Gyan Gupta, CEO, Dainik Bhaskar Digital talks about dainikbhaskar.com strengthening its virtual presence and focus on the biggest Hindi-speaking market in the largest State in India, Uttar Pradesh
BY SIMRAN SABHERWAL
Dainikbhaskar.com, the flagship Hindi website of the Dainik Bhaskar Group, has strengthened its virtual presence in the State of Uttar Pradesh (UP) – the largest State in India and the biggest Hindi-speaking market. Talking about the increased focus on UP, Gyan Gupta, CEO of Dainik Bhaskar Digital, shares the insight that UP has a huge appetite for content, particularly for news that is not filtered, and staying true to this will be a key priority for dainikbhaskar.com (db. com). He says db.com has worked hard to understand the needs of the UP audiences. “The biggest challenge is to make sure that we understand the market needs accurately and have the right offering for the market,” Gupta adds.
Though the Dainik Bhaskar Group has a presence across 14 States via its Print publications and is in 30 cities across seven States courtesy its radio arm, it has no physical presence in UP. Now, the digital firm has launched a 360-degree campaign with the tagline ‘Na Khabrey Dabegi, Na Khabrey Rukegi’. urrently, db.com gets a significant part of its traffic from UP, just after Delhi, Mumbai and Rajasthan, and its new campaign could help grow the numbers. Gupta believes that though there are challenges, what makes db.com stand apart is that it is a strong and relevant product for the consumer. “We are a product-focused organization and it’s important to work on the product. We ensure that our products like the mobile site are fast and efficient. We have a large editorial team and spend time, effort and energy to ensure that the content we produce is differentiated, and has an edge so that consumers appreciate it.” It is this focus that has helped db.com become the second largest news website in the country and the first language site to feature in the top three.
Vaue for the advertiser
From the advertiser perspective, it is reach and more importantly, relevant reach that matters. Gupta says that DB Digital is one of the few media companies that utilizes audience targeting and works on three pillars - technology, user experience and creatives; its technology targets the audience based on interest level and delivers a much better RoI for advertisers. Working on the user experience has resulted in ad spots being viewed at a much higher rate than the global benchmark. Gupta reiterates, “We work on the product, user experience and the design and make sure that the site design is right so that the ad is viewed. Most of our ad spots are viewed 50% more when compared to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) global standards of viewability.” DB Digital has focused on creatives in local language. Gupta explains, “Advertisers have seen response anywhere between four to 20 times higher because of a language creative. Our internal DB studio works with advertisers to make sure that we have the right creative going on the site.” Talking about the importance of advertisers being on language sites, he states, “If an advertiser takes one English site and a language site like ours, he adds 65% more unique audience which gives better RoI.”
Growth of language
Looking at the first quarter results of of DB Digital (Q1 FY 2016-17), business revenue grew by 22% to Rs 123 million from Rs 101 million (QoQ). In addition to dainikbhaskar.com being the No. 1 website in Hindi, divyabhaskar.com continues to be largest website in Gujarati. Gupta believes that the future is bright for language sites and explains, “We will add almost 400 million people in India on digital. Almost all of them would come from local language and Hindi being the largest, there is huge scope. The same goes to Gujarati and Marathi.” He also adds that while the current Internet penetration is 24%, English penetration is at 11%, showing that a large part of an audience which is online is not the English audience and advertisers cannot miss out on language sites and that 75% of growth will come from language users.” While advertisers are increasing looking at the digital medium, monetization is still a challenge. Says Gupta, “Monetization is a challenge and will remain a challenge for a while. While a certain set of advertisers understand the importance of language site advertising, others are yet to come on board.” He adds that Auto, BFSI and Entertainment understand the medium, and there is traction from the FMCG sector which is heavy on videos and moving to programmatic buying. Gupta also estimates that digital spends will move to 30% of the overall marketing spend in the next couple of years. The Dainik Bhaskar mobile app and Divya Bhaskar app have seen increased video consumption and this has led to greater focus and investment on videos.
As for the future, Gupta says, “We will see a lot of product improvements as well as innovation, going forward.”
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