Manorama Online wish list- 2022
By Boby Paul, General Manager – Marketing, Manorama Online
The year 2021 remained as challenging as the year before for media firms across the world and India was no exception. The second wave of covid had put our economic and health infrastructure under great pressure but Kerala remained an exception by the earnest effort of its people, organizations and government. Digital grew to unprecedented strength during this year as digital adoption was taken up by even small & mid-sized firms due to the pressure and uncertainties the pandemic has put on them. In the media ecosystem, even the traditional media started using more digital touchpoints for their last-mile effectiveness. For us, at Manorama Online we saw top-line growth of about 30% over last year.
Here are some Focus areas for MMO for the upcoming year:
Gearing up for Cookie Less World:
Along with other Digital Publishers, we too are bracing for the cookie depreciation in the near future and we are working with various data partners to ensure that there is a seamless transfer to a cookie-less world with no value erosion to our advertisers & audience privacy at its core.
First-Party Data:
First-party data will be at the core of Manorama Digital offering. When we say this we mean a real amalgamation of the first party from most of our digital services and product offering which will be powered by a super-intelligent digital data core.
Subscription Revenues
We are one of the earliest legacy news publishers in India to make their e-paper behind a paywall and this is as natural a step for us in this direction. We will be live with our premium paid news offering by end of the current Financial Year. This will be the right step towards consolidating the unmatched content sway Manorama Digital have in making the next billion possible for Digital Bharat.
Self Serve Ads:
As the digital transformation is gaining more momentum post-Covid, we are looking to tap the still largely untapped SMB, Boutique Agencies & Individual small advertisers with a self-serve mechanism which will enable them to reach our digital audience. This is a major step forward for us to get to the root of our advertiser base with Lesser Budgets & No credit history.
Regional Collaborations
South Premium Publishers (SPP) completed its first year of operations in the month of December 2021. Going by the traction which we are getting from large digital spenders looking at a premium south audience base, we are having plans to add more to the bouquet of offerings shortly. More collaborations are also in the pipeline which will augment the Digital South pitch.
My wholehearted wish for the next year is that we don’t see a third wave happening at the time when Adex has started showing much-needed spurt and we all across Media & Advertising can see that we return to at least 2018-19 levels. But Digital will remain the beacon for the entire media world and India. That is where the real action is going to be backed by mobile internet, 5G roll out and imminent Data and Privacy laws which are under making.
