MUMBAI: The fourth edition of the Indiantelevision.com’s Vidnet had a successful run of the marquee “Creators Track”, on the first day of the two-day-long video and content conclave that wrapped up on Thursday in Mumbai. The track had some of the finest creators, writers, and directors from the OTT world speaking on many important topics like how to write good stories and how to make them travel beyond national boundaries.

The day-long conference was opened by Indiantelevision.com founder, CEO, and editor Anil Wanvari and some of the speakers by an auspicious lamp lighting ceremony. 

MUMBAI: The ‘Business and Tech Track’ of the fourth edition of Indiantelevision.com’s two-day-long video and content conclave, Vidnet, became a raging success with some of the most successful and powerful names from the digital video industry coming together and highlighting the challenges and opportunities that they are dealing with right now. A special screening of “The Hitler Chronicles: Blueprint for Dictators” and “The Bisexuals” was also organised for the attendees
Organised on the first day of Vidnet 2019, parallel to a ‘Creators Track’, the ‘Business and Tech Track’ hosted a number of panel discussions and fireside chats to present an in depth image of the functioning of the video ecosystem

Following the positive response for its first season, Star Plus has decided to expand its footprints for the second season of “TED Talks India Nayi Baat” hosted by Shah Rukh Khan into English and other regional markets.

Created in a collaboration with TED, the globally celebrated nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, the show, which was aired on Star Plus in Hindi in its first season, will now have English, Tamil, Bangla and Telugu feeds. The show will be telecast from November 2 on weekends at 9.30 pm.

MUMBAI: Information and Broadcasting (I&B) minister Prakash Javadekar has suggested that there is a need to have some kind of regulation for over-the-top platforms (OTT) on the lines of print, electronic media, and films.

In an interaction with PTI journalists at the news agency’s headquarters, Javadekar said that the mainstream media outlets have complained that there was no level-playing field as OTT platforms are completely unregulated.

“I have sought suggestions on how to deal with this because there are regular feature films coming on OTT — good, bad and ugly. So how to deal with this, who should monitor, who should regulate. There is no certification body for OTT platforms and likewise news portals also,” he said.

MUMBAI: Public broadcaster Prasar Bharati has told the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to mandate distribution platform operators (DPOs) to make the mandatory Doordarshan channels available even to their inactive customers.

In its submission on the consultation paper ‘Tariff related issues for Broadcasting and Cable Services’, the pubcaster stated that the regulations/tariff order should delink provisioning of DD channels with network capacity of the operator, technology adopted by the platform, tariff plan offered by the operator to its subscribers.

“In the context of the consultation issues, Prasar Bharati is of the view that, in the larger public interest, the channels notified by the Central Government shall be made available to subscribers over and above the network capacity subscribed by the subscriber without any additional monetary burden on the subscriber. This would be in line with the intent of the Cable TV Act,” the pubcaster said in its submission to the TRAI.

Ad investment is shifting towards internet formats, but the rate at which that is happening depends on the sector; food and soft drinks, for example, still pour around two thirds of advertising investment into TV, a new WARC report points out.

The latest Global Ad Trends, from the newly relaunched WARC Data, focusses on benchmarking ad investment by product category, based on a new industry standard measure of net advertising investment data across 19 product categories in 23 markets, including the United States, United Kingdom and China.

Food and soft drinks are far less likely to have been disrupted by e-commerce, so the need for high levels of digital ad spend to facilitate a path to purchase is reduced, the report says.

On the other hand, the pivot to online advertising is particularly stark within financial services and retail, with both sectors having invested heavily in developing digital platforms to serve their customers in recent years.

AMUMBAI: As over-the-top (OTT) platforms have started capturing audiences from tier II, tier-III cities, beyond the top metro cities, all major players in the ecosystem have upped their investment significantly. Both international and homegrown players are trying to win more consumers with original content, innovative marketing strategy, and right distribution partnerships

Despite the fact that the market is thriving, certain challenges like content protection, regulatory issues, monetisation, lack of measurement system are bothering video streaming services. Indiantelevision.com's flagship event Vidnet 2019 summit is ready to facilitate conversations on the opportunities and challenges of the ecosystem.

It may not be the best of times for India Inc. but it will not hold back its digital advertising spends this festive season. In fact, according to industry experts, the medium looks all set for a festive bonanza, with a healthy surge of 20-25 per cent being predicted for the period between Ganesh Chaturthi and New Year. 

Ashish Bhasin, CEO, Dentsu Aegis Network, Asia Pacific, says, “I think it will be good. I expect it to grow at 20-25 per cent. In some ways digital will gain from the general slowdown. Particularly, performance marketing becomes very important for clients because they want to drive sales in a short period of time.” 

Traditionally, businesses reserve 40 per cent of their advertising budgets for the festive season, but the first half of this year saw big ticket events such as IPL, General elections and the Cricket World Cup which put a strain on marketing budgets. In such a scenario, given the cost efficiency of the digital medium, even big ad spenders on traditional formats such as FMCG, auto, consumer durables, BFSI, smartphone manufacturers and others may be seen shifting a part of their ad spends to digital.  

MUMBAI: Distribution platform operators (DPOs) believe that broadcasters have misused the flexibility available to them to give a discount on the sum of a-la-carte as high as 90 per cent. The operators have shared their views on Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (TRAI) consultation paper (CP) on ‘Tariff related issues for Broadcasters and Cable services. The industry has also given mixed views over the implementation of the 15 per cent cap on discount for a-la-carte by broadcaster
TRAI had released the consultation paper seeking responses from stakeholders to review the new tariff regime on 16 August 2019. In its consultation paper, the authority informed that it has observed that broadcasters are offering bouquets at a discount of up to 70 per cent of the sum of a-la-carte rates of pay channels constituting those bouquets. “It indicates that in absence of any restriction on the discount on the offering of bouquets, broadcasters are making prices of a-la-carte channels illusory thereby impacting the a-la-carte choice of channels by consumers and giving huge discounts on bouquets to push even those channels which are not the choice of subscribers,” said TRAI.

The economic slowdown may have affected several sectors but for digital agencies, it is turning out to be more business and better margins. In the last one year, brands have reduced their adex on print and TV and turned to the cost-efficient digital medium where they are finding better ROI.

Brands have started spending more on programmatic advertising, where they can track every penny spent. Some companies are taking the native advertising route to build brand image among their TG.