 All right, welcome everyone to this Exchange for Media Publishers roundtable powered by Tabula, where we will discuss what it takes for publishers to improve their audience engagement. This is a series of webinars that we have that we curate with Tabula, one of them and the discussion today will be around decoding the newer monetization strategies for digital publishers. Without further ado, I want to introduce the esteemed panelist today who will be speaking on the topic. We have Mr. Shawneel Charles, Executive Vice President, Digital Times Now. We have Samat Sharma, Chief Business Officer, AsiaNet News. Pradeep Gayrola, VP and Business Head, Digital, The Hindu. Hemant Jain, Senior EVP and Head of Digital Business, Lokmath. And the session chair today is Mr. Hanan Fajal, Vice President, AIPAC Tabula. Thank you very much for joining us today over to you, Hanan. Thanks very much for that introduction and welcome everybody to today's panel. Thanks to all our friends at Exchange for Media for helping us make this possible. So without further ado, the topic of today's discussion stands from a very pressing issue. We think we gather here because as publishers we are doing the topic of today's discussion stands from a very pressing issue. We think we gather here because I think we're getting some background noise, but I will continue. As publishers we are challenged more than ever to get consumers' attention. As publishers we are challenged more than ever to get consumers' attention. Are we being heard properly, Hemant? Hanan, it's basically a repetition of what you're saying. Are we being heard properly, Hemant? Hanan, it's... I apologize. I apologize to everybody. Exchange for Media, can you please mute on your end? Backend team, can you please mute everyone because some of the audience has kept it open? Can you please mute everyone? Okay. Okay, great. Sorry for that, everybody. So we are gathering here today because as publishers we're all challenged more than ever to get consumers' attention. Consumers have instant access to a variety of media and wouldn't hesitate to click or tap away if they're not engaged or suddenly their attention is swayed elsewhere. So this is what researchers are calling the attention economy. It's an approach to the management of information that treats human attention as a scarce commodity, as we the humans become the commodity. So as content has grown increasingly abundant and immediately available, attention becomes the limiting factor in the consumption of information. It directly affects revenue from readers, subscription, membership, so on, as well as that from advertisers who now want some guarantee beyond subscription numbers that users will stay long enough to see their ads and their sponsored content. So today we will speak to our esteemed panelists about improving audience engagement and with that, of course, monetization strategies. And with us we have Hemant from Lokmat, Pradeep, the Hindu, Sunil from Times, and Samarth from Asian News Network. And without further ado, let's jump right into it. So Hemant, we'll kick off with you. Do you see the effects of the attention economy? Do your readers seem to click away faster? Do you see them consume content in a different way than in the past? Can you share a little bit about that with us? Sure, Hanan. Good afternoon, everyone. So I was just going through one of the recent studies which suggested that the average attention span in any case has fallen from 12 seconds in 2000 to what is now seven seconds. And if you look at most of the news publishers in our country today, the average time spent per user per session is not more than two to three minutes. I'm talking about an average time spent duration per session. Now, when you look at this time spent, it is quite alarming. And it also has a direct impact on our own strategies in terms of mapping what we are creating to what the consumer is actually wanting in today's age. And when we just look around, you would realize that there seems to be huge paradox between what used to be the dictate to the content team to create more longer articles which are far more richer beyond 250, 300 words extending up to 500 words, which is not the case really. And the other very important aspect is that there has been a considerable shift in the manner in which the content is getting discovered today. So I would say in 1995, 96, when we set up IndianExpress.com, which was the first newspaper site to go live. And if I look at the next 10, 12 years then, most of the news used to be destination viewing, when people used to key in the destination, say for example, TimesOfIndia.com, IndianExpress.com, etc., the Hindu.com, and largely they used to consume content in terms of their basic connect with a particular news media brand. But today when we look around, there is a huge fragmentation in terms of the platform where the content is getting discovered. And because of this very, very important aspect of decrease in the attention span, there is a need to completely reinvent ourselves. So for example, when I'm scrolling through the Facebook feed, and I see article links, posts, etc., unless and until the title of the article is extremely catchy, the thumbnail or the feature image kind of resonates with the various aspects of the mind, the way typically being a retail marketer, I would look in terms of the SKU presence, etc. It is very difficult for you to grab the attention of the user. And that is where various aspects of pulling the consumer from a point of discovery to your destination plays a very important role. So that's point number one. Point number two is when the guy lands on to your destination, your product, your site to consume content. I think so in today's time, especially given the fact that 95% of consumption is happening through mobile, it becomes very, very important to ensure that what you serve him is exactly what he's looking out for. Because if the first scroll is about 300 by 250 ad, and then you have got another space below which which is taken away by huge title feature image. And then in the second full lies the content, you miss the customer. Point number three is this whole evolution of short format content. And I'm just keeping my points aligned to the whole concept around attention economy. So we've seen in shorts doing extremely well today. We have seen YouTube, Facebook at one point they started off with long form contents, but you have now seen the emergence of reels and short format content. I think so a lot of things are getting aligned with the core shift in the consumer behavior from ability to spend a longer duration to shorter duration. I think so. There is a need to, for most of the news publishers to completely reimagine their businesses to ensure that the core experience on the product, whether it is through content, technology, consumer experience, page layout enables the consumer to spend more time getting relevant content much faster and through a better packaged environment. The other very important aspect here is with regard to discovery of content. I still have to find someone within our space who's able to help the user discover content very seamlessly. So I don't really find users going on any of the news sites using a search bar to search content. It's not working. It doesn't work. But yes, voice searches can help. Chatpots definitely makes the whole life much simpler. It's much aided. It could be a voice chatbot. It could be a text chatbot. So it helps you replicate a Google search experience onto your own destination portal. So these are some of the things I believe are very imperative. And I think so in this particular session from where I come, I thought it's very important for all of us since we have Shawneel Pradeep. Let's try to reimagine this whole thing, keeping centered around this topical discussion of attention economy. Thanks for that, Hemant. And I agree with some of the sentiment around innovation. Why don't we move over to you, Pradeep from the Hindu. Can you share a little bit about the effects of the attention economy on the way you engage with your users and possibly some view on the future? Thanks, Anand. See, I would like to look at attention economy in three perspectives. One is attention as a scarce commodity, attention as a unit of measurement, and attention as a source of monetization. So as Hemant rightly said that, you know, the attention is dropping. So from 12 seconds today, it is about, say, seven seconds. But then this urge for newness, which we are constantly wanting something new, causes us to explore more. So this newness piece actually helps the media and content creators started turning shorter and more engaging content. So the total output of content increase, and hence the user started spending more time with media. So if you will look at between 2011 and 2021, there's an 18% increase in the time spent with the media, and it is a worldwide figure. So in 2021, on an average, world spends 8.25 hours daily with media, which was about 6.98 hours in 2011. Now, when I look at attention as an economy, because fine, this is reducing how does it impact my life, right? So if you really ask from a Hindu perspective, as a group perspective, we have witnessed the decline of in range of about 20% in the pages per session that the user consumes with us now. The bounce rates have increased by about 8%, right? But you know what happened? We did not realize these things because the overall traffic was increasing substantially, and somehow these trends got grown. So, but if you really do some soul searching, you realize that you are not doing a great job with users who visit us, and somewhere we are still obsessed with social media, we are still obsessed with search engine optimization. So we are doing that. So we have built the teams for search engines, we have built social media team, but there's no team which is saying that how the hell do I increase the time spent with me, the people consuming more pages, you know, like lessing the amount. So this is clearly an area which at least in our case, we have ignored. So I think there's an opportunity for us that if we personalize our experiences of our reader, you know, we will be able to do a better job and I think, you know, we will be able to arrest a lot of things. Now comes to our attention. If I look at attention as a source of monetization, right? So as we all know, at this point in time, we have two large sources, one is advertising and another is subscription, right? So lower attention span actually increased the consumption and hence the impression base ad revenue streams benefited, initially they benefited a lot. So user was consuming more content, they were putting more pages, we had our ad spots there, the advertiser was paying, so this in the initial run it worked, right? So typically what happened was like, you know, however, it doesn't seem to be working now, right? So what has happened is if you look at last 10 years, there's a humongous increase in the page views that have been consumed, the number of users which are coming to our website, but is this directly proportional to our revenue? No, it is not. So ad revenue, ad revenue and the traffic are no longer directly proportional or even if they are then the yields are the ones which are really creating a lot more problems for us. I got into digital in 1997 and our yields in 1997 were better than the yields what we have today. And this is where I think a lot of page views, a lot of content creation actually started digging down the yields. So this brings us to the second source of revenue, which is subscription for us. In our case, subscription was about 47% of our overall digital revenue in the last financial year. So a large number of readers who otherwise have a very, very short span of attention are ready to commit to reading high quality, well research longer format content. So if you will see our case, the maximum conversion happens when people read editorial, which generally when I was growing as a student, I found them pretty boring and all that. But the great thing about here is that people actually pay for it. So lots of companies these days even started publishing that to read this article, you will need so many minutes and all that. And our own research says that there's a large correlation between length of content and the willingness to pay. So we produce one content, which is a full page content ground zero every Saturday. And that is one area where whenever you jump for it, it's about a 3,4,000 piece of content. We have another magazine called Frontline, which is a long format content. So long form content is doing dramatically well when it comes to subscription. So now the challenge for us is add economy benefits from short attention, while the subscription economy benefits from the willingness of reader to commit their attention to content that is relevant to them. So our challenge today is that how do we cater to these two oppositions opposing universe? One universe wants very, very short form content. Another universe and which can be monetized through advertising. Another universe demands a very, very large format deep content. So this is a challenge the as a publisher have to really solve when it comes to attention. Thanks for that very deep answer. I think that one of the things that I most appreciate from your comments is the need for from an audience perspective, the new the need for newness. And that need for newness drives exploration. And that exploration is what is driving pretty much a lot of content discovery on that page. So from our perspective, I would say to that that we tabula through our algorithms or technology. We strive to continue to provide publishers with the tools that you require in order to continue to effectively engage with the audiences. Of course, we also don't require a third party cookie, but we'll get to that a little bit later in the hour. So given that we've established that the attention economy is is more rather the lack of attention economy is is is right there. Could you talk a little bit, Sunil, about how you see the future of news consumption? What are the tools and methods that you employ to make sure that you know you're top of mind for your readers? What are the other ways you keep your audience attention and monetization while reducing the reliance on advertising dollars? Sunil. Thanks, Anand. Thank you for having me. And, you know, it's a great panel. Hey, man, then ready for believe some very valid points. They're both working for huge, very credible publishing houses in India. So I just, you know, I want to just, you know, add to some of the stuff they said, which is to just sort of highlight some of the challenges which we're dealing with. And as we proceed in this chat, I'll probably, you know, we'll all collectively be able to recommend solutions and talk about how we can, you know, deal with those. So on the audience side, what I have seen, I've been doing this for about 10 years, you know, in a couple of big major publishing houses. We are audience, you know, and it's, you know, I just want to put this out there that it's not becoming easier. You know what I've seen over 10 years, like he mentioned, our yields are lower than they were 10 years ago. It's not just on the yield front, everything, you know, somehow becomes more complicated year on year. And, you know, monetization is also one, you know, following the same trajectory. So what, what, what some of the thoughts which I wanted to share, you know, with your audience and, you know, what, what, what publishers are dealing with right now is the audience become very promiscuous. Okay. We like some that came out mentioned earlier, there was a lot of brand loyalty earlier. We had a lot of direct traffic, a lot of pages per session, that's becoming lesser and lesser. We are in a situation where a lot of content is being churned out by, you know, the desks, each newsroom has its desks. And, you know, it's very similar. And most people now, you know, if you go to, if you read, you know, a few news stories and you go and ask them after a little while, you know, where exactly, where did you read that news? They're not really able to pinpoint exactly where they picked it up, you know, the contents, contents very, very similar. So this is something which, you know, we have to spend a lot of time then working on brand. And, you know, the second point which all of us have worked on over the years is quality of content. But unfortunately, that becomes really difficult when your newsroom to a very large degree is actually writing to service algorithms, not to service humans. Okay, this is a very pertinent point I want to, you know, raise that, you know, a lot of our discoverability is happening on, on through search or through social, and they have set the norms for what your mobile page has to look like. And, you know, headline image, summary, scroll depth, I think, you know, we are seeing it becoming lesser and lesser. I think people are reading two paragraphs and bouncing out, you know, in most cases. And subscription is early days. I'm very impressed with what the Hindu has done. And, you know, it's one of the trailblazers here in this country. Times is also working on it, but it's going to be a slow and steady climb for us to pick up on subscription monetization. And so this is just a summary of some of the things which I'm seeing, you know, the ecosystem evolving towards, I'm not saying that there are no solutions. There are, you know, a lot of things which all of us are working on, there's great tech coming into the ecosystem from, you know, partners like the Boola, etc. So, you know, algorithms aren't just bad, they are good as well. But, you know, just to summarize, you know, the attention economy, etc., something we've been seeing for a long time. And I think some of the panelists have spoken up more towards our text effort, okay? A lot of our efforts are on text, but at the time's network, we spend a lot of time and resources delivering video content, video news, right? That's probably one of our primary objectives. And there, the attention economy is, you know, most obvious, though, you know, there's a huge, there's a new animal out there called the three second viewer, you know, they come in, they are happy with consuming three seconds and leaving, you know, then that makes it so complicated for creating a business model around it. But that's what it is. And I'm sure we'll figure out some way to work around that. Thanks, Sunil. I most identify with the three second user comment and I'll come back to that in a minute. Samarth, over to you. Speak to us a little bit about how you're driving this from your perspective at Asianism. So, you know, firstly, thanks for having me here and I'd like to be with all the esteemed guests. Now, I think fairly valid points by Hemant and, you know, specifically, I'll just, you know, pick out one thing that Sunil mentioned, right? And the fact that we are, we're, we're, we're serving algorithms, right, more than the humans as much as, and, and, you know, how and what this is happening. So let me, let me just raise some light, some, some light on, you know, the three second view, for instance, that's one side of the story. Like the other side is that TikTok records 45 minutes a day, right? Yeah. So, and the other side is that, you know, TikTok records 45 minutes per day on a session in a day, allowing, you know, users to consume it could all well be, you know, that they're coming from different sources or getting discovered from different areas. Having said that, you know, what is important, I think that we, that we need to do, which is not happening too much and we're sort of focusing at Asianism, is, you know, instead of telling the user a lot, okay, this is the ad, this is the content, this is what you like, this is what I've got from retargeting and all of that, there's quite less of listening from the user purpose as well, right? So that side of things and that side of the story, right, via interaction or via comments or whichever way, videos, for instance, form a big part of this strategy, right, as well, you know, when you see, for instance, whenever you see YouTube, for that matter. Now, this attention economy, what it's doing is sort of moving in very aggressively into the psyche, right? So when you see, for example, a YouTube video or two plays itself, outside of that, when you're watching a game, the music starts permeating into your conscience even before the game begins, right? So that those are the techniques that we're using to convert sort of a three-second or two 10-second ad best on and you know, how and when then that opens up other avenues as well. So I think one thing is around listening more to the users. The other thing, other point that I like to mention would be, you know, the particular shift of the audience segments that we were catering to say 10 years from now, right? We used to hear that buzzword of 18 to 24, 18 to 24 is there and everywhere. Now that dude is 28 too, you know, and that that that's a shift that's been made. And it's not that your 18 to 21 don't exist now. On the other hand, you have other other generations, the Gen Z, which is sort of 10 years even younger and they are consuming content and perform a bulk of your users as well. So, you know, adding to the challenges that we had to cater to a particular set of audience. Okay, this is my audience pool, this and that. The cohorts have changed and they've become more deeper in terms of, you know, low and high art more than this age group, this geographies and and then I think that's that's one way we are looking at it. And we're trying to cater to, I mean, you know, because otherwise, if you catering to geos and demos and all the other 25 parameters that GA would throw at you, you'll end up nowhere, right? If you were to sort of club them together in terms of, you know, all all the people here in this call believe revenue is the prime most important. So, you know, if you were to put it in terms of the art pool, this thing, right, you have, you have a huge bulk of people, right? That's that's in the lower art you cater to them at the same time that rate of being maintained for the premium users and which are less of them. And they will give you your time spent and all the all the metrics that we've grown up watching, right? But I think for us, the strategy at Asian Art, we are evolving more around these two cohorts and trying to see how much of it we can overlap with the audience demo of the information and you know, other parameters that we get from our various partners. Including tabula. So we're trying to balance these two things out and taking it from there. And, you know, immediacy constant, I mean, personalization, right? Personalization part, right? These two, three things have to go hand in hand, along with your data horizontal sort of that overall is all the same condition. So, so yeah, I mean, that's that's where we are sort of planning out things and obviously learning from fine gentlemen out there as well, and and tabula. So, you know, it's it's been a pleasure so far, but it's changing with every year, with every year is also a bit of an overestimation, I think, with every six months with the COVID pandemic, so that adaptability, having a nimble and an agile team is what we are sort of moving towards more and more each passing day. I truly appreciate that, Samarth, and I totally identify. And I think that from maybe from every year, every half year, I think possibly every quarter we pivot and change and focus and revisit. And it really connects very well to what you were saying earlier about having a little bit more sophisticated user segmentation, different cohorts, how do we pivot and change and curate the experience, the content experience, the page experience to every single type of user. So, I think that's a very strong point. And I also identify deeply with writing content for algorithms. And I think that from our perspective at tabula, we strive to continue to build tools and technology that drive specifically that and put the user in the middle. So, our tools for editorial teams like Newsroom, what insight does that give them on where the interests of the users lie just in the in the space and how we can curate content to drive that engagement in an ongoing discovery. So, thank you both, Shanil and Samarth, for your comments on this topic. So, speaking of users and younger users, like you started out, many teens these days, my own teens included, will consume their content from social media and the likes of many, many outlets that we all are familiar with. And I, on the other hand, go to my favorite news website, possibly websites, several times today to check on what's happening, but the kids who are now 15, they have no idea about what is a news website and how does that operate. So, my question, I guess, to the forum at this point is 20 years from now, when our 15-year-olds are 35, how do you think they'll get their news? How do websites protect themselves if people are able to obtain news from non-news generating platforms? Over to you, Hemant. I think so, this is a very, very interesting part of our conversation today, because I've got two 15-year-olds in my house, boys, and if you ask them news, the definition of news is very different. So, for my younger one, he is a soccer geek, and for him news is equal to anything around soccer across the world. And is there anything else which interests him? Maybe even around 10, 15, 20 percent here and there. You asked my elder one who's a gaming geek. For him, news is equal to anything which is happening in the world of gaming. Now, to start off with, in my view, firstly, this entire definition of news, what it would mean to them would, in my way, go through a huge shift. So, even if you look today, you have products, news products which are available, which are called new gen content sites, which is pass feed and scoop food, witty feed, etc., etc. Now, it's not that they don't cover the mainstream news, current affairs, things which are breaking out, which are developing during the day. But the format of writing content is very different, which is what is called as creating site content, which is picking up the story and going a little side track on that in terms of investing on research and trying to give you a different view in terms of consumption. So, the point number one I wanted to make is the whole essence of what we define as news today would definitely go through a huge shift tomorrow. That's point number one. Point number two, for all those who would continue to consume news, so sometime back, a couple of years back, I went to a school of journalism in Noida and I was addressing a batch of say 120, 130 young journalists who were about to pass out. So, I said, hey, I'm sure all of you watch news, so all of them said yes, 100% of them, they watch news, they read news. So, I said, when you have to read news or watch news, what's your most, which is your favorite channel? So, most of them were like Archduke and Times and this. So, I said, wow, that's nice. So, I said, when you want to watch entertaining news, no, so I asked them. So, when do you watch the other one of India Today, which is the one? Sorry, I just skipped it. What are you doing here? The Shawning, which is the other brand of India Today in Hindi. In Hindi? No, no, no, no. The one which is Lullantop. So, they said, yes, when we want to watch entertaining news, we go to Lullantop. But when I want to watch very serious, credible source of news, then his choice of channels are very different. So, if you look at globally today what's happening, your top four tech companies in Silicon Valley, they are all investing behind creating a news product. So, Google recently launched Showcase in India. You have Apple, which is there out with news plus, Microsoft investing in the AML to build the next generation of news product. So, everyone is out there building news because they realize that news is important because of the frequency of consumption. While they would continue to be the primary platforms for content discovery and creation, content discovery, but the core brand would continue to stay and extend further. So, whether you look at Lokmat when it comes to Marathi or you look at Hindu, Malayalam Madhurama, I don't think so. They're going to perish over the next 20, 30 years. But the way and the manner in which the content is going to get discovered is going to be different. So, we're moving into connected device variables. So, there are going to be very newer ways in which these forms of content will get discovered. But still, some of these old age news media brands, they would continue to exist. And over the next 20 years, they themselves would have reinvented. Now, just to give you a small example, Hanan, it's just been a four-year journey at Lokmat. So, from print to digital. And I think so, we just didn't do print to digital. We did print to digital to video. So, with a very, very lean team structure, today we are the second largest news and infotainment network in Marathi language video network on Facebook. So, if you talk about ABP, which is the largest television channel in Marathi, ABP, Maza, that's the number one video network on Facebook. We are number two. We are larger than some of the television network. Now, why? Because the kind of content we create, whether it is for YouTube or Facebook, it's not a volume play. It's a value play. So, if you are able to even create five to eight pieces of content in a day, but you are delivering value to your user, the content gets automatically discovered and shared. So, I want to bring back the premise of the conversation saying, in the news media business, content will continue to take the priority seat when it comes to any kind of business or economics which has to be created around it. Like, if I ask all of you today, what is your unit economics of the business? If you ask me personally, I would say the article page. In today's economy, I'm not talking about video. I'll come to that separately. Now, you would ask me why would I say that unit economics of my business is an article page because the more a user comes and consumes article page, it adds up to my saleable ad inventory. And even today, there are advertisers who ask us that how much would it take to advertise on home page? And then you go through the educative journey of explaining you, explaining the advertisers that, dude, today, the guy lands up on the article page and not on the home page. So it is very, very important as a news media owner for you to create a very, very firm objective and a model around which you want to build your business. For example, for some of the publishers in India, they're very clear. They do not want to distribute content to the multimedia platform like on social media platforms and news aggregator platforms because they believe that they have to become the destination for users to come and consume content. In my view, however hard you might try, news is more or less a commodity. So the more you are able to distribute your content across multiple platforms and it becomes very easy to discover, the more and more you start creating a connect with the consumer, given the fact that the quality and the standards of content remain the same. Aman, thank you for that. And I think that what I most identify with is what you were saying in your opening comment around what, wait a minute, let's just redefine and calibrate on what is the definition of news. I think that that is quite a strong view on the topic. Sunil, over to you. In 15, 20 years, our 15-year-olds of today, where are they going to be when they consume news? It's a nightmare scenario for me to try to think of, 15, 20 years from now, I have no clue what this bunch is. I have two kids at home, their consumption patterns are nothing, which you can predict or how they consume it. But just coming back to news, news will remain ubiquitous. Credible journalism is important. Some of the folks who are on this call represent some of the best media houses in the country, if not the world. So we know that's a very important service which we are doing. It's also complicated, expensive, and all the other aspects which go into gathering and disseminating news. Coming back to digital, and I just want to press upon a monetization point. This is a monetization discussion, about I think six, seven years, the original Tabula team ran, etc. came in and showed us the newsroom product. And we saw it and we liked it at that point in time. What I'm trying to say is that this is a time where we have to reinvent our newsrooms as well, especially the digital newsrooms. These have been large groups of people sitting in one location, sometimes annoyed, churning out eight articles per day. You're trying to hit your caps of five, six hundred articles for the day. I think that model has to evolve now and using tools like newsrooms. So the idea, what I'm trying to say is that we should not be chasing comscore glory anymore. The whole logic that more page views means more money, that is over. Of course, you have to grow in users and page views as you become a larger site. But there's so much oversupply that at some level the yields are down and we've complicated it by basically creating a situation of oversupply. And that's very evident in our non-English businesses as you and the bullet would also see that it's just so much supplies, difficult to monetize it well. Hopefully that will change. But what I want to again emphasize is that now in the newsrooms, you have to dissect your newsrooms at the highest level. You have to do justice to the brands we represent and the highest quality content that flow should not stop at all. But that's not necessarily the content which will make you a lot of money. A lot of us have seen that some of our entertainment desks are the most valuable. I know from our relationship with the Bula, the more entertainment content we send to Bula, our monetization is higher. So what I'm trying to say is that it's a good opportunity right now to drill down into our newsrooms, not to chase the billion pages and the hundreds of billions of unique visitors like we've been doing just single-mindedly in that direction. But somehow now strike the right balance with the right partners on monetization as well. We're not only going to get kudos and appreciation now for unique numbers because I think post-COVID monetization has come much more into the forefront as a success metric than only the audience metrics which most businesses were looking at earlier. So I think that's a little nugget of information I just want to share from the way we are looking at our businesses. Basically, we're looking at our newsrooms, desks and units where we are seeing better yield and better monetization from partners. Not just the banners, but even partners like the Bula. So that's a concerted effort going on and I think slowly, slowly most newsrooms will make efforts in that direction. I had a point here to make on Shawnee's comment. So Shawnee, we have observed that the moment your page views go down and here I'm not talking about comm score inspired page views. Here I'm talking about genuine consumer led page views. We have seen a direct proportional rise or fall in network revenues the moment your page views go down because your tabula ads are served below your article. Your in-stream widget is placed in between the article. So the moment your number of article read or page views go down, your third party network revenue automatically gets impacted. See the reason being your direct revenues will always be a small percentage of your entire field inventory, but the network revenues become fillers. So I fundamentally believe that when it comes to unit economics of a news business, the article page or the page views become very, very imperative. True. You're absolutely right. I just was trying to say that at a newsroom level, at a desk level, it makes sense to now identify the valuable desks, staff those more where you're garnering higher yield, push more content, because this is a monetization discussion. This is an audience discussion. You would have had a different day, but I'm just saying that their bears merit because a lot of us have staffed languages teams. I'm not talking about only languages, people who are only in one vernacular language, but for instance, at times we do 14 languages. Maybe 12 out of those 14 are not that profitable as they could be, but I say in the future as we evolve, I think an effort can be made using the tools available to us, which can help newsrooms become more efficient for monetization. I think that as we speak about the unit of economics and the article page and the user engagement and the associated revenue with it, and we look at least from our perspective, when we look at how can we drive value to publishers to continue to do what you guys are doing, not only from an audience, but also from a monetization perspective, we tie those two in together. It's pretty much what you guys have been saying about the type of content that I'm writing and how much of it am I writing and publishing. Certainly, there's something of an ecosystem to be discussed over there. Plus, I think that with a product like Tabula News, from our perspective, is that we are also not only trying to do stuff on the page together with our publisher partners, but we're also trying to help disseminate your content and your articles to fresh new audiences so that they are either discovering the brand or deepening the relationship with the brand. By bringing those new users, we're trying to make the pie all the more bigger for each publisher respectively. The innovation of what goes on the page as well as what goes off of the page in India currently, Vivo phones, Huawei phones, and others. Certainly, that for us will remain a focal point and we continue to try and support in the best way possible. From monetization perspective, we had a very unique experiment which we did last year. So last year, we had about, can you hear me? Yeah, yeah, go ahead. So the last year, we used to have separate team and we used to have a separate digital team. So digital, there were about 15 or people. So what we did was we created much the sales force and we created a digital team. And the result was that we got about 120% increase in the direct tax sales revenue. And this was at the time which the India was facing one of its worst time as far as the digital advertising business is concerned. And this is continuing for us. So like in the, if you will see this quarter, we will, our direct sales business will be about 150% more than the last quarter, same quarter last year. So what we have done today, we have started is something called digital center of excellence in the Hindu digital learning academy. So this center of excellence picks up a handful of sales team members, puts them into six weeks intensive hands on digital sales spending and aims to build a formidable sales force that can solve problems faced by the advertisers. So we feel that there is a large opportunity in actually pooling the resources of the organization, solving the problems for the advertisers and in the process create a fairly good unlock a lot of value. So this was our experience when it comes to revenue from our direct sales force. Thanks for that addition project. I think that the digital is certainly the most innovative word I've heard today. So let's take a step out for a minute of the monetization strategy and possibly the individual digital property and speak a little bit about, let's speak about industry changes. So last year, Google announced two updates core web vitals and Chrome no longer supporting third party cookies for the power you guys preparing for these changes. Tell us a little bit about that. Like four vitals actually is not really a large challenge because most of it what they are talking about HTTPS mobile friendliness say browsing that was actually I think all the publishers were quite on on it. But the challenge for us was the very, very large advertising intrusive industry shares and all that. So that's the only piece as far as the core vitals are concerned, which we are, we have to address. So our teams are now working very closely with the advertisers advert and once Google announces even advertiser listen. So when we go and tell them don't put a larger and they may have a lot of opposition to it. But when Google says most of the industry listens, which is a great part of it. I think our biggest challenge is cutting down, shaving down this one second of download time. That's a nightmare. So you know, so like you do whatever it is one second can make so much of difference and the complexity for us happens because there are a lot of third party scripts working on the side. So that's the complexity for us to solve, but balance site, the web vitals is not a larger challenge, but larger challenge will be the third party cookies. So if you look at it, what is basically cookie doing for us? It is helping us to do a targeted advertising. So if it helps us targeted advertising and it is basically it has a root in the data collection. So we have three implications. One, what will happen to our programmatic revenue? So the programmatic world is dramatically data reliant. And this is the ecosystem, which is likely to change very dramatically once this Google stops our third party cookies. And at this point in time, we have a lot of uncertainty about the ecosystem. So we would really look up to people like Kamula to guide us and say that, okay, how do we really work with you guys and try to see that we have a lesser impact on the programmatic advertising. Second part is we also feel that maybe our dependence on the big tech will increase, but the good factor there is we work closely with the big tech company. So maybe it's a area which may not really be a large shake up for us. And thirdly, I think this data platforms which are there, will they be ready to really emerge to really solve our problems. So given this, what are the implications? So we are saying that what could be alternative of cookies? So we are figuring out that. So we feel that there will be some alternative to cookies will emerge and you know, cross-site tracking might happen. There will be a lot of tech ecosystem is fairly large. There are a lot of smart players like you guys itself, right? So I think there will be some problems is what we believe alternative to cookies might come in. We feel that app advertising will grow phenomenally because that's a very, very, that's a world which is very, it's a wall garden. But to a certain extent is much higher logging rate. People spend a lot of time. So we are preparing for that. We feel that, you know, like our own data, which at this point in time is not much important because we actually don't have too much of data. Will advertiser may start looking at it at a bit more interest. I think login is compulsory logging is an idea which we are trying. It's very high risk in India. So we would want like, you know, we will be prepared for it. But if all the larger publisher ecosystem starts believing that, you know, login is compulsory, maybe we'll move that. And finally, I think universal ideas is something which if all the publishers come together, maybe we can create our own universal ideas and, you know, safeguard others. So basically, in the long term, we will build our data capabilities so that, you know, but that's a long term. It's not a short term. In a short term game, we have a very, very, maybe 2-3% people data we have. That's not really what we want. But long term, it is that we need to build data capabilities and short term, maybe these are the things which are likely. Thanks for that, Pradeep. Samarth, can you share with us a little bit around the changes that you see with the two Google releases, please? Yeah. So I think, you know, the four web vitals part, that sort of hasn't had as much as an impact like Pradeep also mentioned, as much as the third party cookies being blocked on Chrome specifically. Now, that's not like this is an absolute surprise that has come. It has been around the news floating around until it has eventually happened. Other browsers already had, for instance, Safari, Firefox, way, way before. And frankly, you know, what it takes to, takes every, all of us to, we still have, we then have to find ways of monetizing our first, having first party data. Eventually it will come down to that, whichever way you look at it, either via sign-ins or, you know, other ways. We'll have to generate and have enough first party data, like a lot of advertisers are moving towards it as well, since a long time now. They have their own set of audiences that you will uniquely identify and they keep targeting them, so we get our audience goals and so on and so forth. Nothing to say that, you know, over a period of time that, you know, the publishers will also have to move to that. Also, you know, it's not like the third party data is cookies are going away. They're going to still remain within the browser, just that they're not being exposed to a set of stakeholders. Now, what does that mean? So, there could be a browser-based model that could evolve, right, basis the browser and the interaction within that space. How do we interact with the big tech and find a way to sort of get access to that information, right? Also, you know, they're also coming up with cohorts, right, rather than a very specific user-level targeting. You can mirror certain sets of audiences, basis behavior and all of that and target on those parameters, rather than getting more specific. It's not like it will be an absolute end of the road. Obviously, the next would be cost far wider than they were in the past. So, in that sense, yeah, I mean, see, also, it's coming on the back of a big issue that the entire world is facing around the user previous data, and that's the fundamental reason why this thing is happening. At some point, it will make the audience and the users understand that this is what they gain out of it, right? And then get into a consensual way of providing access to their information and slowly evolve in that zone. So, that translates into more of first-party data for you, which obviously can be monitored at a much higher rate. So, this shift will also happen on the audience side as well over a period of time, and the gathering of this kind of information, which is for first-party. And some publishers, for instance, Vox and New York Times, they already have their own targeting systems based on the first-party data. So, this is a place, this is zone wherein a lot of smaller publishers would face the heat. I feel a lot more because in the absence of, because you're just reducing the percentages right now, when your absolute number goes down, the percentage becomes really miniscule and from that perspective. Also, the identity-based, uniquely identify, if you're able to identify a user and retract via that, and we won't take that step already initially, and then we move on to all our other ways of targeting. That's possibly the way I'll put it, that's what at least it does. All right. Thank you so much for this wonderful discussion. I want to thank my panelists, Mr. Charles, Mr. Sharma, Mr. Ghairullah, and Mr. Jain for joining us today. And I want to hand it over to Mr. Hanan Fajal for the last comments. Over to you. I'd like to thank everybody for participating today. Thank you to our friends at Exchange for Media who helped moderate today's event. Thank you to our esteemed panelists. Thank you very much to the Ebola marketing team, to Suita and Ran. And thank you, of course, to our publisher account team for the India market. Garvita, Richard, and Neha for all of your contributions, taking such good care of our publishers every day of the year, and especially during these times. Thank you very much to everybody for watching. See you next time. Be well. Be safe.