Digital Media India 2018 on engaging Gen-X in modern news media publishing

This year, the 7th edition of Digital Media India conference is themed to engage the young generations, who are considered to be the Holy Gail of modern publishing, not easily achievable but essential to relevance and financial well-being. The conference will discuss how to sustain the engagement with the readers and increase revenue share from digital.

The recent World Press Trends report shows the global digital circulation revenues grew by 28 percent and a full 300 percent from 2012-16, with the trend expected to continue. Reader revenue now makes up about 30 percent of total digital revenue. The digital media world requires continuous push and well understanding of readers’ habits and the strategies in order to maintain and generate revenue through good quality content. Digital Media India 2018 has set programmes to discuss all these aspects and more over the three days of the conference.

Pre-conference workshops

On February 07, David Higgerson, digital editorial strategy director, Trinity Mirror, as trainer, will conduct the ‘Workshop on Big Data for Journalists’. This workshop on Paid Content Business Models is all about to crack the strategy behind success to bulk of revenues from advertising and circulation. Charging for one’s digital content is no longer an option, but there are many different ways do so depending on the market, audience and culture. All these will be discussed at this full day master class focusing on topics—Choosing the Right Pay Wall in Your Market, Reinventing the Customer Journey, and Best Practices for Implementing a Pay Wall.

The second workshop is on Paid Content Business Models, which will be chaired by Steffen Damborg, expert advisor, WAN-IFRA Global Advisory. The workshop is all about to crack the strategy behind success to bulk of their revenues from advertising, circulation is now taking up the lead. Charging for one‘s digital content is no longer an option but there are many different ways do so depending on the market, audience and culture.

Conference opening

Steffen Damborg, expert advisor, WAN-IFRA Global Advisory, will deliver ‘opening address’ of the conference, shedding a light on round-up of digital transformation worldwide. Keynote address

will be on ‘digital trends and digital transformation experiences’ at one of the India’s leading media groups.

The first session of the conference, Session 1: Leveraging Data and Machine Learning, will have three speakers: Trushar Barot, digital launch editor, Indian Languages, BBC World Service; David Higgerson, digital editorial strategy director, Trinity Mirror: and Gyan Gupta, CEO, DB Digital, India. Trushar will take on the topic ‘making use of data analytics, machine learning and AI in newsrooms’, defining what are the potential uses.

In the follow-up, David Higgerson will talk about building audience-focused culture in digital newsroom, metrics and strategies practiced at Trinity Mirror (UK). Gyan Gupta’s discourse will be on driving engagement through personalisation. In this, he will present a case study on how DB Digital has been using AI (artificial intelligence) for building powerful content recommendation engines across its digital platforms, also leveraging their data-driven strategy for segmenting audience in order to target ads using algorithms and AI.

After a networking break, there will be Session 2: Digital Publishing in Local Languages, in which the discussions and discourses will revolve around Indic language publishing, highlighting user behaviour and preferences—learning and best practices from publishing news in non-English languages. Also in the session, another discussion will be on internet adoption, which is reported to be high among language users, compared to users in other Indian languages. Discussion will take on the trends in Indian language digital publishing and the challenges in the eco-system.

Attention on Gen-X

As the theme of the conference this year is on millennial, there will this Session 3: Engaging Millennial in Digital Landscape, in which Ian Yee, news editor – executive producer R.AGE, Star Media Group; Sathya Sriram, head of strategy, The Hindu Group; and Ivor Price, CEO of YehBaby Digital Creatives and Media Consultants, will be talking about initiatives and strategies to keep the young generation inspired, informed and engaged. Star Media Group is winner of World Digital Media Award under the category ‘Best Innovation to Engage Youth Audience’. Ian Yee will present their strategies to be relevant to the millennial audience.

Another award-winning case study from The Hindu Group, Sathya Sriram is presenting Youngworldclub.com, an initiative of the group relevant to youth audience, catching them young. The initiative bagged ‘Gold’ at South Asian Digital Media Awards. Ivor Price will present Wecan24 from Media24, South Africa to inspire the young generation about digital with citizen journalism, keeping them innovative and engaged. End of this session will mark the closure of the second day of the conference.

The third day of the conference will open with a breakfast session on ‘making newsroom digital first’ (sponsored by CCI) in which CCI is presenting key insight into several successful projects of transforming newsrooms’ structures and workflows from print-focus to digital-first. In partnerships with well-known media brands such as Axel Springer/WELT, Helsingin Sanomat, Le Soir, New York Times, USA TODAY, The Times of India, The Hindu and more, CCI has developed a new state-of-the-art content creation platform, CUE, for the digital-first newsroom. CCI will present and give a demo of the CUE solution for integrated newsrooms—supporting all print and digital media channels through a single content tool.

On the second day, the Session 1: Video Content and Social Media Channels will have speakers like Esra Dogramaci, senior editor, Digital, DW – Deutsche Welle, Germany. The talks in the session will cover social video for engaged audience – tips and tools. Digital-native companies have succeeded in just a few years, to shape up their media brands by creating highly shareable content that grabs

the attention of younger generations. In this, The Quint will present their experiences. The talks will also include discussion on online video as a premium advertising inventory – what does a good online video strategy look like?

Panel discussion

Reader Revenue—this is the topic of discussion at the panel discussion. This is a realisable goal in the sub-continent. Panellists comprising leading Indian publishers and editors will discuss whether news as a category can pay for itself and many others like what would make readers pay for content and how is the future.

The panel discussion will be followed by Session 2: Digital Advertising Idea, in which speakers including Gulshan Verma, chief revenue officer, Times Internet Ltd and Tajdin Hassan, head of marketing, The Daily Star, Bangladesh, will talk about brand solution for advertising revenue generation – what works well and opportunities for digital marketers. These days, premium ad networks show the way to maximise publisher’s return on digital advertisement revenue. Publishers in South East Asia have joined together and are starting their own network. In this respect, the speakers will talk about their experiences.

Tajdin Hassan will present Daily Star’s award winning case study, which bagged ‘gold’ in the Best in Digital Advertising category at South Asian Digital Media Awards. He will explain what did they do unique to achieve it and their strategy for digital advertising. After a networking break, there will be a Valedictory Session, in which Abdul Jalil Hamid, CEO, The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Bhd and Gard Sterio, editor-in-chief and CEO, VG – Verdens Gang AS are the session speakers. Abdul Jalil Hamid will speak about The Star’s digital transformation, while Gard Sterio will narrate digital transformation worldwide and look at how successful news media companies have transformed themselves to face the future, in which he will explain the digital transformation exercise of

VG in Norway. After that, summary and closing of the conference will follow up.