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Dainik Bhaskar Digital's data strategy manager on leveraging local languages and data to drive innovation

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By Taruka Srivastav, Reporter

June 26, 2018 | 5 min read

By 2020, India is expected to become the second largest online video viewing audience globally, given by the exponential growth of video consumption over digital media.

Dainik Bhaskar Digital's data strategy manager on leveraging local languages and data to drive innovation

Dainik Bhaskar Digital's data strategy manager on leveraging local languages and data to drive innovation / Lotame

This has paved the way for many print publications to venture online. Dainik Bhaskar is one such publication whose digital arm DB Digital has ventured into the digital space by developing a superlative Hindi language web platform apart from other localised language platforms.

Dainik Bhaskar has alsolaunched India's first SME website apart from websites on Gujarati and Marathi news, fashion, tech and spiritual management. DB Digital has further developed mobile-friendly websites and applications to cater to its digital audience.

The Drum spoke with Rohan Kumar , senior manager, Data Strategy and Content Personalization at DB Digital to find out about how well the Indian audience has taken to online publications.

"Digital media consumption in new formats is happening across the globe, and India is no exception. In line with the global trends, Indian consumers are increasingly consuming content on many different digital platforms. Rising internet penetration, the proliferation of smartphones, and the convenience of consuming content on-demand are key drivers here. Given its rapid digitalisation, the demographics of digital India are expected to be more diverse than before. India has a large millennial population – young, tech-savvy consumers with growing disposable incomes.

"This demographic has been the early adopter of new technologies and models of media consumption, and they will continue to drive trends. As a marketplace, India is ripe for digital media investment. In fact, after China, India is projected to be the second fastest-growing advertising market in Asia."

While traditional print media formats continue to grow -- including local and regional-language papers -- marketers are shifting their budget in accordance with consumer preference, from traditional channels to digital ones.

The audience response according to Rohan has been positive, and the media and advertising industry is investing in various initiatives in collaboration with the Indian government to navigate challenges. With affordable data pricing, cost-efficient smartphones and improving 3G and 4G internet coverage, the ‘digital-only consumers’ are touted to around four million by 2020 and generate significant digital subscription revenues for the media and entertainment sector.

As to how is DB Digital driving innovation, Rohan says it by banking on the power of data. DB Digital has partnered with data driven companies like Lotame to provide consumers with rich content experiences. DB Digital partnered with Lotame and used the DMP to collect audience behaviors from across its network of websites. They will be able to use valuable first-party data to segment and build audiences to meet advertisers’ campaign targets.

He says: "With our team of data scientists and data engineers we have over the past two years developed a robust and language independent Recommender engine to drive user engagement and in turn the revenue. The recommender engine would power most of the content visible on all domains and is already powering areas such as Push Notifications and In player Recommendations.

We constantly innovate and improvise on algorithms that are and will provide users a personalized experience to impact metrics such as user retention, frequency and time spent.

"We believe that these innovations should be leveraged by the media industry as a whole and thus plan to work with our long-standing partners Lotame to make it available to media houses that are either unable to invest in such technologies or face a challenge in getting the right expertise."

The average Indian consumer’s growing affinity for digital platforms has forced the industry to change the older paradigms of entertainment consumption and revenue generation across various platforms. Marketers are harnessing technology innovations, like the use of chatbots, AI, VR and AR, to understand audience behavior and DB Digital's foray into localised language will further boost its digital plans.

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