Preparing for the Online Future

MUMBAI: With Internet users touching the 40 million figure mark in India and set to touch 125-150 million by 2010, advertisers and content owners need to be prepared for the digital future.

E-commerce not withstanding, content owners can generate steady revenues from innovative streams, take the instance of Cricinfo.com which used the online medium to deliver audio commentary and video clips of cricketing encounters or NBC channel web-casting the 2004 Olympics to U.S. audiences.

But the biggest success of all has been Apple's iTunes venture, where millions of music downloads have been done in the past year. To spread the awareness of the immense potential in store, CIOL in association with Akamai Technologies organized the “Monetize And Control Valuable Digital Assets" Seminar in Mumbai on February 3.

The event was well-attended by industry people and watchers. The seminar was kicked off by an address by Stuart Spiteri, director (Asia Pacific), Akamai, who spoke on the global perspective on digital delivery. He spoke at length on the emerging digital home topography and how global IT major like Intel had established a consortium to set standards for home entertainment, namely Intel Viiv. Stuart also spoke about how content owners were vary on the digital rights management (DRM) issue, adding that Indian players like NDTV, Times of India and Rediff.com had used Akamai technologies successfully for different online ventures.

Jasmeet Singh, vice president (Product Marketing), Reddif.com, spoke about the shift from 'consumer' to 'prosumer' and the coming of age of participatory content. He emphasized the thrust on innovation and how new innovations like Flickr.com and Myspace.com were heralding a shift from traditional revenue streams. He also spoke on the trial and tribulations involved in Rediff's latest venture of providing Sanjay Maroo's music album online.

Anil Kumar, vice president, Cyber India Online Limited (CIOL), talked about how content has evolved over the years with changing consumer taste. He also highlighted the emerging power and potential of online medium, “Television industry accounting for approximately 48% of the $ 6.5 billion advertising industry, the shift is steadily happening towards the online medium,” he said. Anil spoke about the consolidation taking place in the cyber space, “Newscorp acquired Myspace.com, there are many such acquisitions in the offing,” he added. The toughest challenge according to him was, managing the needs of the viewer/consumer with the requirements of the advertiser.

Saleem Mobhani, vice president, Hungama, displayed some of the innovative websites created by Hungama for films like Mujhse Dosti Karoge and Home Delivery. He also talked about the gathering momentum for broadband in India and how that will revolutionize the content that is currently delivered to the audiences.

The presentations were followed by an interactive panel discussion, which saw the participation by all the speakers and Krishna Prasad, head of programming, Microsoft India.