Convergence is the new multiplier for M&E's $100 billion vision

A recent CII-BCG report unveiled during the fifth edition of Big Picture Summit 2016 talks about how the ambitious Media and Entertainment industry can stay competitive and grow further

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Mumbai | October 26, 2016

The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) organised its fifth edition of The Big Picture Summit on the theme: 'Convergence, the new multiplier for Media and Entertainment's $100 billion vision', with The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) as the knowledge partner. On this occasion, CII-BCG released a report that talks about new vectors for growth and disruption being the only way to stay competitive.

BCG conducted a survey of 20,000 consumers over two years to analyse media consumption trends. The analysis revealed three vectors along which the industry can create explosive growth -- digital, rural and supply.

According to the report, with smart phones and mobile data becoming affordable, it can be estimated that the number of connected rural consumers will increase from about 120 million in 2015 to over 300 million in 2020, growing over 30 per cent year-on-year. This is on the basis of the current telecom infrastructure and can leapfrog further if connectivity becomes ubiquitously affordable. Once connected, media time spent by rural consumers grows at a faster clip than urban counterparts. The rural consumer is willing to bridge the 30 per cent consumption gap versus urban counterparts, once they have access. Estimates suggest that access growth within rural could open up 200-400 million new consumers (across media).

Digital is an equally potent lever, with digital consumers sending 1.5X the time on media versus unconnected counterparts. There are no variable segments on digital as this consumption spike shows across demographic and income variables. The only driver for digital consumption is digital age with consumers that spend more than two years online, showing an inflexion and significantly higher growth.

Supply begets demand. If the industry is able to create differentiated supply, the audience will consume more -- very often stretching the time spent on media and moving to multiple screens. This is perhaps the primary driver for disparate media consumption across states – where states with large supply of relevant local language content have been able to capture higher time from the audience.

Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, Confederation of Indian Industry, said, “We are extremely thrilled to bring forth the fifth edition of our annual flagship event -- The Big Picture Summit -- for the Media and Entertainment sector. With this collaboration, CII and BCG together aim to bring out enlightening insights from the sector. The government, regulator, academia and civil society will join the discussion to suggest new ways to achieve the mark of a $100 M&E industry.”

Sudhanshu Vats

Sudhanshu Vats, Chairman, CII National Committee on Media and Entertainment and Group CEO, Viacom 18 Media, said, “The CII Big Picture in its fifth edition will bring together bright minds of M&E leaders to navigate a successful path that would take our M&E sector to $100 billion. During the two days of this summit, M&E leaders will make bold predictions about the future of media and provide insights and diverse thinking on the new disruptions and new business models on the fast-changing M&E environment.”

Kanchan Samtani, Partner, BCG, India, said, “Digital consumption of media represents a large database of consumption patterns, viewing habits and consumer content preferences. Leveraging this data intelligently can help content creators customise new content to consumer tastes and preferences to create targeted hits and subsequent success. With this, India's rural growth story is sure to replicate China's growth in rural consumption as observed in the past. As penetration and content supply for digital media increased in China, smart phones replaced TVs as the preferred viewing screen. Today, China's rural consumers spend more time consuming digital media when compared to other media forms.”

Analytics will be on the biggest unlocks moving from consumption to monetisation. Players need to move away from monetising broad audience to creating the right segments with who they are targeting – 'identify' and when they are targeting them – 'context.' BCG's global studies suggest that context and identify can help content providers raise realisations from advertisers by as much as 2-5X. Analytics can also provide attribution – with clearly stated metrics on brand and sales uplift. Gone are the days when we do not know which half of advertising works for industry leaders, as we are now in a position to track returns on every rupee spent. The advertising pie itself needs to grow with new advertisers having local and niche audience coming into the fray. The M&E industry needs to create the right platforms to find, handhold and serve these new advertisers.

The industry also needs to come together to solve for key challenges like talent, redistribution of monies across value chains and working with the regulator to create a positive environment.

In summary, there is significant potential for the industry to grow consumption and monetise that growth. However, these are not secular trends and will face headwinds from time to time. The industry's fate is in its own hands, M&E shall reap what it sown.

Click here to View BCG-CII - Convergence-The new multiplier for Media & Entertainment's $100 billion vision

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