While oftentimes the discussion around news companies and their audiences takes center stage, advertising is still a big part of the revenue equation. 

At the recent INMA South Asia News Media Festival, several panels looked at different perspectives: AI, data, content-to-commerce, and Gen Z.

AI: a gamechanger for digital advertising

Smita Salgaonkar, principal architect of marketing technology for Google, told festival attendees that many companies are in a place of conversation right now in their AI journey with board members and leadership, but it can be terrifying to take that first action step.

The power lies in companies understanding their own data first — that data will aid in the success or failure in using GenAI, Salgaonkar said: “We still struggle with data creating multiple silos and not getting a consistent view of your own data.”

Salgaonkar asked Daniel Hulme, chief AI officer for creative transformation at WPP in London, where he thinks organisations should begin.

“Always start with a problem,” Hulme said. “I know there is an impulse to build technology, to get seduced and excited by technology, and forget what are the problems we are trying to solve. So if you can, identify the frictions and figure out which ones you’re going to go after, and then build your data capability over time.”

Hulme said he recognises there’s a culture surrounding AI that can be daunting. One of the issues is the technology is getting so good, it’s difficult to know what is true. He knows people now who are creating safe words to make sure they’re talking to humans and not AIs.

“I actually think our industry will solve this problem,” Hulme said. “I think there’s a way of authenticating or determining the harmfulness of content and then forcing people to authenticate content before it gets pushed out to those channels.”

There are also energy and environmental concerns with the use of AI models, as well as superintelligence concerns of people at some point building conscious AIs. Legal concerns also come up a lot with AI technology and the issue of job loss.

Hulme said what he is seeing is not job loss created by the automation of labour, but people moving into less tedious positions when that work can be accomplished through automation. 

Data on Gen X spending habits

In undoubtedly an eye-opening conversation from The Times Group’s COO of Publication/Executive Director Mohit Jain, gave attendees invaluable data and information on the consumer group that is changing the way adults spend. 

Gen X is indulging in ways once unthinkable according to Jain, who says the American trend of living life to the fullest and being unapologetic about spending on oneself has made its way to India. This new way of thinking comes from less emphasis on a larger family unit and more emphasis on smaller nuclear families.

“There has been a landmark shift in family structure and social norms that has altered the mindset and thus the expenditure for the modern adult,” Jain said. “There are fewer dependents and more disposable income.”

Modern families are also subscribing to the idea of loving detachment, Jain said. The dynamic between children and parents is about independent choices, which is leading parents to feel less guilty about spending money on themselves as they believe they have fulfilled their duties to their families. 

“This detachment is coming from a rise in equality and empowerment among all family members and the belief we have the capability to solve our own problems,” Jain said. “Empowerment has come from the democratisation of information, and information is power. Democratisation of information is a result of the internet revolution, which has accelerated economic opportunities.” 

Gone are the days of norms like control and possessiveness in the family dynamic, and that is being replaced with a sense of mutual space and independence — leaving room for adults to explore their hobbies and spend on themselves.

The rise of social media is playing a crucial role in this transformation since consumers are constantly being bombarded with pictures and videos of people living large. On top of that, advancements in healthcare and technology means adults are living longer with more time to spend on food, fashion, fitness and music — all areas where Gen X is leading in spending. 

“Additionally they are at the peak of their careers and they enjoy enormous spending power,” Jain said. “Marketers were previously focused on youth as a primary consumer segment, however this demographic is becoming financially conservative and self-sufficient.”

Jain notes youth are looking for financial freedom more than ever before.

“It’s hard to find a category where Gen Z is outspending Gen X,” Jain said. “Advertising follows consumption, and a large part of consumption is happening in this age group and advertisers are allocating their resources accordingly.”

Outlook India builds content-to-commerce

Starting a project with no budget and no dedicated resources doesn’t sound like the fastest way to success, yet Outlook India is proving that by focusing on their main goal of building something of great value to their audience, significant accomplishments can be seen.

Udit Jain, vice president of digital strategy and growth for Outlook, outlined the roadmap he used to build a content to commerce business, breaking it down into three parts.

The journey

Since they had no real budget or dedicated resources, Outlook relied on partnerships and a revenue share model. 

The strategy

Creating something of value to the customer meant they wanted to help the customer evaluate products and make the right choices when purchasing. The next question they needed to answer was how they could create value for their audience.

“Most importantly, the Indian market is very value conscious. Everyone out there is looking for value when they’re buying products and services,” Jain said. 

They wanted to solve common consumer problems such as how a lot of products are complicated, like appliances or TVs. The influencer strategy is convincing, but influencers are by no means experts. Salespeople don’t always give the most reliable advice, online research takes time, and the average shopper is not an analyst. 

Outlook decided to hone in solely on customers with the intent to purchase.

“We are not focused on building awareness, comparing products, or doing any of those things. We are looking for people who are right now searching on Google for a specific product,” Jain said.

And they didn’t focus on just any product; they wanted categories that would be the most profitable by selling easily and driving high commissions. They had to determine what content format they needed to be successful, which led them to decide what products they needed to use to achieve their goal. They also focused a lot on SEO. 

“Last year, 95% of our traffic was from high-intent organic searches,” Jain said.

They also kept in mind tentpole events like Amazon Prime Day and the Great Indian Festival.

The Insights

Here are the top content elements that worked for Outlook India’s content-to-commerce business.

1. Buying guides: Jain advised being thorough and focusing on high dollar items. Consumers already have a lot of questions about complicated products like appliances, and when they’re making a bigger investment, they want to do their research.

2. Pros and cons

3. Best value, budget, best features: Calling out to consumers what products give the best value, are best on a budget, or offer the best features really helps meet consumers where they are. The callout for best features for instance can signal a customer is willing to pay a premium for convenience.

4. Product specs

5. Reviews

All of these elements helped Outlook increase their CTR. Next on the list to implement is real-time pricing. They hope to have that up and running so customers can price shop instantly through their site.

Outlook published an average of 35 content pieces a month over the past year. They found kitchen and dining, major appliances and laptops were the product categories with the highest revenue, and Google search brought in 95% of their traffic.

A word of advice from Jain: Do not equate pageviews to revenue. Outlook had to implement a single customer view that showed revenue per story.  They also learned that they couldn’t monetise the commerce section with programmatic ads. In fact, the programmatic ads in the content-commerce section resulted in a 10% drop in CTR.

News publishers all know the importance of a good headline, and this application was no different. They found a common word in headlines that worked for them.

“Some of the common elements that we found in all of the stories that worked was using the word ‘best’ because this is how people are searching,” Jain said.

Looking ahead, Outlook India will work toward simplifying and improving purchase decisions for users. They’ll look for new product categories and do some testing outside of Amazon affiliates.  They’ll work on improvement with recirculation of content and establishing new content distribution channels. Another future goal is for Outlook to produce their own video content and actually test out each product in-house. 

Building first-party data

News publishers are living in a “four data world,” Puneet Gupt, COO of Times Internet, told attendees.

Gupt defined the four data categories:

• Zero-party data: where a consumer intentionally gives information to a brand.
• First-party data: collected based on consumer’s interactions with that brand, merchant asks for the data.
• Second-party data: first-party data that has then been shared with a second party with permission.
• Third-party data: information collected about a consumer from a business that has no direct relationship with that user.

Gupt noted that once a business has first-party data, it can create content it believes customers would want to read, show them advertising they’d be interested in, create newsletters they’d want to read, and leverage all of it in a way that works for everyone.

Data is changing the way businesses are interacting with customers in a big way.

Sumeet Singh, CMO of Info Edge India, said without data, many businesses find themselves going down the wrong path.

“It’s only when you start tracking user journeys and looking at every attribute of that person that you realise the person might have stated ‘x’ but actually the person’s behaviour is very very different,” Singh said. “For sites like ours, I think to just serve our customers more relevant data, you need to collect a lot of first-party data. And if you don’t personalise, they will not come back to you.” 

Karan Grover, lead director of inventory development at The Trade Desk, noted first-party data is so important from an advertising standpoint that it makes all the difference between effective and defective advertising. 

“Advertisers today value data so much that they are willing to pay a premium for it, but the point is there has to be more than enough content signals coming in, flowing into our platform,” Grover said. 

The main goal for publishers is to give advertisers the ability to target audiences on their platform. News publishers should get to the point of creating some sort of targetable ID for the user.

“The advertiser now has an option to use their first-party data to find that data on a publisher such as yours,” Grover said. 

Once the advertiser starts cherry picking where and who, the publisher can charge a premium for them to be able to hand select from a pool of people they want to talk to.

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