Not just the media fraternity, but the entire India is looking at the upcoming general elections of 2024 with a great deal of enthusiasm. India is looking for a continued stability at the center to take forward the momentum which India has achieved in the past 9-odd years.
Coming to the business side of the general election, we have historically seen a trend of cautionary spends happening from brands during elections along with big spends from political parties across India.
As we have seen in the recent past this election will also be fought on digital media with a skew towards various social media platforms. Digital news publishers, especially from the legacy media, would help political parties and their candidates to win the credibility and acceptance within vernacular India. Real fights would be fought in the hinterlands of India and not just the metros and mini-metros. We will also see widespread use of AI-led creativity by various parties to get a foothold and that too at scale reaching the length and breadth of the Indian population.
I personally feel that all stakeholders will use the varied possibilities that digital media brings to target Indian youth which otherwise would be harder to target. Indian youth is going to decide who will steer India for the next five years. So, in this youth mix, no one can ignore short videos, interactive games and use of influencers which serves up a gigantic screen time for the young India.
Fact-checking processes to curb the spread of fake news too will be an area which digital publishers will focus on in the upcoming elections. This is inevitable as all parties will make sure that their content mechanism will work overtime during election time.
Digital and Traditional Media Convergence
The convergence is already happening for some time now. What is going to be different is the scale at which this would happen with the aggressive usage of AI, ML and other large language models.
Finally, the real impact for any media would be to serve wherever their audience is present. Screen sizes and internet speeds should not be a hindrance for seamless content delivery. Traditional media would struggle here without the help of digital as appointment viewing is already a thing of the past. Both worlds have to co-exist.
(The author is Senior General Manager – Marketing at Manorama Online. Views are personal.)
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