‘Digital revolution can only be brought about by vernacular websites’

BY IMPACT Staff

Focus on the local pulse of small towns, content and real-time breaking news has helped Dainik Bhaskar’s online news portals notch up impressive numbers says, Gyan Gupta, COO, Dainik Bhaskar Digital Division. Gupta also reveals how the company is now betting on the mobile space and is all set to launch its new women-centric portal 30

Q] According to comscore data, users spend the most time on the various bhaskar portals. what have you done right to encourage stickiness?

There are two aspects to effectively engaging an audience: content and usability. We have spent a lot of time in trying to create and understand what users are looking for. We debate on how to play up the content and create an engagement point around what the user might be looking for. Our editorial philosophy is very simple — whenever an event happens, a user should get the most exhaustive coverage in terms of the depth, variety and all the possible angles that add to that story. We also have created a lot of different categories, including Bollywood, religion and astrology. Our sheer ideation of content, coupled with usability, focus on images and constant analysis on what people are looking for, and keeping it simple, are reasons why users spend a lot of time on our sites.

Q] While advertisers’ spends have remained low, digital seems to have gained in this scenario. have you seen a visible difference in advertisers?

There has been an increase in spends, and digital is gaining prominence and increasing in scale. A lot of advertisers are opening up to this medium now and they are trying to define how they want to play it up. While the spends in print and broadcast are fairly well-understood, the spends here may not be allocated to an online publisher but go towards search or social media.

Also all broadcasters and print players have an online presence. However, when you look at categories, FMCG have started experimenting more on publisher sites or on direct advertising. We are also seeing a growth in entertainment and a lot of small publishers or advertisers who would be not able to afford print or broadcast, are also online, which is a positive trend.

Q] Would it be right in saying that news website today are more content aggregators than just news sites?

About 70 to 75% of our content is created indigenously, originally and only for the online space and we have a huge editorial team to create that content. A lot of publishers are focusing on differentiation as you can’t be content aggregators; and thus you have to differentiate with content.

Our focus is very clear. When you see our Hindi and Gujarati websites, we have clearly defined that local news is our forte. The way we treat our breaking news is also different; and we get maximum viewership post a big event. However, if a person spends an average time of 14 minutes on each visit, the time is not spent only on the news and we give the reader a holistic experience; thus the need to provide content across genres from entertainment, to recipes, astrology or whatever he is looking for.

Q] How do you leverage the strengths of your parent brand on the digital platform? are you a firm proponent of the integrated newsroom model?

I think in India we were the pioneers of the integrated newsroom as we were the first ones to launch a hyper-local model two-and-a-half years ago, where we leveraged our print reporters by getting them to file straight from the scene, with the help of smartphones. The mandate was that anything that happens should be reported within half an hour and uploaded on the site and this has been followed by our competition. We need to leverage our resources and skills across all media as that’s the only way forward and the company can’t create the infrastructure only for online or till the time that online establishes itself as a profitable entity.

Q] Being a regional player primarily, how do you drive traffic to your websites, especially the readers of the various Bhaskar brands?

Internet is more a medium of choice, and we are driving readers on the basis of content because it is the best advocate. We leverage our print properties for promotions and currently 40% of our readers are from Tier II and Tier III markets, 40% from metros, primarily Delhi and Mumbai, and 20% international.

Q] With the increase in penetration of smartphones, what is your game plan for the mobile platform?

Mobile is a very critical component in the digital medium and this will go up as smartphone penetration increases. However mobile has to be dealt as a separate medium from digital. Moreover, the consumer’s need on the mobile is different from that on the web, so rendering the same content on the mobile may not be relevant. Mobile is very quick and specific and is more utility-based... you would probably check breaking news or even search restaurants on your phone.

Q] What are the challenges faced by the vernacular language media in the digital news platform for Dainik Bhaskar and the industry as a whole?

The industry has to realise and recognize that the next wave of the digital revolution can only be brought about by the vernacular sites. If we estimate that about 300 million users will be online in the next couple of years, a large part will be driven by vernacular or the local languages, simply because they might be more comfortable with the local language. We still have a few other technological challenges, like English has a fairly consistent standard but Indian languages don’t. These standards have to be defined for people to create technologies for it.

Q] Monetisation on the digital platform remains a concern. How do you drive revenue growth?

The moment digital media reaches 300 million users, which I think is the tipping point, that’s when the medium will really become mass and will get a large share of the advertising pie. Digital’s share in the overall ad pie might touch 15 to 20%, up from the current 6%. So as the share spends increase, the local languages will have the reach.

Q] Looking ahead, what is the growth that you see anticipate in the online publishing space?

In the last three years we have grown almost 3,000%. About four years ago we were doing about 1 million pages per month, and currently we are doing about 400 million pages a month and 10 million unique. We will continue to drive growth as the focus increases.

Q] What can we expect from Bhaskar.com? Are you looking to launch new properties in other regional languages?

We are launching a new portal for women, Shesyou.com by the end of this month. The portal will be launched in three languages: English, Hindi and Gujarati.

Q] While your strength lies in the regional language space, how are you taking on the big guys in the English space with Daily. bhaskar.com?

We are not taking on the big guys, but just defining our space. If you look at daily.bhaskar’s positioning it is more ‘tabloid’ — the stories are crisper, racier. Daily.bhaskar does about 30 million pages a month, 2.5 million unique ones and that’s significant for us as without the support of an English ‘mother print brand’, we have still gotten a fantastic response. In the last three months, Daily.bhaskar has grown by 25% each month and we are now focusing on content to drive our growth.

REDEFINING BREAKING NEWS

‘Breaking News’ and ‘First on’ – these words are what most television viewers are accustomed to seeing on various news channels. Bhaskar.com has now taken this online and is running a campaign to promote their USP of ‘Breaking News online first’. The campaign has an image of the event with the time when the event took place, along with the news report carried by Dainikbhaskar.com, again timestamped, this time with when it was reported on the website.

Kaustuv Chatterji, Head - MarCom & Brands, Dainik Bhaskar Digital Division, says, “The idea behind the campaign was to establish our promptness and real-time action of our coverage before anybody else. We do the fastest update of any news and felt that we need to inform people when an event happens, within the next five minutes.”

The campaign also promotes the four online portals of the Dainik Bhaskar Group: Dainikbhaskar.com, Divyabhaskar.com, Dailybhaskar. com and Divyamarathi.com and is being run across the group’s websites, mainline publications and radio arm, MYFM.

Feedback: simran.sabherwal@exchange4media.com

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