Media

There is nothing harder than finding effective digital sellers. After studying this for years, I believe that professional sellers are less than effective at selling digital advertising because BUYERS HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO BUY DIGITAL ADVERTISING.

India’s largest Direct to Home television services operator, Dish TV has added 0.2 million subscribers for the quarter ending March 31, 2013, taking its total net subscribers to 10.7 million subscribers. This is the company’s lowest subscriber addition in the past 23 quarters. Dish TV had last recorded similar additions in the quarter ending June 30, 2007 (Q1-2007) where it had registered (pdf) 0.18 million subscriber additions. Need To Know - Subscriber Acquisition Cost (SAC) was at Rs 1,996, down from Rs 2,201 in the previous quarter. The company attributed this decline to the price hikes. - Average Revenue Per User: The annual average revenue per user (ARPU) for DishTV stood at Rs 157, down from Rs 160 in the previous quarter. Goel attributed this increase to the price hike in the second quarter. - Subscription revenues for the quarter was at Rs 500.1 crore, up 15.3% year-on-year (YoY). - Average Churn was at 0.8% per month for the quarter, down from 1% in the previous quarter. - Dish TV added 5 new HD Channels from April 2013 and claims to offer the highest number of HD channels, offering 25 HD channels and 17 HD services on its platform. Financials Dish TV reported an operating revenue of Rs 555.4 crore for the quarter, down from Rs 557.8 crore in the previous quarter, but up 7.6% from Rs 516.44 crore in the same quarter last year. The net loss declined to Rs 43.6 crore for the quarter, down from Rs 49 crore loss in the same quarter last year. Its EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) for the quarter stood at Rs 120 crore, up 6.5% from *** in the corresponding quarter last fiscal. The EBITDA margin for the quarter was at 21.6%. For the financial year ending March 31, 2013 (FY13), Dish TV reported an operating revenue of Rs 2,166.8 crore, up from Rs 1,957.9 crore in the FY12. The net loss declined to Rs 66 crore in FY13, down from Rs 133.1 crore in FY12, while the EBITDA for the fiscal was at Rs 575.9 crore, up 16.8% from Rs 496 crore in FY12. The EBITDA margin for the fiscal was at 26.7%. Other Highlights - During the current year, Direct Media Distribution Ventures Private Limited divested 14.74% stake in the company, following which it is no longer the holding company of Dish TV India limited. It currently holds 45.24% stake in Dish TV India Limited. - The name of Dish TV Singapore was changed to Digital Network Distribution Pte Limited on March 12, 2013. The company entered into a Share purchase agreement with a party for SGD 12,000 (around Rs 5.28 lakh) on March 19, 2013 and the share holding was transferred on April 1, 2013. - Jawahar Goel, Managing Director, Dish TV said that the DTH industry is still reeling under multiple taxation and in the absence of an enforceable contract for set-top box recovery, it is now looking to move to a virtually zero subsidy model over the medium term. Download: Press Release | Financials Updates: Error in Headline has been corrected

Reliance Communications will be using Aadhaar’s online authentication process to activate new connections. The company claims to have tested this solution in a non company owned multi brand small retail outlet and claims to be the first telco in the country to offer Aadhar authentication in both company owned and non company owned multi brand small retail outlet. However its worth noting that Vodafone had launched a pilot program offering Aadhaar based verification  back in October 2012. RCOM said that it is currently awaiting Department of Telecom (DoT) guidelines for acquisition through Aadhaar. One can just walk into any retailer in the country with their Aadhaar card to get a mobile connection. The customer’s Aadhaar profile details along with the biometric authentication details will be shared by the retailer with UIDAI server for real time authentication. Once authenticated, the customer details can be fetched online from UIDAI server following which their mobile connection will immediately activated by RCOM. Note that this method of authentication will be available at both company owned and non company owned multi brand small retail outlet. The company claims that about 90% of the new SIM cards sold every month come from non company owned multi brand small retail outlets. Prior to this, users had to submit a photocopy of customers KYC documents and photo to purchase a SIM card. Retailers then had to submit the documents to the company and the SIM would get activated after the company verified the documents. Aadhaar authentication makes the entire process swift and paperless. Our readers might remember that speaking at the #NAMA conference, Nandan Nilekani, Chairman of UIDAI, had announced the launch of Aadhar E-KYC powered instant prepaid accounts, for which a pilot project was conducted in New Delhi. He had also stated that UIDAI had partnered with 20 banks, and had tied-up with the NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) and Visa for payments powered by Aadhaar enabled E-KYC  (Electronic- Know Your Customer). The Aadhaar powered E-KYC (Electronic- Know Your Customer), utilizes the E-KYC APIs, to allow citizens to avail different services without carrying any physical identification proof. To conduct an E-KYC check, an E-KYC request, along with Aadhaar number and authentication is sent as an input and the name, address, date of birth, gender, and photograph, is received by the agency. (Full video here) Fake Accounts? While we believe that Aadhaar has the potential to be the single unique identity system for Indian citizens in the future, we think that the project hasn’t reach that stage yet, since we have seen several instances of fake Aadhaar numbers being generated till now. Nilekani had admitted that like every complex deployment, even Aadhaar had faced initial teething problems. This makes us wonder if telcos should solely trust on the data provided by UIDAI for verification and activation, instead of using its own subscriber verification methods. Related: - Five Banks Launch Aadhar Based Saral Money Instant Prepaid Cards With Visa - Indian Government Launches Aadhaar Enabled Service Delivery

Netflix, which dominates Internet traffic in the U.S. with as much as 30 percent of bandwidth at peak hours, is shifting from its distribution from content delivery networks (CDN’s) which stream from a central point, to a multitude of “cache” boxes which will be widely distributed to Internet provides who will store high quality video locally, says industry analyst Dan Rayburn, director of the Streaming Media conference. Netflix VP for Content Delivery Ken Florance outlined the plan for the first time publicly at the conference earlier this week.  Rayburn reports about the plans which includes the local cache of HD and super HD 4K content. The Netflix program is called Open Connect.  Here is a recent report on the new product. In this video, Rayburn reports on other news and trends from the show including the emergence of H.265 and MPEG-DASH.

The Financial Times is being subsumed into a new division by its parent company, Pearson.As part of the organisation's restructure, the FT Group will disappear and the newspaper will become part of a unit called "professional". Its chief executive will be John Ridding, who is currently CEO of the FT group.Professional will also include Pearson's global English learning business and its electronic testing business. It is hard to see what these three very different types of business have to do with each other.However, it is suggested that the rationale for yoking the language-teaching with the publishing of the paper is that adults learning English in foreign countries are considered to be the kind of people likely to read the FT. Maybe.The other intriguing aspect is whether the FT's financial results will be split out from the other parts of the new division. I understand that Pearson has yet to decide on that issue.A spokesman explained that there were still many details to be worked out. The company is expected to make that clear before the restructure is implemented on 1 January 2014. Its first results will therefore be published the following July.But he said that for 2013 - which will include the full-year 2013 results to be announced around the end of February 2014 - the report will be made under the existing structure, in which the FT Group is reported separately.The appointment of Ridding as CEO, giving him greater responsibility for a larger business unit, is certainly a feather in his cap. He only took charge of the FT Group earlier this year after becoming chief executive of the Financial Times itself in 2006. Prior to that, he had several senior editorial posts at the FT, with spells as its deputy editor and publisher of its Asian outlet.Under the new Pearson structure, the company will be organised around three global lines of business - school, higher education and professional - and three geographic market categories - north America, growth and core.Genevieve Shore, currently Pearson's chief technology officer, will take on a new role as chief product and marketing officer. Will Ethridge, CEO of Pearson North America, will step down from his role.John Fallon, Pearson's chief executive, said: "This new organisation structure flows directly from the strategy that we set out earlier this year. It is designed to make Pearson more digital, more services-oriented, more focused on emerging economies and more accountable for learning outcomes. "This is a significant change in the way we run the company that will take time and sustained commitment, but it is one we must make to be able to accelerate the execution of our global education strategy."Comment: This move, as with any move involving the Financial Times, is bound to set off yet more rumours about the paper being sold. I think it does the opposite. It suggests that Pearson is as committed to the FT as it has been for many years past.That won't stop the gossip of course. But really, isn't it about time that people realised the pink paper (salmon in the US) is not for sale?Financial TimesPearsonMedia businessNational newspapersNewspapersUnited StatesRoy Greensladeguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The radio stations were on early this morning - was it right and proper for newspapers to publish front pages pictures of a man they called a terrorist brandishing a meat cleaver?Answer: yes. There are all sorts of arguments in favour. Practical and technological first - pictures and film clips of the incident were across social media within minutes. Newspapers (and TV) would have looked completely daft to ignore what was already in the public domain.The man wasn't trying to hide from the spotlight. He was aware he was "speaking to camera" in order to deliver "a message" that attempted to justify his unjustifiable act. It could be said that the media were playing into his hands by giving him the publicity he was seeking. But, given the situation, there was a need to explain. And the pictures lifted from the filmed footage were therefore essential to the exercise. This was a highly unusual event that, by its very unusualness, warranted an unusual response from the media. It was barbaric, horrific, tragic, senseless… even a collective of adjectives is inadequate to describe what happened. I agree that the image was appalling. The meat cleaver. The bloodied hands. The obvious rage of the perpetrator. It prompted my two elder grandsons, who mostly ignore the papers on the table in the mornings, to ask all sorts of questions. On the way to school, the discussion continued. They were, of course, desperate to understand why two men had hacked another man to death in a London street on a spring afternoon.After I had dropped them off I thought more about the problems all editors faced and, it should be noted, all but one (the counter intuitive Daily Express) took the same decision. It is possible to argue against publication from two opposing directions: the image of a brazen killer will encourage others to follow suit, leading to more Islamic terrorist outrages; or the image will encourage anti-Muslim feeling and generate Islamophobia.But media editors, while wishing to avoid provoking anti-social and criminal behaviour, cannot be responsible for far-fetched consequences of their decision to publish news stories. Editors cannot edit in order to ensure they protect us from the feeble-minded. It would make the job impossible and, taken to its logical conclusions, nothing would ever get published. Editors also confronted a second problem in whether to carry pictures of the dead man's body, which also required them to pause for thought. Would it be regarded as an intrusion into the grief of his relatives? Would it be regarded as tasteless?Again, on balance, I think the newspapers were correct because they needed to convey the brutality of a murder that appeared to have been carried out as an act of terrorism. It was shocking to see it but it was even more shocking that it happened at all. There may be objections later that the pictured men cannot expect to get a "fair" trial. I somehow feel that a judge will laugh any such legal quibble out of court.Newspaper editors, in trying to do their job - in company with television news editors - were confronted with a bizarre and barbarous act. They had to react as they did.Woolwich attackNational newspapersNewspapersNews photographyLondonIslamCrimeRoy Greensladeguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Network18′s venture capital arm Capital18 has inked (pdf) an agreement with Dentsu India group to offload its entire stake in the digital advertising agency and consulting firm Webchutney for an undisclosed amount. While the financial terms of this agreement were not disclosed, Network18 informed that this divestment was in line with its strategy of monetizing its investments and claimed the investment has generated a return of over 300% to the company. Network18 held 70.06% stake in the company, through its investment arms Capital18 Limited Mauritius which held 49.42% stake and Capital18 Fincap Private Limited which held 20.64% stake. We’ve been hearing about this development for a while and a report from December 2012 had suggested that Dentsu was in advanced talks to acquired Webchutney and had pegged the deal size to be between Rs 40 crore and Rs 60 crore. Capital18 had neither confirmed or denied this development to Medianama then. For the fiscal 2012, Webchutney had registered a profit of Rs 6.35 crore on total revenue of Rs 21.55 crore. This is Dentsu’s first acquisition in digital, although it had acquired a 51% stake in Mumbai-based Indian advertising agency, Taproot India, earlier this year. That being said, we have seen a significant number of acqusitions in the past year. French advertising and public relations company Publicis Groupe had acquired Neev technologies last month, which was the group’s fifth acquisition in India in the last two years. IPG Mediabrands, the media holding group of Interpublic group had acquired the digital marketing agency Interactive Avenues last month while the media and digital communications group Aegis Group plc had acquired a digital performance marketing and search agency Communicate 2 In August 2012. The WPP group had also acquired 51% in Hungama’s digital agency arm, via JWT Singapore in June 2012. Network18 Divestments: This is the fourth divestment made by Network18 in the last year. In February 2012, Network18 sold online business directories YellowPages.co.in and AskMe to Getit Infoservices. In December 2012, it offloaded 77.5% stake in the financial data and news terminal business NewsWire18 to Samara Capital for Rs 90 crore. In March 2012, Network18 sold its entire stake in one of its Capital18 investee NetworkPlay to Gruner + Jahr, a media company which is a part of Germany’s Bertelsmann group. Network18 also diluted its stake by 20% in the movie and event ticketing website BookMyShow, when BookMyShow raised Rs 100 crore from Accel Partners in August 2012.

Stool Pigeon founder Phil Hebblethwaite has wise counsel for anyone thinking of launching a magazine, ‘Treasure your independence…’ Plastik interviews Andrew about his recent book-about-books ‘Fully Booked’. Vice have an exhibition of work by their favourite illustrators in London until June 2. Boat magazine’s latest issue visits Kyoto. Read an interview with editor Erin Spens. Music site Pitchfork opts for quality over quantity, trials further editorial experiments like this for Daft Punk.

Instant messaging app Plustxt has updated its Android app to add a nifty feature of allowing users to post to Facebook, Twitter and Google+ in various Indic languages supported by the app. Plustxt is currently available as free download on the Google Play Store. How this integration works is that, one can login to the app through Facebook Connect or the recently updated Google+ Sign-In and tap on the Facebook, Twitter or the Google+ icon at the top of the app homescreen to post updates to the respective social networks. For instance, one can tap on the Facebook icon, to open a new conversion window similar to the conversation windows one sees while sending a message on Plustxt. One can then choose the transliteration button above the text input box to choose their preferred Indic language among the list of supported languages. Plustxt currently supports eight Indic languages including Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Punjabi, Gujarati and Malayalam besides English. Rather than providing an in-app indic keyboard, the app follows a transliteration approach, wherein it offers indic word predictions in a horizontally scrolling bar, based on the word the user has typed. One can then type in their message, send it and grant requisite permissions to their account, following which the message is posted to the respective social network. We tried it on a Nexus 4 and found that it worked as promised. This implementation reminds us of the chat bot implementation one sees in Google Talk (now Google Hangout) or any other chat client. Why Is This Important? This feature could come in handy for users who want to post messages to these social networks in their native languages. It could also possibly give Plustxt an advantage over other messaging apps like WhatsApp and WeChat among others. While Imsy offers Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn integration, it doesn’t support Indic language input yet. Also note that Facebook, Twitter or Google+ doesn’t offer native Indic language input support yet, although one could use third party keyboards like Swiftkey, Swype and Adaptxt on Android which have added support for Indic languages over the last year. Regional VAS Services: This development also indicates the direction Plustxt is taking in a bid to differentiate itself from other apps. Last month, Plustxt founder Pratyush Prasanna had told Medianama that they intend to monetize the service by licensing Plustxt APIs to others and providing value added services (VAS) in Indian languages. This is particularly interesting because its quite difficult for a content provider to exactly target a specific language audience in the country. Prasanna had claimed that they have already inked partnerships with a Marathi and a Bengali newspaper for this purpose, although he hadn’t disclosed any specific details on it. The company claimed to have 60,000 users as of April 2013. Related: - Plustxt Raises Funding From Mumbai Angels & Others; Monetization - Plustxt To Launch Instant Messaging App With Indic Support, Privacy Controls - Tachyon Technologies Launches Hindi Facebook Chat App