Changing media consumption: Case study from India by Mariam Mammen Mathew, CEO, Manorama Online, India
Being from India, "best known for its technology boom and the film Slumdog Millionaire," Mathew sketched a market many in the room could only dream of: 1.2 billion citizens, 60,000 publications, more than 4,000 daily newspapers selling 100 million copies, and the only market where newspaper circulation is rising - the numbers were staggering. What also became clear was that Mathew wasn't simply telling us of a far-off place in terms of geography, but also in terms of time.
"Thanks to watching the US and Europe, we had the benefit of hindsight and we didn't let go of classifieds. We didn't want a Craigslist or a Monster taking away our strength, and so we created sites like M4Marry - a matrimonial site capitalising on a niche audience, but one that today has more than 300,000 profiles, and it's subscription-based so profitable in its own right, as well as bolstering our print classifieds. The way it works in India is that the paper edition builds credibility, but the transactions are enabled through the website." M4Marry is only one of a number of niche products playing to the hyperlocal market in Kerala (another surprise success turned out to be the obituaries section), all of which are beefed up with blogs and UGC.
"The next big thing in India is mobile," explained Mathew, pointing out that SMS shortcodes and downloadable apps for online content have already proved highly profitable, a situation capitalised on by Manorama's use of both media-specific sales team and Junction K - its cross media integrated sales team that spreads campaigns across all platforms and enables the paper's claim that 'you talk to us and you talk to Kerala.'
Blau quickly pointed out that "all design should be user-centred." On one level his presentation was about the graphical re-design of a newspaper site with the associated issues of font size and ad layout, but behind that was the question of how to deliver an audience not based on chasing numbers, but instead attracting and retaining a select target group. "Die Zeit is small but it sometimes sets the debate agenda for Germany, so we want to be Germany's best debate portal."
What followed was an exhaustive process of user testing and redesign, resulting in a site where every user has the ability to create a profile page that collects their contributions "with buttons so big that look like they come from Fisher Price [the toy company] because in total the number of surfers aged 60 and over is greater than those aged 20 or less."
Among the insights that Blau shared was the fact that designers "always give you mockups featuring the kind of great ads you dream of - insist they use ugly images and nasty ads instead, because a truly strong design can handle that." Another was that Twitter proved invaluable, as users reported problems (such as obscure combinations of OS and browser) in real time. The end result was that the old site was "'pruned' like you would with a fruit tree that had previously stopped giving fruit."
"We like to call ourselves the newspaper of a new generation - faster, shorter, clearer," explained Tomislav Klaric ('MMM stands for anything, anytime, everywhere'), a hybrid of website, paid editions and a free afternoon edition.
The resulting UGC-heavy product has a reach of "more than 30 percent - every third person in Croatia reads our papers every day, which is higher than the most popular TV shows." In a market where online advertising represents only 1 percent of total ad spend, it's never going to be easy to monetise the web but MMM does a good job of attracting eyeballs to web (and mobile) by publishing news in real time: "We have a single ticker of fast-breaking news on web and SMS, and we don't wait for all the information for an article. If we only have a single sentence, we publish that in the breaking news ticker and update the story as we go."
Ã-hrvall said, "Seventy-five percent of all media is user-generated content or consumed on traditional media sites. But 25 percent will be produced, edited, and consumed among peers as a form of collaborative media, that won't be compared with other media in terms of quality but rather in terms of who is behind it and whether 'I' can be part of it."
1. Bring back the DJ to filter the content.
2. Focus on fans - find the most loyal, prioritise them, give them social network tools and let them promote you.
3. Design for re-use, which means identifying social dimensions of stories from the beginning.
4. Track the data from visitors and display it back to them.
5. Do less - keep it simple.
6. Remember the need for a silent mode - when people lean back and stop communicating.
7. Re-launch 'The End' - the sense of completion people have turning the last page.
"Every year someone say's this is the year of the mobile and somehow it never is, but I'm going to say now that this is the Telegraph Media Group year of the mobile.....At least none of you can argue with that." Safa began with a cheeky grin, but his presentation about the Telegraph's mobile achievements gave weight to his assertion.
Safa took us on a short journey through time to the mobile news application of two years ago. He demonstrated the number of clicks it took to arrive at what was ultimately a very limited amount of content. Then he jumped to the current application and there is full (personalised) content, device detection, better navigation, and perhaps most importantly
there are banner adverts, pre-roll video ads, and tracking of level of engagement and time spent.
Safa told us of lessons learnt on the way. Of the fact, for example, that sponsors competed to brand the application but often didn't capitalise on it, for example, with a logo that was clickable but didn't go to a mobile-specific page. "They said there's no need for a microsite because it's a brand campaign and nobody is going to click on the logo. There was a 29 per cent clickthrough rate and it went to a Flash banner on their home page which showed up as nothing on the phone - a waste of time."
The response was to shift to three levels of sponsorship (bronze, silver, gold) with the Telegraph creating microsites and content behind sponsors' logos. One year and 250,000 downloads later, the application is well into break-even and has been followed by a Formula 1 application and a version 2.0 of the app due in a week's time. According to Safa, the biggest single change for that will be that "next week I expect the iPhone experience to be better than that on the desktop." But if the iPhone is king this year, Safa foresees a big change in the future: "I think iPhone and Android will swap places - Android is already on 30 handsets and the apps will migrate to it."
Few knew what to expect when Martinez took to the stage for her presentation, but what followed was a lively canter through media predictions and Generation Y - the generation that grew up with digital and which in 2010 will outnumber the baby boomers. Ninety percent of them have joined a social network, and with that social media has overtaken porn as the number-one activity online. Martinez points out that YouTube was thought to be the future of TV, but 100 million videos later it is actually up against Google as the second most popular search engine. She also pointed out that entering into new media is like a student going to the student bar for the first time - "you just try to behave like others and fit in."
Good journalism has often found its home in the fringes, according to Martinez, who cited the examples of Vietnam war coverage in the 1960s finding a platform in Playboy and Rolling Stone. "What's happening with the web is no different."
And her vision of the future? "Books will not disappear, computers are great, but the thing that will be massive in five years is mobile. The way my parents bought papers was based on ideology; that's why some chose the Times, others the Guardian. My generation doesn't give a damn about ideology, just the experience."
Nordqvist came on to talk about e-readers, and particularly Kindle. Pointing out that in Japan there are 90 million 3G and 4G phone users, all with mp3 built in - but they still sell millions of dedicated mp3 players. Similarly, digital camera sales are riding high, and in the same spirit Nordqvist predicts that smartphones won't be the only choice for reading content on the move.
He admired Amazon's Jeff Bezos for putting himself on the line with the product, and gave the example of the New York Times, which has said it earns more on Kindle than from mobile. "It's for heavy consumers of text such as books, journals, and academic text - not a small target group - and it's good on the move, but also easier to hold than a book, so don't ask the tech-savvy if e-readers are interesting; ask the text-savvy."
Jansen told us about going up against Google on one of the world's most wired islands. Rednano.sg is a local search and directory engine that produces more relevant local results than Google. "The great thing is that users reveal more and more about themselves when they type in a query, click on a result, go online at a certain time, use their phone in a particular street, everything. If you want to know what Obama has for breakfast, go to Twitter or Google, but if you want Singaporean information, come to us."
Rednano maps with details like block numbers (a lot of Singaporean addresses have no street number, just the block) and the site sells local business adverts based on maps. By driving a truck around and mapping the radio frequencies of base stations, the site can do location-based services independent of service providers. Local services include the ability to see archive pictures of where you are now standing. Rednano gets a share of the data cost.
The telcos ended up competing for the right to preload their application. "We're hoping to break even in five years and looking at doubling revenue every year, as we think there is a huge hole in the market."
Soitu.es closed two weeks ago, so when Lafuente stepped up to talk about the future it was as the head of 'an exquisite corpse' rather than a live online paper. That certainly didn't take away from his message, however, as he explained the importance of new ways of working for journalists. They "must understand how technology works, so that technologists don't end up setting the agenda.
"It is our job to learn about technology and to know that the important information can not only be found on the streets but also on the Net -- it's not virtual, it is every bit as real." He also told us we have to "stop being so snobbish and be more humble," in front of a new media order in which papers no longer have the monopoly and journalists have advanced their personal brand by leaving papers and heading off on their own.
Mittelbach took the stage to berate papers on the subject of customer-centric communication and lost opportunities. Looking at newspapers from the point of view of advertisers and agencies, he pointed out that they are seen as being old-fashioned, uncool, expensive, hard to book, and with no clear proof of effectiveness.
Taking his points from detailed studies of European markets, Mittelbach concluded that for the vast majority of publishers:
In conclusion, he told newspapers to stop seeing advertisers as the cash cow but rather as a partner, and that they should cut out the middleman (the media agency) and start a change of mindset that starts by segregating their target market and offering tailored offerings for every sector of it.
Stenbäck explained the secrets of making money from hyperlocal, in this case with a mapping/directory product called My Own City, which answers such questions as where to find a good restaurant/plumber/tailor/hairdresser, etc. - but also things you might not expect from a directory, including where to find free WiFi spots, great views, or quiet spots to read.
It combines data from the paper with municipal information and UGC, all geotagged and keyworded ,and allows users to review and rate services. That's montetised by contextual ad banners, expanded descriptions, and map
POI, but Stenbäck pointed out that to make that money, you have to set aside dedicated staff to sell the advertising because of the need to explain the new product to customers. Having done hyperlocal, the next step is go global and ask users for recommendations on their travels, which is being done in partnership with travel agent and airlines.
Jannet talked about his paper's mobile experience. Le Monde already has a paid-for model online with a subscription scheme that sees some content published for free and other services, including the right to contribute UGC, charged for. Jannet mused on the idea of charging users to write for the paper, as he didn't invent the model, but it works. Ads sell for more on subscriber pages than free ones.
"On the issue of mobile, I would say that the Internet version is not going to kill the paper (though it does pose questions) but mobile, on the other hand, poses more than questions - it poses a threat. It is portable and read on the move and we are cannibalising our website with Android and iPhone applications."
The good news is that usage charts show that users go to the web site in different ways at different times, using mobiles to and from work and the main site in between. The application combines offline reading with easy navigation ("the iPhone is idiot-proof, so our navigation must be too"), the ability to customise and 'push' news alerts. An innovative ad offer sees a pre-home page shown during the loading of the app.
Geolocalisation and expanding banners have already been sold to customers including Novotel. "It's been a great success, with 880,000 downloads, 15.6 million pages viewed a month - and one iPhone in two in France has our application on it."
Of course it's not all easy. Jannet noted that there is nothing more demanding than an Apple user, and explained that for some time there were no advertisers (he blames early days and lack of understanding), but in the last two months all that has changed and there are now plans for a paid version of the application.
His conclusions? "You have to be very agile, you have to accept smashing up what went before and taking a risk with the business model. You have to be able to integrate technology and make technicians and journalists work together. The guys who sell ads have to be very at ease with the product so we gave them iPhones." He did point out, however, that there are "powerful animals" roaming in this world and that when they sell this content, "Apple takes a percentage and knows who buys it. With the Kindle, Amazon takes a cut and knows who uses it; we don't."
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