Digital Media India 2020: Driving news to profitability 9th edition of WAN-IFRA’s Digital Media India conference in New Delhi takes place with the theme Growing Big in Digital. The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) hosted the 9th edition of its Digital Media India (DMI) conference in New Delhi this year, with more than around 110 news media executives from over 10 countries. The conference, whose theme is ‘Growing Big in Digital’, was held on 18 and 19 February at Holiday Inn, Aerocity in New Delhi. The digital event brought together ideas on digital trends, technology, advertising, innovation and revenue strategies.
A brand must consider ‘direct sales vs programmatic sales’, ‘brand solutions vs standard advertisements,’ ‘reader revenue vs advertising revenue,’ and ‘revenue from syndication vs on-site revenue’.” Puneet Gupt
Key Notes : > More than 110 news media executives from over 10 countries attend. > The event brought together ideas on digital trends, technology and advertising, innovation and revenue strategies. > The two-day conference covered a range of topics.
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Juan Señor, president of UK’s Innovation Media Consulting Group, got things rolling with a keynote address on driving a news media business to profitability. Señor presented fourteen business models and one single strategy to transform a newsroom into a reader first model. This strategy is based on the ‘Innovation in News Media World Report’ that he authored for WAN-IFRA in 2019. “A newsroom should deliver content worth paying for. Everything that generates value should generate revenue,” he said. The two-day conference covered a range of topics dealing with the news media business such as digital and programmatic advertising, video and OTT space in India, subscription strategies and transformation. The first day of the conference covered digital
advertising and alternate revenue sources for the news media business, discussing, in-depth, how a publisher can drive their business to profitability. Gone are the days when the biggest revenue source of a media house was advertising revenue. Partnerships and alliances between publishers are the new normal; as is content syndication, e-commerce, podcasts, sponsorship and events. Puneet Gupt, the Chief Operating Officer of Times Internet Ltd., in his presentation on ‘Monetising in the times of change,’ urged publishers to find out what content readers are willing to pay for. “Once you’ve figured that, create resources to provide that content to the reader. Quality of revenue should be a factor in deciding how a news media company monetises. A brand must consider ‘direct sales vs programmatic sales’, ‘brand solutions vs standard advertisements,’ ‘reader revenue vs advertising revenue,’ and ‘revenue from syndication vs on-site revenue’,” he said. Day 1 of the conference closed with the South Asian Digital Media Awards 2020, which saw more than 80 entries from over 20 media companies. An international jury comprising high ranked professionals from the media industry chose 34 winners for the fifth edition of the awards. Manorama Online bagged an award for the ‘Best News Website’, while BBC India won the ‘Best Data Visualisation’ award.
