'TV and Digital need to be used for very different purposes'

COVID has been a game-changer for the media industry where digital has become an important asset for many businesses to reach out to their potential customers. TV, which is one of the biggest mass media, is trying to keep up with the growing trend and starting to collaborate with the same. Discussing the same, industry leaders spoke about the opportunities and the various nuances of TV’’s integration with digital.

The panelists were Ashish Pawar, Head - Marketing, Tata Asset Management; Jahid Ahmed, Senior Vice President and Head of Digital Acquisition/Website/Content & Social Media Marketing, HDFC Bank; Jiteen Aggarwal, Head of Marketing, Hettich India Pvt. Ltd; Kailash Adhikari- Business Head - Sri Adhikari Brothers; Samir Sethi, Head of Brand Marketing, Policybazaar; Sumeet Bhojani, Head of Marketing Communications, Godrej Interio. While the session Chair was Harikrishnan Pillai, Co-founder and CEO, of TheSmallBigIdea.

Speaking about his thoughts on the subject, Sethi said,"I don't believe we need integration.TV has been around for a while and is still the single largest reach we have in the country. Digital is up and coming and it's gradually stealing a share of viewership away from television and continues to happen. But I think both of them need to be used for very different purposes. So you can use TV for mass advertising to quickly build up reach. You can use digital and segment it in smart advertising. I think both of them are important. And both of them need to be part of any marketing media."

Pillai asked: "TV is losing out on digital and the pie is getting bigger, but maybe the contribution is reducing, what do you think?"

Adhikari, who comes from a TV background said, “Television in this country is about three and a half decades old. Digital, whether you call it OTT, YouTube or the other platforms. will touch about a decade or so.  It's about 35 years versus 10 years. Also in India, it's about the fact that 70% of India is connected to TV. Although we see some bit of decline in the pay TV, it is not at that double-digit scale that you see in the West. I also believe that the audience profiles for both mediums are separate and the audience expectation is also what that particular consumer or viewer is expecting from television and what is he expecting from digital."  

Aggarwal agreed to the point, adding his thoughts on the same, he said, “Starting point is the marketing objective; what is it that you want to achieve? And then you look at the consumption habits of your consumer.”

Ahmed shared his perspective and said, “When you look individually, the focus is on reach and the advantage of these platforms will come in handy. But when as a brand, we have to think about what the objective is. Your product is not catering to even 25% of the audience that you are trying to target. We have to figure out where the TG lies and what their passion point is. And hence, the planning core of these platforms should not be data but should be starting from the Global Web Index."

“Then start understanding the media indexing. TV will have its denominator that's the largest. Can you index the data with social media platforms based on the TG the interest rate that you're doing? Now, That's how we will start integrating the media.”

Speaking on the topic of integration, Bhojani said, there is no integration at the moment. “At the planning stage, there is no integration because you buy very different things by GRPs and here you buy in whichever way. Whether they should be or not is a different question altogether at the moment. I don't believe there will be integration unless one of the mediums moves to a common platform that measures audience data and where advertisers can bite on a common platform. Unless it happens, integration is not possible ever."

Jahid countered with the point and said that integration is possible. He said, “We have to start using the right tools which can put all the denominators together to help you understand where the over-exposure is happening and which GRP is giving you the right exposure.”

Harikrishnan asked the panel about a real-life use case wherein TV and digital were integrated and created a successful campaign. Pawar gave an example of a campaign they did wherein they started with digital and we started understanding it better. Basis the data, we started moving to regional channels, and that's how integration happens. He said, “While we think we have integrated or not integrated, the consumer has already integrated. For example, a child sees something on TV and something else on OTT or digital channels. We need to understand what’s our TG and what's our product.”

The panellists also spoke about how TV is evolving with the current times and how businesses should start experimenting with storytelling and creatives concerning the medium. Sethi spoke about TV becoming a monitor and a background device while mobiles becoming a handheld device which a user uses while watching TV, so the attention span is divided between TV and digital. While TV can be a good initiator, digital can help in executing the action. With CTV gaining popularity, marketers have to start considering it as well in their yearly budget.