 I'd like to introduce you to our stellar panelists. We have with us, Vipit Puraestha, co-founder and chief strategy officer in shots. Mr. Himanshu Gautam, business head, amarujala.com. Pradeep Gayarola, vice president and business head digital media, the Hindu group. Self, Mr. Puneet Gupta, COO times internet. We have with us Mr. Saleel Kumar, CEO of Digital India Today Group. We also have on the panel, Mr. Sanjay Trihan, digital consultant and former MSN in London. And to share this session, we have with us Mr. Ankit Oberoi, CEO at PushUp. A very warm welcome to all of you. We are having a good J and I request Ankit to take over the proceedings. Very well done. Thank you so much, Khyati. Thank you so much, Khyati. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to this discussion about the future of publishing. And specifically focused on how publishing leaders are gearing up for 2021. We want to keep this discussion and session very, very engaging with the audience. So feel free to put in your questions in the comment box. And I'll try to pick them up as I see fit as part of the discussion. I'm Ankit Oberoi, co-founder and CEO at PushUp, where we help web publishers optimize their problematic strategy. We started this business in 2014, focusing on the US market first with customers like Reddit, Newsweek, CNET until about a year and a half back when we started looking at the Indian region and realized that a lot of Indian publishers have actually more US or international traffic in absolute terms than some of the US counterparts providing massive potential for growth and opportunities. And I think we can do it way more profitably here than in the US, right here in India. I've personally been following the publishing and attic industry since the last 12 years. And I think there couldn't have been a better time for this discussion since it's only this year that we're seeing India has truly woken up to digital. And when I say this, I mean, in terms of the mindset, I think the numbers were always there. They just got better. Up until this year, digital was always seen or thought of as an initiative for the future, which someday will read benefits but not the core business today. And boy, they couldn't have been more wrong. What's also interesting is that in the last 12 months alone we have witnessed so many new innovations coming in and so many new initiatives and interesting insights like subscriptions and paywalls. Subscriptions and paywalls which were earlier thought of as a monetization solution only for financial or business websites. I think that myth has been busted. Less, I mean, all of us know about video but less talked about products like podcast or audio have proven to be profitable units in themselves. User generated and fan opinion-centric content has somewhat started challenging editorial style publishing purely because of how agile and profitable the model is. And most importantly, programmatic has shown a sharp rise in contribution towards the overall revenue mix, especially since the last couple of years when programmatic has truly become open and transparent. In fact, more than 60% of the market today uses open source auction technology and programmatic no longer is a monopoly like how it was for the last 15 years. Today we have a wonderful panel to discuss this and also talk about what their biggest bets are for 2021. So let's begin with the route of introductions starting with Dipit. And Dipit, just to make this a little more fun, we've put in an ice breaker question for you and for all the panelists, which I'd like them to answer after the introductions, which is what would you do if your ad revenue tripled today? Thanks, Sankit, for posing the first question to me. Like everyone on the panel is much more senior and everyone I have looked up to and kind of learned from Puneet sir and has been a real mentor to us as well, various stages of our life, like including the inshorts life and now we've recently launched our new application called public. So this is Dipit. We run two applications in shorts and a public. In public is more like a mass market Twitter, a video first mass market Twitter for the Bharat audience and where we kind of get very hyper-local influencers, people like the Mukhiya of a gram, India has 2.5 lakh villages. So we are kind of getting these Mukhiyas and gram panchayat level influencers and the local police, the local Daroga, the local doctor, to kind of start communicating with their individuals, small townships and kind of gram areas. And our earlier product, which is more popular at least in the audience base that we are speaking to today is inshorts, which is basically a technology-based aggregator platform. And we have a very global kind of footprint on that product and it's for consumption very short bite-sized content on the platform. So that's mostly about us. The ice breaker question is, it's actually very tricky because everybody wants to invest their revenues back into things that can build modes for all of us. I think the modes are ultimately the same. I think that's a question that you will touch later in the discussion around data and personalization. So I think that's where everybody is going to invest in. So my two sides would be like it's data and personalization is where we would want to invest. Perfect. So I think it's very interesting to see, I think sort of shows our Indian mindset, which is the moment we say there will be growth, we think of where we will be invest, right? So that's interesting to see. Himanshu, do you want to go next? Himanshu, you're on mute. Good afternoon, everyone. So I did the ritual. So it's a very common thing. So you have to unmute in all these things. So good afternoon, my fellow panelists. And this is Himanshu, and I'm representing Amarujala Group today here. And I've been here with the group for last six years. And those of you who don't know Amarujala, it's a seven-decade-old, very loved Hindi news brand out of North India. And we are also called the Newspaper of Hills. So we have huge fan following into our states like Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh. And we publish out of some 20 publishing centers on Newspaper. And the Upcountry editions are actually north of 300. So we go really deep inside wherever we operate. And on the digital side, again, we get a lot of support from our newspaper. And it's one of the very loved brand, Amarujala.com, into the digital news space. And we try to cover like every day in the morning, the complete team gets up with just one thing that how can we keep on enriching the life of our users or readers. And so the journey is going on. And so thanks to the whole internet revolution that we have seen, there have been great numbers. And we have been growing along with industry and really feel privileged to get love of all the millions of readers who come to us every month. And on the icebreaker question, I think that's a very obvious thing, Ankit. So if you go to any publisher, so we are mostly about our content. So we love to invest more into quality content and more into our product. And for publishers to attract technology talent is very difficult. So, and if you're thinking about to bring in more personalized kind of products and more AI driven kind of things and all. So obviously you need to have a very robust technology platform. So yes, investments will definitely go in for improvement of quality of content and product which is more technology driven. Thank you. Excellent, perfect. Next up would be Pradeep from the Hindu group. Welcome Pradeep. I'll come back to you. Perhaps Puneet, do you want to go next? And Pradeep, we'll come back to you while the issue is getting started. Sure. My name is Puneet and thanks for letting me be a part of this panel. I have been a developer. I have written code. I have done product management. I've done marketing and growth. So I've been very lucky to be a part of every aspect of the digital ecosystem. In my current role, I am the Chief Operating Officer of Time's Internet driving growth across revenue and non-revenue metrics for the organization. If my revenue were to triple, I will immediately call my collections head. Okay, that speaks a lot. That explains a lot, it's very interesting Puneet to see somebody coming from a developer side and then to product management and looking at very strategic initiatives. So that's of course a slightly less known path as we see in the industry. Pradeep, let's try now, maybe I'm afraid we're still not able to hear you. Do you want to try maybe without the earphones? Perhaps that might work. No, I'm afraid we're still not able to hear you. I think it's a bit patchy, uncle. The line is very patchy today. Sure. So perhaps you know somebody in the team. Okay, that's perfect. We can hear you a little bit now. Yes, we can hear you. Great. So I think the technology malfunctioning has now become a part of life, but overall it works. So I am Pradeep Yaduula. I lead the digital business of the Hindu group. I've been working for about 30 years now. Most of my experience other than six years at tech is in news media. I got into digital in 1997 and have been a close of keen observer and student of digital evolution. Last eight years I have been working to develop consumer revenue. I joined Hindu in September, 2018. And today I am by the top management of Hindu group are focusing on transitioning the organization to its digital future. In the last two years, Hindu group has actively experimented with consumer revenue for its digital business. And we have experienced some initial success and that's very, very promising for us. And I think the moment you said, triple of your eyes breaker question, my first thing was like Himanshu, I also thought that maybe the best place for us to invest would be the content. Because as of now also we are completely here, like majority of the revenue coming from the print makes it very, very difficult to allocate larger resources to the digital business. So I think that's a big challenge. So the day this happens, we will be investing way more money in our digital journalism. Thanks, great. Excellent, excellent Pradeep. Salil, would you like to go next? Yeah, hi, my name is Salil and I look after the digital business for the India Today Group. If the revenue tripled, I think the first thing I'd be looking at making sure how much incentive is going out to everyone. That'll be a fantastic thing to happen. And surely everyone will be delighted. We'd be investing money again back into applying, into trying into, I think data would be the first place where we'd be looking at how much more would go into what kind of technologies and data can be still brought in. That'll be our area of focus. That'll be it from my side to begin with. That's excellent. And I think I'll definitely come back to this Salil. Data is very interesting in this part of our discussion today as well. So thank you for that. And last but not the least, we have Sanjay. Sanjay is a digital consultant and former MS in India head. Sanjay, welcome to the panel. And good to see you're joining in, I think from the mountains, right? Truly speaking of how the digital evolution has happened. Yes, I'm joining in from the hills in Uttarakhand, but and the audio is a little patchy, so I hope you're able to hear me, Ankit. Are you able to hear me? We can hear you fine. Oh, that's fantastic. So, okay, you've spent close to two decades in the new media industry. I've worked with organizations like, you know, the Hindustan Times, the Times Internet was with Microsoft India for six years, was with the haunting team of India's first detailing portal, Jaldi.com. And now I have been for the last two years consulting with some very exciting startups, you know, ad pushup incidentally happens to be one of them, one of the leading players in that tech space. I am also consulting with a London based company, which is one of the finest in the world in terms of paywall integration, paywall solutions. Consulting with companies like in the OTT space, which is essentially in the Dalek based OTT space and in marketing automation space. So that's about me. And yes, if since I am a sole operator and Ankit if my revenue tripled, I would buy lots of books and music, you know, I would give myself a treat. Yeah. Excellent, excellent. So I was hoping, you know, answers mode like this, you know, where publishers would come out saying, well, you know what, we'll go on vacation for the rest of the year because we've tripled, you know, that's way beyond our initial targets. And you know, we'll probably enjoy the rest of the year or, you know, take the whole team out. But that's okay. I think it's nice to see a lot of you would invest that back into the business and perhaps, you know, expect even more returns next year. But I think we have a good start for an opening for the, you know, first part of the discussion. And, you know, I think all of us are aware that how the consumer trends have been on digital platforms this year. And most of us have already, we're already seeing a massive surge in traffic or time spent, which has brought with it, perhaps, you know, higher infrastructure costs or at serving fees. While the ECPs this year, you know, themselves have not, haven't been that great for the most bit, right? And on the other side, you also have these decades all saying about online businesses that, you know, get the users, the money will always follow. So we're not sure what's happening there then, right? So my opening question, perhaps to you, Puneet, to begin with is, given this background, right, of increase in traffic, but ECPs haven't been that great, time spent and all the other metrics, leading metrics are doing great. What is your monetization strategy for 2021? So the first thing to understand is the traffic increase is because of an event, right? And some of it will stay, but all of it will not stay, right? We have to be continuously at it to create meaningful value propositions for our consumers so that they keep on coming without a global event of this kind that happens and then that drives traffic higher. But now that the traffic is there, right? How do we monetize? In this year, there have been both ups and downs. Both publishers thought this traffic will come and, you know, just by doing a programmatic route, they would be able to monetize. But then along with this came the negative keyword list. You know, COVID got into one of them and which one like 30, 40, 50% of traffic for many publishers. So getting into next year, I think at least I will focus on KYT, which is knowing your tech, right? We have worked a lot on tech, but I don't think we can just say that we are there yet. We need to continue to work. Look at what's happening in the ecosystem, right? The buyer, with whom you had a relationship with, the buyer has become an algorithm. So with the buyer is an algorithm, you better figure out how your tech is doing in terms of what you're able to sell. Every impression is being bought, right? It's not, and it could be a separate buyer for every impression, separate price for every impression. So this insights going in the tech part of the business is very crucial getting into next year as programmatic continues to grow. Excellent. And I think there are lots of areas, Puneet, which I'd like to talk more about. Like, you know, for example, as you said, AI or tech is basically the buyer is being based on data today, either automated or even somebody looking at, but decisions are not as much as a way of marketing or positioning, but I think in some cases, predominantly programmatic, it's more data-driven, right? And as you said, temporary traffic versus permanent. So I think these would be some interesting areas Puneet would like to cover, but perhaps, Pradeep, do you want to talk about maybe what is your organization thinking, or perhaps what are your thoughts on 2021 and the monetization strategy given this background? Sure. So unlike most of the, you know, we were extremely lucky when it comes to, like, well, the overall business in 2021 was very, very bad, but, you know, especially because we are a print-dominant business. But as far as the digital is concerned, it was an exceptional year for us. So between the period April to October, we are growing about more than 50% in last year. And this practically happened because of just one large reason, which was the reader revenue. So we, so in the last two years, what happened, like in February 2019, the company decided to build a subscription paywall. And like, we had all the reasons that it is not going to work, but we, you know, like, of course the thing was, okay, let's try it out kind of a mindset. But I think with COVID, what happens, the increase, like for a lot of people with this increased traffic did not monetize. For us, actually it ended up monetizing very well. So what happened like in, so this year, our subscription revenues will be more than what we were able to develop advertising revenue in the last 25 years. So currently in this year, we will have more than 50% of revenue coming from subscription. So I think that was a, so that actually helped us to grow and grow substantially over the last year. Second thing was that see like, the advertising business requires a scale and when it comes to a scale, we are just about say 40 million monthly user. So at that scale, it was very, very difficult to really reach out, build a sustainable organization. So we started working towards transition. So we have a aim of killing the digital department by 31st March, 2023, and make the company digital. So now one of the steps in making the company digital was that you merge your trend sales team as well as direct sales team to build a solutions team. Now that move, first two months did not work for us. April May was a learning period, but after that it started really doing well. Currently we have more than 100% growth on our direct sales business. And I think by the year end, we will have 200% growth over the last year on our direct sales business. So, but yes, programmatic is something where we saw a lot of decline in the year, but overall, because of the, direct sales becoming much bigger, we will be growing in advertising, reader revenue coming in a big way that is going to, that's the reason we are growing 50%. But beyond that, we have one very, very large thing which is going to help us in a big way. So you have to understand, Hindu does not do celebrity personalize, which means a direct, we don't do astrology. We don't do a lot of things which actually build a lot of traffic. Now that's the added policy. I can go and fight and put my head, but nothing much, but the fact remains that the company decides that, yes, this is what it is. And it might be a long term, I would like to do celebrity content, I might want to do, but then at this point, we don't do. But what has happened with this traffic, especially reader revenue and our experiment with the merge sales force has told us that the same user base, we can perhaps go four times without any additional pressure to get audiences. And that's pretty liberating because when you are working with our mindset, where you are very, very, very about editorial you will not, so I will have a longer book of not do than what will I have for do. So that actually helps in a big way. So for as far as we are concerned, our 21 is based, our 21 journey will be based a lot on our successes in 20, which will be basically a lot more focus on the reader. And I can talk maybe about it later. Then more on changing advertising mix towards more, rather than just going for the traditional advertising, go for a more higher value advertising kind of first up that could be the third. And data is something where I think, all the publishers in India have to do a lot of, I was dealing with it, like WHCA and all that. When you look at your data journey, suddenly you feel almost happy that you are not even started. So that's a very, very large opportunity as far as the 2021 is concerned. Excellent. No, no, this is very refreshing to hear Pradeep. And I think key insights, it's actually very good to see that, how you guys have built a very long term strategy all the way to 2023. And are taking bold steps, right? Like making actually industry leading both steps. And also that I'm surprised to hear that your subscription paywall sort of business is doing so well already, which is I think sort of unheard of in a lot of markets, right? So congrats on that. Salil, what are your thoughts on 2021? Where do you think the monetization ship is going to go next year? So I think a lot of monetization is gonna move towards audience monetization. What we are basically seeing a lot of users looking at or advertisers wanting to tell a story. Their basic aim is that, how do you weave their story into your content? How do you create content which is specific to their needs and requirements? Is what I'm seeing. It's a mix of audio, video and text. Those are the combinations. I think the dam will be the most important factor in terms of your ability to have audience that are already mapped up. Today, if you notice, most of the FANG organizations are living on audience. They're choosing on that only. It's like, I know the preferences. I know their needs. I have that database where somebody's gone and bought some mutual funds or somebody's shown some interaction. Those are the opportunities. And again, going forward, you're looking at obviously, I mean, like I said, there's a mix of your video. There's a mix of audio. It's also looking at creating content that's gonna be, people will ask more and more content to be created, which is being able to get the advertiser, tell the story for an advertiser and also get the audience engagement. Because you will want to get your audience engaged. And I mean, it's gonna be a shift towards, I see a lot of it moving towards digital. Like we are into TV, print, radio, podcast. So a lot of money is obviously shifting towards the digital side. And this current pandemic has been a catalyst. It's taken us at least five to seven years ahead of what we'd have normally progressed. As far as paying on subscriptions right now, I'm a little skeptical. Don't see it happening in the next one or two years. But again, you never know when tights turn. Yeah, absolutely. But at least I think the only silver lining here has been at least as far as all digital businesses are considered decades worth of work has happened in probably weeks this time. And on that Himanshu, what are your thoughts as far as the monetization strategy for your business is concerned? So we also have like almost similar thoughts. And we were the first Hindi newspaper to go behind the paywall when it comes to our ePaper. So we did it sometime last year, much ahead of the pandemic and all. And the reason has been simple. The eCPMs for Hindi publishers have always been a challenge. When you compare yourself with the English publisher, so eCPMs that you go out and come on into the market actually give you a lot of trouble. And obviously Hindi being the main language of the country, so you always have like more number of users coming in, but the realization from the users is difficult. So we realized it much early and to keep on retaining those users and to make them register onto your platforms again and to educate them with a whole digital thing and keep them coming back with the same email ID and all, it's been a big challenge because they tend to forget their email IDs. They're trying to log in again and you have to really lend them a helping hand over there. So that has been a big challenge with Hindi readers and so the some things that have worked in our favor is obviously the whole trust factor, the credibility factor because I think that's the underlying stone for anyone to build up some strong communities which can be monetized. So I can talk about it. There are two businesses which we have built riding onto this whole content thing. One has been into the education space and we have launched our tech offering which helps people to make them carrier ready because those were the things which were being most consumed onto our portal. We were seeing a huge interest into something called Naukri, Sarkari Naukri and all. So we were able to build up those communities over a period of year and today we have a commerce led offering taking care of that vertical for us. The second piece was what Pradeep mentioned that Hindu group doesn't do, that's astrology and we've been again building a solid community around astrology for more than a couple of years and again we have the offering called Mai Jyotish over there. It's a commerce led offering where we are helping people with their e-pujas, we are helping them with their consultations and we are trying to take away the whole problem of that trust again that persists out into that vertical and all. So live examples of building communities and then monetizing them through again the end user kind of revenues, so that has been important. E-paper again behind the paywall, so that has been important. So a healthy mix of advertising and end user revenues, so that's our strategy. And I was going through some PWC report which was not very encouraging, which said that current $50 billion of advertising revenue will come down to around $36 billion in the next five years. So again, so that's a great signal for all of us to keep on focusing on to subscription revenues also and paywall revenues also alongside advertising. Great, great Imanshu, thanks for that. And I think it's interesting to see how you're using this audience to build your own e-commerce offerings, right? So maybe the lower ECPMs in the Hindi language are a blessing in disguise, right? Because it's forcing you to either way. Actually, and you can say. Although I think the advertising, as far as the advertising revenues are considered, I have a different opinion, but I think it goes without saying, right, that for a publisher today, there should never be like, you shouldn't put all your, you know, existing basket, right? And it's good to see a combination of paywall or, you know, e-commerce offerings of your own. So on that, Dipith, you have a very different view of the world, right? Coming in from a more sort of app-first experience or, you know, majority of your users, how they work, you know, even the age brackets that they're in, they may be perhaps, right? So what are your thoughts on monetization and how do they differ from, you know, a publisher which is more spread out on web app, you know, across properties where you're predominantly focused on very different form of media content, focused on very smaller attention spans, right? And mostly app users. Yeah, so firstly, I don't think world view can be very different because everybody is in the same ecosystem. It's the same audience. Everybody is catering to different segments in that audience, but really the picture is almost the same for everyone. Everybody is trying to see what is the easiest way to kind of monetize them. What has helped us a lot in our in-charge journey till now is that we have been able to get those users who are the young professionals of the country, digitally transacting audiences and who are, even if their income bracket may not be very high, they might still want to own an iPhone. So that's the audience that we have and very exclusively that is, we have a very high concentration of that kind of an audience. So I think that's the key differentiator that we kind of are able to sell in the market. And that is why the regular, our regular ad clients are kind of spending on us. Going forward, I think there is a big change in the way we are thinking of monetization, especially because of our new application public. And we have traditionally been good at any kind of solving problems which are platform-driven, product-driven and technology-driven, kind of marrying these three and understanding the nature of content and the packaging of content and like not telling us ourselves that we are journalists. I think that is a key realization that we have internalized in a long time that we respect the content creators of the industry and we want to solve problems that are more in our domain, which is platform, product and technology. So from that perspective, when we started this application public, what we realized was that the consumption needs, we were solving the consumption needs of a very different kind of an audience. What we were doing is that we were, for the first time, internet enabled something to happen on the public app, which was not traditionally possible, which was that at a hyper-local level, in a crowd-sourced way, you could generate content that was relevant for not just a district, but also a town center, an urban center and probably even more grassroots, probably a village as well. So India has about 2.5 lakh villages, 10,000 urban centers across 250 districts. And so that supply chain, how do we kind of create a platform that can enable and kind of keep on reinforcing that supply chain of content is what we are building. And I think that will inform our monetization strategy also going forward. So what we are trying to do is, traditionally we used to remember that the newspaper distributors used to distribute the newspapers, but they had these other forms of revenue generation where a local businessman used to print out pamphlets and go to the newspaper distributor, give them, and that was a 500 rupee, 1,000 rupee, 2,000 rupee, probably in the 1,000 to 10,000 rupee bracket kind of an advertising spend that was happening offline. And that has not successfully migrated online yet. So that will only be possible if we are able to do a DIY kind of platform. And also people realize that value, like people won't spend on this platform if they see, they need to see local people visiting because of that offer. So that is the engine that we are trying to build and that will inform our monetization strategy going forward. That how do we kind of unlock that advertising potential and kind of leverage that in our, it will be a long journey. We realize that it won't happen overnight. It will take a lot of effort. So that is the engine that we are trying to build and that will inform our monetization strategy going forward. That how do we kind of unlock because the local advertising market is structured in a very different way currently. So we'll have to look at innovative ways of kind of working on that. But it will be a very much platform-driven, technology-driven approach to monetization. Excellent, Dipit. And I think that SMB business does not exist in a lot of places online today. I mean, while whatever you see on the digital advertising side today is coming from large brands or large organizations. But nobody's been able to, like perhaps the audience which media just died goes to today for listing. Nobody probably has that penetration in advertising today. So great to hear that. And Sanjay, since you look at the ecosystem more from a very broad perspective, you work with so many of partners. You are interacting with so many publishers. You have a strong network. What are you seeing? What are some of the biggest objectives or initiatives which you're seeing publishers bring for 2021? Yes, Ankit. In fact, I am very enthused about the fact that the year 2021 will be really the year of the reckoning for the digital industry. Because the digital transformation has been accelerated by COVID and a lot of naysayers have now fallen apart. The challenge in 2021 will essentially be monetization primarily because now the audience is already moved in and how do you leverage these increased massive volumes of eyeballs? So without actually going into too much of detail and in the interest of time, I essentially see five specific trends happening in 2021. We discussed about the at-tech stack optimization. So in the age of programmatic, where the programmatic is going to rule the roost definitely between the middle and the low part of the monetization pyramid, the optimization of programmatic initiative will actually be the key driver of revenue enhancement. I see that as one very solid trend. Also, Salil talked about audience monetization. So audience monetization will also happen not just on-deck but also off-deck. By off-deck, I mean, how do you leverage the audience that you have which is not on your platform but outside your platform? So I'm essentially talking about optimizing social communities. How do you leverage your communities to create a sustainable engagement and revenue? That's a very specific second trend I see. The third trend is optimization of short form video and monetization that doesn't need elaboration. Branded content and branded solutions, in an age of following ECPMs and the rise of first party data, branded solutions will actually gain currency and Pradeep did talk about it. And lastly, I see and I do agree with Pradeep and Himanshu and slightly disagree with Salil on this. I believe 2021 will be the year of subscription. We already see the times group coming very strongly into subscription with ET prime and times prime. We're seeing early success stories of Hindu already happening. We're seeing money control pro doing exceptionally well and the numbers rising and the business standard and Indian Express now coming in. I see year 2021 will be the year of subscription for India and these are the five monetization trends that I see gaining currency and consolidating. Excellent, thanks Sanjay. In fact, the discussion is very, very insightful from all of you and definitely there's so many questions which I have that I don't think I'll be able to put all of them across, but it's very interesting to see that all the leaders today here are bringing a very strong long-term thinking. And I think that the role of a leader is in a way to balance long-term and short-term thinking as well because you can't forget about the short-term while you're looking at the picture. Almost like having telescope in one eye and a microscope in the other. So while I'll be generalizing here, but I think one area where I think the publishing industry today lags. It's also, sorry to interrupt, but it's also easier to talk about the long-term. So that is also the reason. Because there's nothing tomorrow when you wake up, you have to do, right? So great, you're right. But I think translating that into the short-term plan or breaking that down into the objectives, how do you get to that long-term plan, right? Is where a leader, true leadership comes, right? Otherwise, all of us can come and give Gyan, right? But it will be just that. And I think that's what segregates a true leader. So while I'll be generalizing, I think, but one area where I think publishing sort of the industry at large sort of lacks is lateral thinking, right? Like how do I bring in solutions or the best strategies from other industries to our publishing business? And I think that reflects on not only the initiators, but also how the organizations are structured. While some of you may be an exception here, I can tell you, look at how the industry at large looks at their org structures. You have very few organizations really building two world-class product strategy or technology teams. And when they do, they have very big org support or the lack of right direction. Data is, as we were talking about, not given even if attention. Look at the most important metric in the industry is always CPM or maybe best case scenario, Page RPM, right? Very rarely do we go to and learn from maybe the app industry here about average revenue for a user, right? What is R2? Some of you maybe again to be an exception to this, but the industry at large, for example, would not be considering that. Or when we think of subscription, right? We fail to sometimes realize that one of the most successful industries when it comes to subscription businesses is the SAS world, software as a service subscription businesses, right? So can we borrow some fundamentals from there? And we've actually a lot of examples, perhaps maybe in the US, right? Like a Philadelphia inquirer or the Dallas morning, Baltimore Sun, which have actually brought some of these ideas and have built very strong subscription engines. Whereas we probably have more, you know, international traffic than some of them. So, you know, what would be some of these key strategic misalignments, right? So the leaders here, right? What would be some of these key strategic misalignments which come to your mind across the industry, which are prevalent? Or maybe it's, you know, what you want to solve for 2021, Salil, do you want to take that first? When you say misalignment, I really don't know. I mean, you know, it's like a strategy to each one. Like today what happens is it's more dependent on your strategy in terms of having assigned in user, our poos, or when you're talking about working on revenues per user structure for an app ecosystem, it still is a little bit easier. And again, if you've got assigned in user, you're able to pull out some. I was hearing Sanjay again when you were talking about it. You know, somebody may say, subscription is the right way. We are saying it's two years ahead. Is the time to invest today in subscriptions? Yes, it is. You're aligning when you're putting up your audience or you're creating those buckets today. And somebody may say, okay, it's, you know, it was two years back, you should have done that. I don't think there is anything wrong or right. You know, when you say misalign, it's like timings. It's somebody who's timing it right and somebody who's timing it a little late. That's how I would like to look at it. For example, this conversation about programmatic, and I heard a lot about programmatic and a lot of programmatic monetization, but ask any of the publishers how happy are they with the yields they're able to generate out of the programmatic revenue. Then you're talking about mass audience. You're talking about mass. And when you're talking about mass, who's owning that ecosystem? Today, it's not that me, Puneet, Himanshu, or anyone else, maybe we put together and we say, okay, but programmatic revenues are again, it's like an open exchange. And the price factor, while we're focusing on it, is going to be ranging for Hindi and English in two digits and sub, you know, maybe half a dollar below half a dollar. Now, is that the revenue that's going to grow us? No, because that's going to be, that's only going to suffice some level. And I also see on the other hand, in shots where Dipit is talking about, we see they're not using as much as any of the open market auction model. And they're going purely towards high-end premium brands. And Dipit, I'm not somebody who's really analyzing, but I'm saying what I see most of the time, what I hear is what it is. So I could be wrong and you can correct me there. But you know, programmatic is mass. And there you're having a challenge of the FANG organization. You're talking about an Apple, you're talking about Google, you're talking about Facebook, you're talking about Amazon, and you're talking about other players who are going to take the mass away. So I'd say you've got to put up your priorities in terms of, like I said, you know, having the right damning place, having the right audience mixing place, trying to segregate and look at, is there ways that you can monetize better your audience at a higher premium? How can you be a better storyteller? Publishers will need to look at that front. Sanjay mentioned again, monetization. And I'm again saying some people would be like, we in India today have a lot of offline programs, events we used to do. They've all moved online, right? And we want to go back offline as soon as the markets open. Because we realize what people are willing to pay for offline audience, that physical environment is very much higher as compared to just pure, pure play digital. It's not that they're not paying, it's not the values are not, but I'm sure there's a huge difference. So I again say, it's a question of timing. Some believe that, I mean, you know, I heard Sanjay say what so furiously, Indian express times, but they are e-paper guys, they're papers which are coming every day. I am more uncomfortable in today's time to buy a paper because they touch, hand touch and feel. How many hands touched it? Therefore I'm not buying it. But I want to read the paper and that's an old habit. The next audience is not into reading that paper. You'll have a problem where the guy will come and say, I mean, my kid's 16 year old is not interested. He's happy with his laptop and he's happy with his machine and he looks at the paper or the website. And in fact, at times he'll turn around and say, listen, this is stale news. The Ajo died last night. I mean, we were lucky to pick it up today. So, Salil, I mean, you're spotting right about that. But I think when you say that how the audience buys, you know, offline versus online, wouldn't you say that? I mean, my perception is it's then a pricing challenge. And we're all aware that programmatic has always seen this very lower CPMs. So, you know, it's more of a pricing challenge. How do you reposition this product in your programmatic using maybe certain other aspects of programmatic direct or such campaigns to bring it to a truer value, right? And perhaps position in a way that you are able to bring and command that premium, right? Which are all opportunities for us. Completely agree. No, no, I'm not saying, but what you're doing is your brand business is shifting between programmatic towards, say, programmatic guarantee structures. Audience, again, they're only looking at audience. I mean, otherwise, if you are a smart buyer, let me turn it around and say, I'm a publisher, but I also know if you're a smart buyer, you turn it around, come on from the exchange perspective, you can buy cheap, right? And that's because we left it over as publishers. Correct, correct. That's right. You're forced to leave it over because 85 to 90 punit is smiling from there, but 85 to 90 percent of audience. I mean, your inventory is still available. We are not running short of inventory. We have to see that our content becomes prime, content becomes pristine, that people are willing, A, to pay for it, B, to buy the audience who reads that super good content. Makes sense. And I just realized I looked at the clock and walk, boy, this was so interesting that I got so immersed into this, but perhaps, you know, we'd love to get... Yeah, this definitely is a topic which we should probably set up a time again to talk about, but I mean, given the interest of time, would love to have all of you maybe chip in here as well. I would love to go and go around the room, right? But perhaps Puneet, Himanshu, Dipit, Sanjay, and Pradeep, would you like to add in something here? What are your thoughts on how you fix this challenge today? Yeah, I personally think there is always going to be a, publishers need to know multiple sources. So we are going for subscription, which we always understand advertising is going to remain critical for our survival and growth, right? That is always going to be that way. So it's not that you can just... Our scales are so big that we just can't survive on one source of revenue. We need a multiple sources of revenue. Only thing which I feel will make us successful is this culture of experimentation. Like I will tell you, like I have made decisions worth crores which have gone wrong. But my company did not come to me and say that was, I'm holding you responsible. They said, well, fine, cost of learning, move on. So if we succeed in one out of 10 companies, as you have done a great job, if we succeed one out of 20, they said good job. And nothing called failure, everything is cost of learning. I think if that culture gets big, we will be able to experiment. There's a lot of experimentation required to figure out what will work and what will not work. What will work in the past, we will not work in the future and that's the way it is going. I think... Go ahead, Puneet. One is to, as Pradeep said, we all need to figure out what is the right revenue mix we're looking at two years and three years down the line. Because you can't start working today and change it for the next quarter. There needs to be a build up. And when you do that build up, it's very important to figure out what's the right org design. The org design that we do for a subscription business is going to be very different from an org design that we will do for an advertising business. But interestingly, both of them will lie together, right? So that is where the most meaningful aspect of this come through, how do you make two different kind of organizations who exist and work together and build for your company. The second thing I want to say is... Or build the best of those things, bring the best of their learnings and their design into the way you operate, right? Absolutely, absolutely. The second thing I want to say is that most commissions are leaving the 80% of the market saying that we don't have capability. But we need to build capabilities. All of us are competing in the 20% market and complaining about the CPI and spalling. Because inventory is growing, there's a glut of inventory, right? Then all of us create content of the same kind, voice, video, vernacular, and then we say, okay, you don't see systems at all and it's our own doing, right? So how do you get into that other 80% and start to compete in that side as well? By defending your play in this 20%. And for that, a lot of new learnings have to come, right? A lot of stuff that everyone else talked about. The data management platform that Kallin said is focusing on, the kind of programmatic insights that everyone else said. I would go ahead to say, and if you talked about that people usually end up by making CPMs to CRRPM, how do you go beyond? Can you look at a CVR? So that's the ultimate metric your customers will pay for, right? The number of convergence and your ability to convert. That becomes very, very important. Right now, we are thinking of running a CVR for my customer. I'm saying as from the ads, if the job done, but the job is done when the properties persist, not even when the lead is delivered. So how can we get it built up to that level and also what the customers really say that look at every lead differently because lead that comes from a standard, large platform is going to be different that comes from a conversion percentage of the value of the conversion. Well, it's not that number of leads per rupee. Makes sense. And I think the data will play a very strong role, right? When we have to work on connecting all these pipes, right? Seeing the actual conversion, the data plays a very critical role here. Absolutely, absolutely. Deepit, do you want to add something here? No, I think this is really informative. Also, I think one thing that I have seen is that ultimately, it's about how much inventory, like as Puneet sir said that if the same inventory, same audiences getting available across five platforms, obviously the leverage is with the buyer to drive down the price. So I think what makes a difference here is that if you can get retained audiences segmented across user bases. And I think that cracking that retention will always be an innovation-driven exercise and not an expansion-driven exercise. It will always be innovative and there'll be new and new models of getting a different kind of audience hooked for a different kind of time period. There'll be so much more innovation going forward, like suddenly we see TikTok in the market, suddenly we'll see something else. So I think how do we make sure that the startup ecosystem and the media ecosystem can kind of work together on this is really, really very important. And I think that will create a lot of value for both the media ecosystem as well as the startup ecosystem. Makes sense. And I think retaining your audience and engaging with it is actually a dedicated topic in itself, which we should definitely cover. Himanshu and Sanjay. Yeah, I'll make one quick comment actually. As Puneet mentioned, know your tech. I think it's about also knowing your customer. So I'll put it like that. And that's going to make a lot of difference in days to come because what I personally felt is this, that we have been kind of blindfolded by this whole advertising thing and the whole rush of getting those visitors on your site. You know, the comms code driven thing, 60 million users, 100 million users, 150 million users. So those are all visitors to your site. Those are not your customers. Those are not the signed up thing as Salil was saying and all. So once we have those people signed up with us, once they are logged in kind of people, we know them and we know what are their taste and preferences. And accordingly, I love to do a kind of an emailer for them and not one emailer in which my editor is deciding some 10 pieces of articles, but 1000 emailers are targeted for those kind of taste and preferences of those set of users and all that. I think a lot of it will lie there. Great. The acronyms that I was just sharing earlier, right? So in my mind, there are three of these that go together, right? There is a know your customer, who's buying and then do we have the deep relationships with those customers, you know? The more there is a movement towards programmatic, which is great for transparency, but there has to be a movement towards more direct sales with great for relationships. Here you understand the mindset and the need of the customer and then you can service them better. So there is a KYC know your customer, there's a KYU know your user, where it's all the DMT and everything. And then you can match both of them and deliver them to be able to really come through. I'd probably add to that to me, there should also be a know your data, right? Yeah. Given the same, Sanjay, yeah, over to you. I can, I can, you know, this is a very, very insightful conversation and I can actually sort of glean five buzzwords out of this and so I am thinking of data technology, personalization, optimization and community. Now, if you look at this, you know, if the insights that you can mine out of data and if you're able to personalize your advertising and content and you're able to optimize your at tech stack to be able to have meaningful conversation with the community that you have and you do this in an innovative manner, you are done. So, you know, these are the things that will be the key level, levers of monetization in the coming year. So this has been a very fascinating discussion, I must say. Absolutely Sanjay, personalization is key, but you know, we'll see how that shapes once we get, you know, all these regulations in place, but I think I wish I would have luck not to speak more about it, but I think since Kathy is here, she's pointing out that you're running out of time. Do we have time for some audience questions? Yes. Some audience questions, do we have some time? We have five minutes, I guess, right? Kathy, do we have time for that, right? Yes, yes, we do. And I'm sorry, my appearance on screen happens to be the cue for ending the session, but we have a couple of questions from our audience who asked on many different platforms where they are watching us. So one of the questions is if panelists can spotlight on new solutions around content marketing, messaging, and technology, if any one of you would like to take that up? So I think content marketing and technology platforms, right? I mean, while it will be a slightly different topic, right? But perhaps, I think with content marketing, it's more about distribution, whichever you're thinking about. And I think today there are various channels, perhaps some of the panelists who might want to talk about maybe, I don't know, how do you look at social, when you look at content marketing, what are maybe other partnerships that you've built, perhaps if you'd want to cover that? Let me take that because this is a subject I'm very fascinated by. So, Khyati, this is a good question, but I see two very divergent trends as far as content marketing has been concerned. And it is like as if these two divergent trends, and these are not convergent trends, but divergent trends in content marketing. So I see proliferation of content marketing happening at one end because of the voluminous content being produced and the audience, with the growth of audience. So content marketing proliferation is happening at one end, but on the other end, I also see that the credibility and the trust being increasingly diluted. So the challenge that the content marketing is going to face is to reach consumers and gain their trust. And this whole trust element is the reason why the subscription is going to grow. Because in a world where you are looking at multiplicity of reads, you will not be able to shift the kernel from the shaft. And that is a challenge that content market is going to face as it grows unchecked. In our case, we actually ended up reducing the distribution of the content because we realized that the content is available everywhere. Why will anybody pay for it? But see, there is another areas which we are looking at that would some publishers be interested in buying our high quality content. So that syndication pieces in a much more, so syndication earlier was always seen as a very large kind of a thing, but micro level syndication, like only giving 30 stories to some other publisher. Those kinds of opportunities are something which can unlock some more value to the content that we are creating. But otherwise speaking, in a subscription economy, if my content is available everywhere, my chances of monetizing it- I often say that- I often say that- Obligate users or distribute content. So both of these models somehow have a difficulty working together. If you're a digital native, a digital new digital bond, then obviously you have to start by distributing content because you need to be known. But if you have a presence, then you may want to do more of one than the other. So it also depends on the life cycle of as a business where you are right. To each his own, nothing is right or wrong, but there's something right for each life cycle stage. Makes sense. Most of the legacy publishers actually might have so much of trust in the market, most of us, that all the audience believes us a lot and despite that, sir, even in the difficult time lot of people come to us and benefit from the kind of work which we have been doing for decades or two. Excellent. So I think maybe perhaps the panelists can stay back and interact with the audience on maybe Twitter or all these platforms that be great. But it's been such a pleasure to have all of you here. Have all the imminent publishers on a single stage online and thank you so much, Himanshu Pradeep, Sanjay Puneet and Salil Dipith had to actually leave in between. He was hard pressed for time, but thank you so much for joining in. Really it was very insightful and we hope to have a follow-up discussion sometime soon and go really in-depth in more of the topics which we stirred upon today. Thank you everyone. Thank you.