"Digital is biggest opportunity for monetisation:"INX's Mukerjea

Peter Mukerjea, CEO, INX Media believes that digital TV is the biggest opportunity for monetisation for broadcasters. He made this statement during a panel discussion at the 'Blink' seminar hosted by TAM Media Research.

Aug 27, 2008 07:00:00 AM | Article | Campaign India Team

Digital is the new mantra and the need to measure it accurately is what was comprehensively discussed at the seminar. LV Krishnan, CEO, TAM Media, (pictured) kicked off the session by highlighting the host of benefits that digital has offered to TV viewers. Some of the benefits include unlimited channels, digital sound and quality and choice to view your favourite channels.
Pradeep Hejmadi, senior vice president, TAM, said that DTH has made moderate inroads in cable homes. Some of the other observations that he made were the channels that digital homes tune into is lower than their analog counterparts and fragmentation is more in digital as compared to analog.

TAM also announced that it will soon launch Set-Top-Box technology for measurement. While it will continue using digital peoplemeter for TV measurement, it has started working with Nielsen to introduce STB Return Path Data (RPD) technology. TAM will also release Digital TV data along with the regular weekly data it provides from now onwards.

The seminar concluded with a panel discussion on 'Digital Era on TV- an opportunity for advertisers to address communication better'. While Mukerjea held forth that broadcasters needed to exploit the monestisation opportunity offered by digital TV, Jagjit Singh Kohli of Digicable Network felt that comparing digital cable to DTH is premature as digital cable is not yet present in the entire country. Giving a producers' perspective, Dheeraj Kumar of Creative Eye said that digital has give an opportunity to create specific and niche content.