New Delhi: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) today released a report, ‘One Consumer, Many Interactions’, that reimagines the media house of the future. The report highlights the massive, unparalleled change the media and entertainment industry is going through, with the exponential growth of media and type of content available creating a trillion customer touch points. “This change is not the future but rather is here & now,” said Sudhanshu Vats, Chairman, CII committee on Media & Entertainment and Group CEO Viacom 18 Media, India. He added, “This is an unparalleled situation even for an industry which has always been at the forefront of disruption. The industry will now need new answers, and will need them fast even on the most fundamental things like talent pool to run our companies, methodology for measuring the impact we are delivering to advertisers on our platforms”
According to the report, India’s media consumption has been growing at 9% CAGR over the past six years, which is almost twice that of China and nine times that of the US. But there is still ample headroom for faster growth in the future. The report points to India’s unique multimodal growth across all major media, which is unlike any of the other key markets. Kanchan Samtani, Partner & Director, Boston Consulting Group India, elaborated upon this uniqueness: “India is one of the few countries in the world where we are witnessing most mediums growing hand in hand and we see this continuing in the foreseeable future. For example – video consumption on OTT is supplementing linear TV vs. cannibalizing it.”
This growth will fundamentally change the way media houses look and operate; the changes will range from rethinking the front end content involving format and language, to reorganizing the back end with newer skill sets and partnership models. New age technologies like artificial intelligence and analytics are getting ingrained in each function of media operations. “The industry has to re-write many definitions and conventions on almost a daily basis. While the erstwhile, fixed prime time for TV for family in the evening remains, many new personal viewing occasions have come via OTT (over the top) screen consumption,”observed Karishma Bhalla, Partner & Director, Boston Consulting Group India.
The report showcases real life examples of successful new age media and entertainment companies and highlights the need for media houses to work closely with other stakeholders. In Ms Samtani’s view, “The media industry is leveraging technology at a very fast pace. We expect media companies to invest a significant amount of time and resources to create technical prowess as a key pillar of differentiation. Mr. Vats highlighted the call for action: “The questions are manifold but this is a tremendous opportunity for our industry to reimagine itself. We hope that this report helps our industry executives think through the imperatives and drive action.”
Important Highlights of the report:
- The consumption in India, has been growing at rate of 9% over last 6 years,
- At 4.6 hours of consumption per capita per day, India is still behind China (6.4 hours) and US (11.8 hours), suggesting further headroom for growth.
- In India this growth has been additive and not cannibalizing traditional media, yet.
- India to remain a multi-modal market where all forms of media, including traditional media like TV and digital will continue to co-exist for next several years.
- There is also a massive competition across platforms for getting that share of eyeballs which leads to emergence of differentiated, expensive, ‘hero content’.
- Traditional media houses will need to rethink investment quantum, allocation and velocity of content, as they compete for the same eyeballs.
- AI, RPA and advanced analytics are already creating ripples across the entire value chain.
- Roles such as ‘Consumer Insights Analyst’, ‘Social Engagement Manager’, ‘Data Evangelists’ have already started to emerge.
- In the future, all media houses will be building their core around technology, and not limiting it to just being a support function.
- Sales organizations are now becoming a hybrid of high touch and high tech functions. It‘s imperative for companies to start thinking about their talent sourcing strategy to remain competitive in the new regime.
- The employment level in the M&E industry (including new age digital businesses) is expected to double in next 5 years and much of this addition will require new skills.
- Monetization needs to keep pace with eyeballs for the industry economics to be strong. It is critical that the industry defines a common currency that works cross platform providing a consistent and standard measurement of reach and ROI.
- Unlike the US where the cost of a cable connection can be as high as 80$ per month, India with a sub 3 $ cost of cable per month, doesn’t have the need for skinny bundles.
- No economic need for consumers to switch media and it is likely that all forms of media will continue to grow simultaneously leading to a multi-model, multi-format market.
