We're expecting at least 25% growth over last year: Boby Paul, Manorama Online

At e4m's eTechmanch Digital Conference, thought leaders convened to share their perspectives about leapfrogging the digital marketing industry through small but defined steps.

Among them was Boby Paul, GM Marketing, Manorama Online, who spoke to Neeta Nair – Assistant Editor, IMPACT, about "Monetising News and winning the localisation challenge for Brands."

Talking about getting the average Malayali to switch to digital, Paul noted that the digital adoption in Kerala is very high and it's an opportunity that cannot be missed out on.

"If you take a look at the demographic of users or audience, our predominant age group is 18 to 44 years. But we definitely have users coming in from all age segments, especially after this pandemic. And Kerala was lucky during the last wave of COVID. The distribution of newspaper never got affected,” he said.

Paul stated that Malayala Manorama has "solid plans" of launching its subscription services for its e-paper at least by the end of this financial year.

"We have a quite good tangent of the audience who want to know what is happening in Kerala. But monetizing generic news in India is a big challenge. A lot of players are trying to tap through and try to find a solution. So we are also trying to get on that track and hopefully, things will work out,” he noted.

Talking about the debate between "traditional" and "new age" publishers, he said noted that India has "quite a headroom in the news space", specifically in the digital news space.

Paul also highlighted that the news that a millennial or a Gen Z user will look for will be different from the ones a 40+ user would.

"For legacy publishers, the trust that people have in us, and the kind of network of news gathering and factual newsgathering that we do and the fact that our entire set of reporters are spread throughout Kerala and India and outside as well. A lot of streamers who work with us, actually gather a lot of credible news and there is a mechanism where we make sure that what we put out is genuine most of the time," he noted.

Answering a question about the explosion of regional language content and news, and whether Malayala Manorama saw any national advertisers and national brands coming out from Kerala, he replied: “We have a healthy mix of national and regional or retail brands, which operate from Kerala. So, when I say healthy mix, it's almost like a 50-50. Within Kerala, standards are always a mix and match, which may change for example, in the second wave which just happened in Kerala and elsewhere in India, there is a bit of slowdown for the retail market because things are locked out and no retailers are operating.

"Having said that, once the lockdown is lifted and shops and establishments start opening up, things will start looking up but it will take little more time.”

Talking about how much growth in revenue is expected this season, he replied, “We should be looking at least 25% growth over last year as last year has also seen a growth in spite of being in a pandemic.”