptable to all the stakeholders? If Ekam cannot be revived during this year, then probably it will be shelved forever which will be not only a wastage of financial resources and time, but also a setback for media research in India.

By Indrani Sen

I was intrigued when Femina announced its report on “Millennial Working Women 2020” last week. But my excitement died quickly when I found that its “extensive quantitative research” was conducted among 1500+ English-speaking millennial working mothers belonging to SEC A in the Top 10 metro cities.

The sample represents a miniscule segment of millennial working mothers of India which is further affirmed by the finding that “85% of these millennial mothers hardly cooked or never did so at home.” Even with the luxury of being able to afford domestic help, most housewives in SEC A still have to cook when the maid is either on leave or simply absconds. As health and nutrition conscious mothers of young children, they are not expected to depend on ordering food from outside. So, this is a surprising finding.

A large number of these upper class millennial working mothers have acknowledged that their spouses help them not only in taking care of the children, but also with the domestic work though the nature of the work has not been detailed in the report available for downloading. It is understandable that their children are first priority for these mothers and for maintaining perfect work life balance they enjoy harmonious relationship with their parents and in-laws. It is however surprising to note that “at a professional level they receive a lot of support, strength and motivation from their respective managers and peers at the workplace” when we know about the cut throat competitiveness across professions.

Most of these women feel that “good looks do matter” and ensure that they get good nutrition for themselves. They are all addicted to online shopping as “the easiest way for them to indulge in some me time is to shop online.” Last year in a report “Trend-setting millennials: Redefining the consumer story” released by Deloitte India and lobby group Retailers Association of India, we saw that millennials still preferred offline retail modes and were gradually shifting towards the online mode based on the aspects of  convenience and options (https://rls.net.in/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Trendsetting-Millenials_RAI-Deloitte.pdf). Perhaps the shift has already happened among this particular target group.

When it comes to media habits of these millennial working women, they are consuming contents mostly on TV (97%), Facebook (91%) and newspapers (85%). Newspapers score much above magazines (38%) as a source of content. However, in nuclear families almost half the millennial working mothers source their content from magazines.

Whats App messages play a significant role in their life by providing them with information about current local news as well as the latest happenings in the world with 66% of all the mothers sourcing content from the messaging app. They consume movies and video content through YouTube, OTT platforms (37%) and Facebook videos. 20% of them also listen to radio for entertainment.

“According to a Morgan Stanley report of April 2017, India will have 410 million millennials, who will spend $330 billion annually, by 2020. That’s more than the total population of the US, and more than the total number of millennials (400 million) that China has today. Naturally, every brand owner wants a slice of this pie” quoted www.livemint.com in June, 2018. Femina conducted their research with the objective of getting a better understanding of a section of the millennial consumers, the life of millennial working mothers, but the report available for downloading lacks in providing in-depth understanding of their lifestyle and does not offer meaningful insights to their media habits.

Indrani Sen is a veteran adperson and now a full-time educator. She writes for MxMIndia on most Mondays. Her views here are personal.