 Alright, welcome to yet another webinar. We have been doing a series of leadership webinars and this one is exchange form media in association with video dot AI. And today we have a very interesting topic. Before I move further, I just want to put in a little bit of context to what the conversation is going to be today. You know, programmatic as we all know has become a dominating narrative over the last few years in in domain, not just media advertising, but across. And if you look at 2022, it is seen as the year in which publishers, if we talk about particularly should make the best use of programmatic methods. And there are many available. Today we have a very esteemed panel, people who are immersed, understand the nuances of this domain with us. And I want to start start introducing them. We have Mr. Bridges Chand, Chandela, a senior manager programmatic sales and monetization Times Internet. We have Mr. Gandhi Suresh founder and editor in chief power sports. We have Mr. Rahul Dogra, head tech, digital and new initiatives, daily Excel share. We have Mr. Suheep Hussain head programmatic sales audience and at ad operations, TNG global private limited. And we have Mr. Akash Pandey lead publisher success video dot AI. And my name is Rohail. I'm a senior editor at exchange for media. Great. But to have you all heard, you know, I just want to start with the only lady on the panel with you trying to understand, you know, how programmatic ecosystem has impacted the overall advertisement delivery over the few years. If you can give me a broad sense of that. Well, I think there's been a tremendous impact, you know, initially what the philosophy that was being used was what you call a spray and pray methodology, where you threw ads, and you just prayed that it hit the right people and got the right kind of engagement. What programmatic advertising has done is changed that entire spray and pray focus to target oriented focused approach. Right. So it's algorithm based and I'm sure a technical expert will give you more on that. But what this has done is just changed the expectations of the advertiser and change the expectations of the viewer as well. So it's a double edged sword. The focus now is on ROI, it's written on investment, because even even the advertiser knows that there's something called a programmatic advertising and the publisher can no longer rest on, you know, just throwing ads like the way it used to be done. So I think it's a change for the better, and it's putting everybody on their feet. And it's early stages, I think along the way to go. Perfect. Early stages. Rajesh, your quick thoughts. It's all about programmatic advertising. It's like getting the higher return on the strengths, basically. If you say about programmatic advertising, it also reduces overall costing to the system. Also, it will help advertisers to basically target correct audience, which basically they want to target. Also, there are some, basically, you can say relevant ads to the customers or you can say to the users. Okay. All right. So here I want to understand from you the kind of impact that we're talking about. How do you see, what kind of impact do you see has happened? Yeah. Actually, thanks for having me in this, for this discussion and thanks exchange for media. So it's from a publishers standpoint, what it has done is it has helped us to build a robust tech stack. From day one, we were very clear that our inventory will not be sold at a certain price. So what programmatic does is it helps you to kind of set certain flow prices and command the premiums for the inventory that you have. Especially in India where the programmatic rates are much lower than compared to other countries. Here, you have the option of setting flow prices and not letting cheap demand take away your inventory. That's key. That's the number one thing. The second thing is it also kind of reduces the discrepancy. When you do a programmatic deal with a direct buyer, since it's a server-to-server connection, there is no discrepancy in terms of the reporting or in terms of the interaction. So it kind of helps you to kind of cut down on the impression wastage on an ongoing basis. And finally, the biggest bottleneck for publishers is chasing for payments and all that, which kind of considerably gets reduced. And if you're working with the biggest tech partner in India, the payment cycle is just about three weeks. So it kind of helps you to solve that issue as well. So all in all, it benefits the publisher in a very big way. Absolutely. And it's not just the publisher in the bigger cities that is looking at programmatic. Even when you go deep down in the tier two, tier three regions, the impact is seen there. And we have Rahul here to share his perspective. Rahul, how do you see the impact of programmatic on the advertisement delivery overall, particularly in your case? In our case, actually, we have worked with multiple advertisers, agencies, particularly in the programmatic field. I have seen actually it is a win-win situation for both the advertisers and the publishers because we are just utilizing the space of the advertising part. For example, if we're placing a slot in our website and the programmatic chooses according to the users, for example, if I am to launch a particular car in our city, like in Jammu right now. And the programmatic chooses the ads with respect to the audience of that particular region because they want to target the audience. In our case, Jammu and Kishmir and Delhi itself is mostly covering the Jammu and Kishmir and the Ladakh part of it. In that case, we can say programmatic is solving a lot of issues and bottlenecks. Akash, coming to you, you have heard the panelists before you and having literally the skin in the game in an intense way when it comes to this conversation. How has this ecosystem evolved and got impacted, especially when you talk about advertisement delivery? So basically, when we talk about advertisement, if we talk about the traditional form of advertisement, it was only print and all the big advertisers had the access to that sort of advertisement model. And over the period of last four, five years, what we have seen is the change of user adaptation from coming from the print to digital. And this transformation overall has impacted the entire ecosystem of this advertiser or the user engagement. So I think how programmatic has impacted or created a bridge between both the advertisers, the users and the publishers, a very systemized way of targeting the users, the delivery of the advertisements. And this has definitely also impacted a lot of small scale advertisers which didn't have the budget of serving their advertisements on maybe the print scale. So on a larger perspective, when we talk about programmatic advertisement, this has enabled the publisher to take control of their inventory. As you have seen a spike in the coming years of the users coming onto the platform, plus it has also enabled the advertisers to be more interesting about what they are serving and how they are serving and whether the delivery is happening or not. So definitely from the delivery perspective, the targeted perspective and obviously at the bottom line, the revenue perspective, it has all evolved a lot in the past two, three years. Right. Of course, I think we're just at the beginning of that huge what you call disruption, if I may call it. There's also what we have seen among publishers is also that they are moving towards a clean website model with less intrusive advertisements. It's no longer the clutter. It seems like a shopping mall at times earlier. Give me a sense of how do you read this shift towards a more fluid interface for the end user? What are the dynamics that are shaping this shift? It's the need of the art. If you understand the behavioral patterns of a digital viewer, he's spoiled for choice. It's not like one of those days where you're sitting in front of your satellite network and that's all you have to watch. He's on the internet. He gets what he wants whenever he wants at any point of time. When he's got so much in front of him, the publisher better take care to make sure he does everything possible to keep the viewer engaged and loyal to his site. Now, you keep throwing ads like we've been used to when we were growing up, sitting and watching all those ads, whether we liked it or not. It's no longer going to work on a digital platform. That's primarily one of the reasons why it's so important. What is the average retention of a digital viewer? I mean, it can range from a couple of seconds, maybe two seconds and he says, no, I've got something better to do. And then on top of that, he's going to throw all those ads and breaks and all stuff which does not keep him engaged. He's going to lose it. That's it. So I think that's the primary reason for this entire shift in the mindset. Absolutely. I know I remember when you go on a website and it opens up three more windows before you get to where you want to go. So, Rajesh, you heard what Kanti said. What are you understanding from the market? According to the publishers, they actually want to clean their website because there are lots of inclusive ads right now, basically from the many Google stacks. So this is all about the user engagement, how basically user is engaging on the page. If the user see multiple ads on the page and definitely he will bounce back. So it will increase and bounce back, bounce rate increase. Basically, there will be the latency on the page. It can affect definitely on render rates of the page. So it will definitely affect the coverage and everything the CPMs of the system, of a Google stack. So increasing CPMs to increase coverage, how basically advertisers bid on the page. That's why most of the publishers are trying to reduce inclusive ads rather than basically increasing the logical or maybe a native ads which are the same type of page you can say. Right, right. I want to bring in Suheb here. It's not just aesthetics here. It's of course strategic when you clean, have a very minimalist design on your website, of course, and making it more effective. Suheb, how far has this gone, this shift and I mean, how do you see it? How do you read this? I think it's extremely important, especially for media house to have a very clean site. Because there are also some external pressures, right? Today, Google has their web core vitals and they have laid out a set of a number of factors which help you to rank better within their search results as well as to get users to come on board. So there are some external pressures. Apart from that, we also feel that there are certain, like you said, there are certain strategies in place. It's not just a matter of showing ads to a user. Today, when a user visits your website, there are a couple of things that he needs to do. One is like what Kanti said, the user is extremely impatient. He wants the page to load in three seconds. But if you look at the average load time of a mobile page, it's anywhere between 15 to 19 seconds, which is way too high. So once the user lands into your site, the moment you show him an ad, again, there is a delay of another five or six seconds. And then you give him a consent to fill. You ask him to accept a consent, which takes another three seconds. Then maybe he gets to see the content that he intended to come. So all in all, about 15 to 20 seconds for the user to really look at the content once he clicks on any link. So this is like a huge lead time. And that's something which we need to cut down on. And secondly, what are your priorities? Is your objective only to make or monetize only through ads, or also to build a relationship with the user? Like for instance, we have a subscription model, which we run. So we also intend the user to revisit us because the user cannot convert the first time that he comes or he can't make him to buy a particular subscription package on the first go. So you have to take small steps, kind of build relationship with these guys, make him register first, and then retarget him to notify him about certain updates that's happened on the site, new articles that have been published. So that's an ongoing relationship. And I think that's one of the key reasons that the site needs to be clean and effective for any user. Of course, I think you can't let users do so much of homework and 20 seconds like a lifetime where nobody has that attention. Rahul, your quick take on this, the importance of this clean website model. In your understanding, what is driving? Yes, this definitely is the point of concern for the users actually. For example, ads are actually somehow actually relevant to the user. For example, if a user is searching for some sports equipment and a sports related ad is shown to him, that is relevant to him. But if a user is searching for a cricket bat and we are showing him an ad of a car, that's quite irrelevant for the user. And sometimes ads are too hard to escape. The user has to wait for three, four seconds or maybe sometimes 10 seconds. So in that case, we have to think about the users first. And a minimal and a clean website interface is very much important for the user experience. Akash, a lot of publishers that I've spoken to, maybe are not also this kind of an awareness that is needed to make them understand that ads can be placed in many ways. This is not the only way. One, where do we really need our publishers actively seeking, are they getting more aware? How are you kind of pushing this, making them aware that a clean website does not mean a dip in revenue. It can in fact mean more people coming to you. So that's an interesting question, first of all. And I think Suheb almost covered the important aspect of having a clean and flawless website. So maybe I'll talk about when all of this started. So there was a digital movement in 2020 when we saw this spike in the overall viewership of the users spiking from 16 to almost 39%. That was the user adaptation of the digital properties. And that's when we realized that having the content to add ratio is really very important for an advertiser to also keep on bidding higher and plus also for the users to retain on the website. And both the things are simultaneously important from a media house perspective retaining users on their website is the first primary task. And the most important thing and that can only be happening when there is a flawless ecosystem when the user visits onto the website. So I think in the last two, three years, we have started using the consultative approach where we are more talking about how it impacts both for a media house perspective and both from an advertiser perspective. Obviously, when there are very few slots available on the website to showcase the advertisement, the focus for the advertiser becomes really targeted. The spending also increases. And over the period of time, what personally we also go through and have been seeing over the period of months is that even the publishers are now more focused upon targeted advertisement rather than just putting up a lot of slots on the website and serving a lot of advertisements. Because it definitely somehow make things intrusive for the end user. And just because now we have seen that the overall transformation is happening for the web properties across devices, I think that's a very important thing at the current scenario to have a very clean and flawless website and have an absolutely amazing UI UX. Right, right. We have also seen people talking about, say, if I talk about editorially, we've spoken about that we could do so much and more if we had a subscription model and we always blame it on the way the business dynamics works and that's why you see a certain content. Kanti, to you, how do you see the subscription model getting affected on the web properties? How do you see that? What's your take on the model and how will it affect advertisement models on the web properties according to you? See, I'm not too gung-ho about a subscription model, honestly speaking. This is now debatable. It's each one's personal experience on their website. What I think is India is a very, very price sensitive market. And if you're going to only be using a subscription model, I think your content has to be great or your marketing budget has to be splendid for you to be getting that kind of an engagement on your platform. And then maybe yes, then you could survive purely on a subscription model and needless to add that we've been reading in the news. I'm very big OTT platforms, very frankly admitting that it's been very difficult for them in the Indian market. I would go in for a freemium kind of a model, a free, until you gain that level of loyalty and engagement, which is itself a huge task on a digital platform. Loyalty on a digital platform is not the same as loyalty that used to exist on a satellite network. So I think have a free model, build a revenue stream out of your free model through great programmatic advertising, build on the viewer's shade, build on your traffic and try and monetize that. And then yes, when you have your premium content, your loyal customers would not mind paying for it. Personally, I feel India is not ready for a 100% subscription model on a web-based platform. Right, great insights here. I mean, a lot of people sometimes, you know, they bring in the other point. But of course, great to very valid points made Kanthi, British, what is your take on subscription? I agree with Kanthi regarding the Indian thinking because most of the Indians are not likely to pay for generally for content at least. So there are many, many sites where you can get same type of content on free. So there are things for like subscription model is basically you can like, you will get loyal users, definitely. But this is not for India at least, and it will take some time or maybe five to six years to gain loyal users who basically buy or content on the basis of money. So it will definitely affect revenues for web because in subscription model, publishers can't basically run their ads and many things. So it will definitely affect revenue terms. Right. So have you heard two people who totally disagree and have their valid points? And we have this fantasy model of the West, which we always look at and say that look, they have been able to do it and this is the next big thing. What is your take on it? And if it all happens in whatever percentage, how will it impact the web properties? So we have a different story here. So we started our subscription journey way back in 2019. That is our web articles were put behind the paywall in 2019, but we had our e-paper initially behind the paywall. When we started some six, seven years back, our e-paper was always behind the paywall. And that's what I think it has done exceedingly well, especially in the last two years. I think the numbers have really grown, grown, grown ahead. You see, there are two things. One is we always think that subscription is going to heat into the ad business or the ad business is going to, you know, vice versa, right? But we don't have to think that way. If you look at, like you rightly said, we want to aid the Western models. What we feel is that the ad business can coexist with the subscription business as well. In fact, the ad business becomes even more robust because once you have a loyal user base subscribing for your content and slowly you try and discover their behavior and their interest, you can probably personalize, you can also send and personalize content as well as promotional messages. So that can work hand in hand. Now, what does subscription mean? Subscription is access to a certain content. Like Antti rightly said, you could have a premium model where certain things you can put behind paywall and certain things you can make it free. So once someone subscribes to something, you are actually giving them access to something that you have blocked. So under the circumstances, currently, if you look at, if you take up the subscription for the Hindu, you will not see it's an ad free. We never promise it as an ad free experience. We always say limited ads, limited or personal ads. So we will try to maintain that philosophy from day one and saying that the ads will be there, but it will be in limited quantity. It won't be too intrusive. It will be more personalized and stuff like that. So what I feel is that it can coexist, right? Even if you take the OTT platforms, like again, one of the panelists said, the leading OTT platform globally, I'm saying Netflix, makes 30% of their revenue from brand deals and brand placements within their original content. So they also have an ad business. It doesn't mean that 100% of the revenue is coming just from subscription. So it can coexist is what might take this. It can coexist. Rahul, how do you, you heard your panelists before you? Yeah, actually, I've been working on it lately because we were planning of e-paper to go on the subscription model. And I've gone through a different paywall system like the one already discussed, the premium one already providing a certain, for example, we are providing a free version and the paid version. But I see some of the flaws in the subscription model. I'm not particularly sure about the others. But in our case, for example, we are limited, we'll be showing limited ads. For example, we won't be able to show the native ads and local ads particularly local players will not be publishing their ad on our model where we are charging users to view an ad. So in that case, so we will be seeing and I've been searching in the Google tool and in the internet too. I've seen that in certain cases, the user will call up to 70 to 80% of the user falls after the subscription model if there is a, for example, and that's a huge fall, I believe. Right, right. So Akash, your mixed, you know, kind of for takes on this, you know, some people saying that, you know, it may not work here and some saying that of course, you know, there has to be a, you know, they have to echo exist. How do you how do you see this? I think it's a fair opportunities for the readers who would strictly want to limit themselves to just content, first of all. But you know, we are the ad networks and media houses for us as business owners, it might not be the best solution, even now. I mean, I do see that the momentum is gaining over the past few years, like Suhey rightly said that, you know, like websites are moving towards that direction, but the adaptation of subscription model, it's still around eight to 9% of the overall user base that we have on the websites or the properties that are there currently live. So, you know, users are actually opting for both the mediums. I think the momentum to have more on the subscription model has now started facing up in the last one or two years where I think the advertiser threat is not too high because there are a lot of, you know, other sources to deliver and make the targeting happen. But I think it's more of a business decision now, like how the content has to be served because I think content is not exclusive, right? What we are serving on the subscription model is somehow could be found somewhere on the other websites too. So I think, you know, have deciding upon a business model, like whether to retain the subscription or with the free way, and you know, how to retain the use current user base on the website is altogether something that needs to be decided by the media houses. So I think we are moving towards that direction, but not on a 100% scale. Maybe at a scale of 10 to 20%. Right, right. You know, there's another talk going on in the digital ecosystem, which is about the cookie less world, you know, and era where you move and 80% of the current advertisement, you know, is around this concept. So, Gandhi, from you, I want to understand what proactive steps are you taking as a brand, you know, to address this rise of a cookie less era. See, you know, our product itself is cookie proof. There's a word for that. If you've seen our, you know, our website, our domain, we are a completely video based channel. Right. The idea of launching our channel was to give a television viewing experience on a digital platform. Right. So we are doing exactly what a satellite channel does. It's just that the satellite is there on, you know, it has its license and it's on a different platform, a distribution is different. We have a linear stream, and we are distributing on a digital platform. Last time we have a VOD. So it's a hybrid model. So cookies are more concerning for those people who have websites which are blob driven, which are article driven. Right. So they are huge issues there for a completely video based platform like ours, which is akin to any kind of a television channel. It's not a concern for us at all. Absolutely. Vijesh. So this issue is for us, basically for the news publishers like us Times of India. So it's like 80% of the inventory is used by this cookie structure. So generally we do re-targeting and everything, each of our partners like networks and even our Google stack do the same to get the user who basically want that product. So you can say if I want to do cookie less, if in the future there will be a cookie less environment, so we need to collect data. Basically we need to create our first party data through our own audience. You can say like because we have Facebook pages, our Facebook pages. Plus we need to do contextual targeting to overcome these issues. So third party data definitely moves out of the system in some time or maybe in years. But definitely we need to create our first party data to target exact audience for a segment actually. So 80% is a huge number. So give me your story on this. So if you go back to how this, I mean the entire digital advertising started, it was basically built on three originals since I would call. So one was using cookie as a proxy. Second is separating audience data from media impressions. So you never knew where you were targeting. You were just blanketing your websites with ads without any idea. And the third was using clicks as the metric. Now all these things are questionable today. Everything is trying to break out. Cookies are vanishing. So you have to replace that with something else, maybe an identifier or maybe an email ID, which is BLI compliant or maybe a consent from a user to kind of show him ads and things like that. Secondly, audience data becomes more available because like Brijesh said, publishers have to start building their stack now. They have to get serious with their first party data, try and build audiences around it, create cohorts and comply with maybe with Google. Google is coming up with their own version of targeting, which is on topics. So they're again moving from individual to more community-based or cohort-based targeting. And thirdly, of course, like I said, clicks are going to get replaced by other metrics like mobility will come into picture. There will be other metrics. So all these originals since which we created, we are trying to kind of break away from it. And over the course of time, I think publishers will gain from this because you will have an audience which is premium and you can sell these audiences to your advertisers at a higher rate because the advertisers are not going to get or the marketers are not going to get these audiences in the free market anymore. So overall, I think it's a good step and publishers who are privy to this, what should they start building their own first party data and eventually I think it'll benefit us. Rahul, your quick thoughts? Actually, on a publisher point of view, this is going to be hard for all of us because we have to come with certain other ways to target the audience to target the ads and all the things. For example, in the recent past, we've seen that they are not in India particularly, we have seen, but in the European countries, this is a legal matter right now. And they have actually introduced some European data protection laws, which is not particularly implemented in India right now. So we have to think of other targeting like that of the email collection or some other contextual ads. But this is going to be hard. It's going to be hard. Okay. Akash, to you on this panel, of course, your perspective is different on this. What is happening in the market according to you on this front and what all are you seeing? What are publishers doing and what is the best way for them to address this? I think a lot of evolution is also happening on the ad network site. Like if I specifically talk about, we just started off with programmatic serving on web and mobile devices. And now we are almost serving at web, BMP, mobile, OTT, CTV, fast. And I think the serving have transformed from just programmatic to inducing PG, CMP, PMP, direct deals all together as the delivery metric for the end media houses or the users is the way out of the overall sustainability of the digital advertisements on these web properties. So I think both the parties are in the evolution mode where the media houses are also finding out ways to have the first party data and be as the ad networks are trying to become the ads of technology and so and induce the overall delivery metrics in the much efficient and a transformed way. So I think it's going to be interesting the time and definitely this, the overall delivery is going to increase. Like Suhey rightly said that when the targeting is going to be much appropriate and more aligned towards what the users are there on the website, the advertiser spend would also increase. So I think it's both going to be more interesting and great for individual opportunities as well. Right, right. What has also happened is that the consumption, if you see the interfaces has shifted to mobile first, AMP based solutions and in this kind of behavioral shift, Kanti to you, I want to understand that are you making any active efforts to increase the retention on the desktop device and what can be done to kind of balance this flow? It can be an app and a desktop. I don't see any need for doing so. We are available on all OTT platforms and you want to watch us on a desktop, go ahead on the fire TV, go ahead on the Android, go ahead on the iOS, go ahead. It really doesn't matter. At least it doesn't matter for a complete video based platform like us. Right, what we've seen is when a linear stream is being watched, the analytics tells us that it's more on a desktop or more on the fire TV because it is akin to couch viewing. It's similar to television viewing. For example, we are a sports channel. Let's say we are showing a match life. The tendency is maybe start off on a mobile and then they find it interesting and this so they want to have viewership in a more relaxed manner. So it's called couch viewing. Right, so you see a change in the pattern depending on the timing as well. What we see is let's say 9pm onwards. People are indulging in a more relaxed form of viewing. So when you're doing it on a mobile, you can't be watching a match on a mobile for about one and a half or two hours. Right, so you need to be on a mobile. So desktop becomes a little more relaxing. Your fire TV becomes a little more relaxing. So we just made sure that we are available on all platforms and what we see is our users keep switching from one platform to the other depending on where they are and what time of the day or the night it is. So there is no great strategy in particular to retain on one platform and not to retain on the other. We cool about it. Right, absolutely the user's discretion here, you know, how they want to see but of course, for a longer duration contest content, of course, I think, you know, they would like to shift to a bigger one. Rajesh, any thoughts on this? Rohil, according to news publishers, there is no actually any planning to get retention of the desktop users because right now we all are focusing on apps and AMPs because all these basically platforms are very fast in loading. But on desktop, it's very slow. That's why there is no like any plan of action for retaining the desktop users right now because there are multiple things are there because in mobile, you are like user friendly. And the internet, you can say the ads get all the content is loaded fastly on the apps and AMP pages right now. All right. Suheyb? I think I pretty much echo with the panelist. I think there is no strategy as such to retain the desktop traffic because of course, the traffic is moving towards mobile. Right. So that's it. But sometimes, you know, as a user, like Kanti said, you know, sometimes you want to lean forward or lean back depending on the time of the day on depending on your modes and where you are and stuff like that. So, but having said that, you know, our traffic is still good on desktop, you know, 30% of our traffic still comes from desktop. So we try and, you know, try to keep the site clean and neat as far as the user experience and engagement is concerned. But not there is no as such no strategy. Just the way it is right. Rahul to you and then finally to Akash. Yeah, there is a certain change in the, for example, we have earlier the website were all on the desktop and now we are switching to the mobiles and most of the traffic is from mobile. I believe 70 to 80% of the user in our website to come from mobile. And there are certain issues with the AMPs to actually, for example, EMP does increase the speed of the website and they do improve the visibility in our search engines. But there is a certain flaw that our website analytics and the traffic for example, if we use a click on the AMP pages is actually using the Google servers and he's not actually coming on to our website. So this is a certain con I will say that. And for another reason is that there are the other parts of the website are left out in the AMPs, for example, ads and other important sections of the websites are left out. So that is a certain drawbacks of the AMP. Alright, okay. Final words Akash. So I think like Suhaib said, for all the big players retaining the traffic on desktop is not something that a chaos they are facing, right? But for a, from a broader perspective, for mid-level pack, that from for them, it's a really challenging thing that we keep on hearing is because the delivery rates and the, you know, the advertisement rates over the desktop and the mobile are completely different. So people who are heavily invested on just devices like desktop and mobile who do not have, you know, the resources of having multiple, you know, delivery sources for them, it is very important and efficient to have base of retaining traffic on the desktop because they get better rates of the delivery of the advertisement that is happening on the website, which I'm sure that's not a big issue for all the top players that are there in the market. So I think definitely a lot of, you know, I think there are a lot of products in the market that are helping publishers to also, you know, re-engage the traffic within the pages of the website. And, you know, that engagement model is also improving on these mid-level packs, you know, and the small scale publishers where they are actually trying to build the traffic while also, you know, gaining the momentum of having their properties on the multiple device level. So, yeah. Right. So, Kathi, you know, AMP in your view, give me a sense of how do you see it in terms of impact on advertisement across the industry and whether to opt for it or not, and related question on the rise of OTT models, you know, how does it, how will it impact the entire digital piece in the long run? See, you know, like I said, we are a complete 100% video-based model. So, we are more concerned with things like bid compression to make sure that, you know, the internet user even with a lower bandwidth is able to have a video viewing in a user-friendly manner. AMP is again more for article-based sites, right? We are only worried about how responsive it is, the look and feel design, and the bid compression technology. So, it's something, you know, making a video-based platform, a 100% video-based platform is a difficult task, is a difficult challenge to begin with. But once you are done with it, you are only then focusing on content, right? Once that's made, you're not focusing on the other aspects of what a typical website, which is like an e-paper or an article in a block site does, right? So, we don't have those worries in terms of the AMP and how it's going to really impact us. Moving to the OTT platform, yeah, I think that's something which has already happened if you're talking about moving from, let's say, print to digital. That's happened. I think COVID has been a catalyst. We are talking about e-papers now. It's maybe nothing to do with the way the print is actually published. It's to do with the viewing behavior of the people. You want to read your paper online. So, OTT is something which has already happened. But I think OTT is going to get more and more specialized. You see, what's happening now is sometimes OTT also becomes a marketplace, right? You have entertainment, you have movies, you have views, you have everything on one platform. And so then, again, targeting a viewer interest on a particular platform becomes difficult. When you specialize in your OTT content, then and if you can retain your content specialized, then I think OTT becomes a much stronger tool for both the publisher and the advertiser because you know the exact target group that's coming on the OTT platform, exact interest, and there is return for your investment. Bridget, another question, same question, very relevant to you. You have any thoughts on this? As per Kanti, because they are basically video, they have videos. But as per news publishers, we are focusing on AMP because it's like everything is moving to mobile and on a term of mobile, AMP and apps are there. So, AMP is totally about how basically the page is loading. So, this fast page loading, higher render rates, you can say higher render rates that leads to the higher CPMs. But there are some issues right now in AMP. Because there is some implementation technology driven things are there, which is not right now, which is not possible right now, you can say. There are technologies like refresh, hydrobidding, videos, is not able to basically implement it on that page properly. So, this is in testing phase, definitely it will go live in some months or maybe, but definitely AMP is next thing, basically all the news publishers definitely move. But as per CTVs and OTT, my thoughts are different. Because OTT and CTV player, basically these are for video and audio publishers, you can say. Reason behind this for news publishers like us, it's very difficult to move from apps to OTT and CTVs because there will be an issue of navigation. Screen size, higher bandwidth required. Because in normal videos, user can just click on that and because the thumbnails are there, but in case of news publisher, there are articles, which the user need to basically, there are multiple articles on the page and user need to navigate from one to second. This will be a difficult and also the screen size. Screen size moving from app to TV is difficult. That's my thought about this. Right. So, hey. So, definitely I would recommend to have an AMP version of your page, because Google kind of recommends more AMP pages on the search result page. So, and I think most of it, the British head cover, right? Your viewability is higher, your ad CPMs are much higher. So, definitely till you get your tech stack, right? Or your technology is enabled enough to kind of, you know, load your page within three or four seconds, I think you should, you should opt for an AMP page. But I think it's very short-lived. Over the course of time, I think AMP, which will get replicated maybe in two, three years time and Google will start giving, Google will start giving preferences to their own web providers. Right. So, that's something which is there on the OTT front. Again, most of this has been covered, but I am kind of excited to see, you know, how this kind of playoffs plays out in the education, healthcare and fitness space. Those are three niche verticals. I'm seeing a lot of content being put out, especially for kids, you know, for K-12, kids, you know, where, you know, they want to access content and then also kind of, you know, for entertainment and as well as to get educated. Right. So, in that space, I want to, I'm a bit keen on, you know, seeing how this will play out. Of course, sports is another category. Where, you know, it's OTT is really big. There are a lot of these big, big, big size distributions. I mean, OTT's distribution, which are taking rights of all these big, big tournaments and, you know, kind of monetizing it. So, that's going to be an interesting space. Right. Rahul, your take on this being the leading regional, you know, and the regional space. How does it resonate in your case? Well, you mean about the OTT or the AMP pages? AMP, yeah. Yeah, AMP pages. Actually, we have AMP pages like we have tested and tried in AMP pages and I've seen certain improvement like in the web page speed is increased, like we have already been covered, the web page speed is increased. It is actually content focused and it is better for the user experience. But I have seen the drawbacks or I can not particularly say the drawbacks, but there are certain issues with the AMPs like all the traffic is through the Google service. Like I've already mentioned that our website is getting the lower hits as compared to the AMP pages. In AMP pages, when we are switching to the AMPs, let's say in mobile pages, our website is getting the less traffic and there is no refresh rate, no technical scripts involved in AMPs. So, we are seeing ambiguity in analytics. For example, we are not particularly sure about how much traffic. Right, right. Akash, from this add ecosystem, digital add ecosystem perspective, give me a sense of these two aspects. So, basically, when the websites were developed, they were developed across the devices for desktop and mobile. So, in 2015, Google launched AMP saying that their ranking systems would improvise once the media houses adopt the technology of AMP and move their entire setup of mobile to having more accelerated mobile pages, where the users won't have any intrusion, the overall interface would be much fluid and it would be a much better look and feel for the end user when they come onto this setup. But the overall delivery was not that efficient however, it is still functional. And like Brigitte mentioned that there are still a lot of discrepancies that the ads are serving regarding header bidding, regarding implementation of the advertisement and the overall delivery of the kind of revenues coming onto the normal mobile pages and to AMP. So, in 2020, they launched a pilot of Core Web Vitals, where they discussed about with the publishers to different ways where they can optimize their regular mobile pages and how they can make serving a little more better, how the overall page load time can improvise. So, I think that kind of helped them to also gain the momentum of having publishers work more on their Web Vitals and improvise their ranking. And in 2021, I think they completely eradicated that policy that the ranking would be completely dependent upon the AMP. So, now publishers are free to have Core Web Vitals efficiently design and customize and optimize in certain way that their revenues can also be stable and keep on increasing while they can also make a very fluid overall architecture of the website. But definitely for CTV and OTT, it's definitely the next era of advertising because the kind of impact on the delivery it creates for the advertisers is really high. And the global OTT and CTV ad volume has also increased by almost like 330% in 2021. That's kind of really huge that we have seen in the last year. And the main reason about the entire this delivery is high viewability of the overall ads that are being delivered on these platforms. So, I think it's going to be even more further interesting in the coming years and even in 2022. Absolutely. And this brings me to my final question. I request everyone to stick to one minute. We have around eight minutes. Kandhi, to you, how do you see user adaptability? We have seen it over the years, but how does how will it pan out from here on? Also, you lot is this buzz around this metaverse. So, how do you see the user adaptability pan out as we move on from here? See, when you talk about user adaptability, you're talking about digital adaptability. I think that is the past two years has taught us that that was what life was. During the COVID pandemic, even the most non-digital user was forced to become a digital user. So, user adaptability to a digital platform is something which is you can say which has already happened in India. It's just and you have behavior formulated in 21 days where we had two years for us to get formulated. So, I don't think that's going to go easily. When you talk about metaverse, to me, I can correlate it to the virtual world and coming from a sports platform, I would think of fantasy gaming as my metaverse. Right? Now, it's a huge market globally and in India, but what is lacking terribly at the moment in this world is the legality. Game of luck, game of chance, nobody knows, right? We need strong legal laws to exactly tell us what is on the right side, what is on the wrong side. Only then your entire metaverse for the sporting platform is going to become robust. At the moment, it's blur. Absolutely. Rajesh? Adapting user adaptability is totally about in terms of problematic. It's like user definitely is moving from, it's like earlier in 2019, videos and ads are not so much in the market. So, video, you can say the video integrations and first video scene, the ability are less. But in the last two years, definitely, as for Kanti, everyone was at home and everyone is moving to digital and everyone is watching videos and you can say reading out articles. Most of the like 70 to 80 percent users are moved to digital. Like most of the guys are reading news on mobile rather than on newspapers. So, yeah, definitely users are moving to digital part. Regarding metaverse, it's a three dimensional, you can say a virtual space where user is engaging with other ones. And right, Kanti was correctly right. It's like legal terms, definitely is there. Otherwise, it will be like how, what is right, what is wrong. Nobody moves in terms of metaverse. Absolutely. I think regulations, of course, will play a huge role here. Yes. So, hey. Yeah. So, user adaptability, of course, has, I mean, has isolated by about five years, right? You've got one for five years. Now, I mean, like rest of the panelists said, the transition has become even more faster. Now, people have started consuming everything online. So, of course, that has isolated and that's going to, I mean, that's going to gain more momentum as we go, right? Today, we have about 350 million users in India just consuming content online, right? But it's through DTU, through other platforms. That's one thing. On the metaverse, extremely positive. I think, like others, other panelists said, there is a lot of opportunity there, not just within the sporting or the gaming community, but even otherwise, right? What is metaverse? It's an extension of your life, which is enhanced by some technology, right? So, virtually, we are doing meetings, virtually, we are conducting a lot of events, right? Tomorrow, there was a virtual marriage, in fact, in Chennai, which happened last month. And there are virtual holy parties also happening. Absolutely. So, that's something which is the first step towards metaverse. And I think things will get more interesting where the virtual and the physical world will kind of merge. Rahul, to you, metaverse, of course, I won't touch up on this because print to digital even is a story still in the regional, what you call, parts. How will it pan out? This definitely is a big one. Yes. So, how is it going to pan out? Am I audible? Yes, yes. Am I audible? Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, how is it going to pan out? The shift? Yeah, definitely, digital shifting to digital media is a big concern for us. For example, earlier, we were just a newspaper in the print form. Next, we have to move to the website, then e-paper, then to the mobile apps. And now we have seen the social media presence. For example, you have to be present on all the social media platforms. We should be in touch with the users because not all the users are using your apps and the website, but they are continuously following you on the digital media space. While I see in the advertisement kind of where I see there, for example, the local ads, in local ads, I will say the print media is more effective. For example, a user, print ads can have a localized presence. For example, if I have to launch a particular local event, then I'll have to go with the print ads. But definitely, we are going to cost towards the digital transformation. All right. A final question to you, Akash, on your thoughts as far as this digital ecosystem is concerned on user adaptability. Of course, it has had firm roots in the last two years, especially. How does it pan out from here on? And what does metaverse, what kind of opportunities arise out of this? So I think the revolution had to come and COVID-19 just amplified the overall process of the transformation and the adaption for, I think, the masses. But as the consumption of the content has increased over time and simultaneously the delivery opportunities have also increased. And we are also working as the extension for sales for these publishers. I think it's going to be even more enriching experience both for the users and the advertisers in the coming time. For metaverse, I think it's legitimate. I think we're currently at just the start of that era. I mean, how cool is it to be a part of the organization visiting offices, virtually traveling places and whatnot. But I think it's a long way ahead. This thing has all just started. But one thing is for sure that since H&M has marketed themselves into metaverse, the scope of the entire advertisement and delivery is comparatively much higher because the entire metaverse is digital. So all the consumers who are coming onto the platform are visiting that are the targeted audience. So I think in that way, it looks really uplifting for the coming time. Thank you. Thank you everyone for joining us today. A lot of takeaways here and what a great insightful points that everyone has made. I want to thank all of you for taking our time this afternoon and joining us and we hope to continue these conversations as we move on. Thanks once again for joining us. Thanks very much. Thank you.