INMA South Asia conference: ‘Skill gap in selling digital media a cause for worry’

On 23 August, the second day of International News Media Association’s (INMA) South Asia conference in New Delhi,CVL Srinivas, CEO, South Asia, GroupM, spoke on ‘Trends in media planning for digital media’.

Starting off with the importance of audience clustering and targeting, he added, “Advertising is becoming content; it is not just about marketing but curation. Brands are becoming publishers. Marketers are becoming storytellers; and consumers are becoming participants.”

On India’s internet base of around 150 million, he noted that it was a little less than 10 per cent of the whole population, and substantially higher than the English print readership base. Citing further statistics on adoption of social media (82 million on  Facebook) and offtake of smart phones (60 million users), he said, “Advertisers are taking note and moving with the audience.”

“TV planning has moved to multi-screen planning since GRPs are coming from Youtube as well. Increasingly, integrated media campaigns are anchored in digital. Advertisers are also using digital to provide utility value as they move from advertising to creating content, look at digital engagement to drive sales,” said Srinivas, citing examples of digital initiatives from Red Bull, Titan Fastrack, Kissan (Kissanpur) and Dove (Be Beautiful).

While qualifying that digital accounted for only five to six per cent of advertising expenditure, he added, “As planners and advertisers, 80 per cent of the time is spent talking about it.”

Srinivas surmised by pointing out that skill gap in selling digital media was a cause for worry, in managing thetransformation (to digital).

‘Print media is like the sun - rising in the East, falling in the West’

Lara Balsara, executive director, Madison World started her presentation with the line: ‘Print media is like sun - rising in the East, falling in the West’.

Sharing M: Spectra’s study, she said that campaigns work 20 per cent better when combined with print media, as it is efficient in meeting reach targets. She further spoke on campaigns that used print innovations such as Saffola Life, Cadbury’s and Parachute Hair Oil that turned print into social media by ‘inviting friends to try on the hair oil and recommend it further’.

Concurring with Balsalra’s view on combining print and digital for improved RoI, Rickard Ohrn, CEO, RAM Group, said, “It has been proven that when you add digital to print, engagement, recall and call-to-action went up. Advertisers will finally pay for response.”

Balasara surmised, “Multimedia is always RoI accretive. Using two to three communication channels impact hard business metrics like sales as well as soft metrics like awareness.”

Underlining that print was critical for high innovation categories, Balsara added, “With 10+2 ad cap ruling, there is going to be severe ad inventory crunch on television. Print can take advantage of it.”