chandruganesh: Digital Media – A Nightmare for Single Medium Owne...

chandruganesh: Digital Media – A Nightmare for Single Medium Owne...: Digital Media – A Nightmare for Single Medium Owners??? The word “Digital” for anyone in the media industry is like honey on the tong...

Digital Media – A Nightmare for Single Medium Owners???

Digital Media – A Nightmare for Single Medium Owners???

The word “Digital” for anyone in the media industry is like honey on the tongue, the fact when it comes to revenue Vs expenses is always a pinch in the pocket. Especially this happens with most of the Indian publishers where they have the barrier like language, single media (TV only or Print only or Radio only) & single state presence etc.,. 

Why the strategy mislead investor?

The sugar-coated things on digital shows a big biscuit overall, but the fact is that the single media content won’t serve the purpose of the consumer’s expectation or the time spent on the sites will not be as expected if the adequate content is not provided. This results in low revenue or non-proportionate revenue on the investment done. The media houses report 2% to 3% revenue contribution from Digital wings (some of them report 10% due to their other media revenue is lesser than the top players in the industry).

The unique content attracts the consumer rather than the content syndicated / subscribed content from 3^rd party. Most of the media houses are subscribed to multiple content providers where they will sell it to multiple players in same geo. This results in adulterated content available everywhere, the consumer should have the reason to come to your website which is none other than content.

Why multi-media wins the digital spree?

The content along with the visuals creates the impact more than other form of content, most of the cases though the person is not watching they keep listening along with their day to day activities. Advantage of different media got its own pros and cons. More the interesting content, more the time spent. The content created for one medium compliment the other is when the investor gets more returns. Example – the content created for the TV channel is used as capsule / full used in digital gain more traction in revenue. The production cost involved for the video is one-time investment and the same is used in multiple forum. The proportionate revenue of the digital for the content creation might not fetch-up to the investment value. The additional revenue for the multi-media consumption is profitable rather than comparing with single media content usage (it’s like internal content selling/buying). 

If a single medium owner (print/radio/website) like to produce a video content for his/her website the production cost of the video won’t yield them proportionately to the investment. The investor should understand the basic difference of content creation & platform providers. The video content creators like TV channel has the advantage of yielded more with the produced content, whereas the other media owners can’t have the advantage like TV, due to the investment Vs returns.

The platform providers revenue can’t be added up in the digital revenue which is not an apple to apple comparison. The investment on the backend technology / support is the only investment where the platform providers does it, the entire content is generated by the users themselves (UGC) or the investment on the content generation for those companies is miniscule compared to their revenues (Youtube/whatsapp/facebook/Google/Instagram etc.,).  In India if we compare the media houses revenue share, the multiple media owners always hold upper hand. Ideal revenue comparison of any digital news publishing industry should be the unduplicated revenue post removal of the UGC content contributor’s digital revenue, E-commerce websites and other social media revenues. The digital pie of this news publishers is minimum if we compare to the overall all digital revenue which is reported by the authorities.

The investor should be aware of all the challenges before entering the digital business else the digital business will be a nightmare for the single medium investors. Before investing in the digital business, one should be clear in the content generation/providing - else the investment will be haywire. Never invest on the infrastructure before knowing what we are going to do with it, because no one will come to see your infrastructure build – they come to consume something interesting. It’s like people travelling 100’s of kilometer to have cup of coffee of their taste – people wish to invest their time and money for their taste!