Indian publishers were warned to protect their digital business from "legacy culture" at WAN-Ifra's Digital Media India event in Delhi.
The key message from Torry Pedersen, chief executive and editor-in-chief of Nowegian publisher VG (pictured) was underlined in a roundtable discussion in the conference's concluding session.
Pedersen told how VG transitioned by thinking "digital first" and recruiting the right people to cope with the dynamics of transformation. He stressed that transformation requires new criteria for success, setting the tone for the conference's deliberations.
The two-day conference (February 22-23) which concluded on Tuesday, focused on the theme Engaging audience, monetising content, with the programme including parallel break-out sessions on social media growth, online video, digital advertising and ad blockers.
An Indian perspective on digital came from Rajan Anandan, who is vice president and managing director of Google South East Asia & India. He said 65 per cent of users in India now accessed the internet via mobile, with the total number of internet users is estimated to reach 500 million by 2017.
Online news required new capabilities - web and app, video and wi-fi, as well as localised content, he stressed.
A panel following the opening session, joined by India's leading news publishers, set "increasing engagement in mobile, online video and native advertising" as the common digital priorities for the year.
Other key takeaways from the conference were:
Journalism is not disrupted by digitisation, which has only made it better than before;
Power is in the hands of the audience (mobile, connected) - "go where they are";
Robo journalism is a reality today:
Improve the life of readers with trusted, compelling content;
Revenue lost due to ad blockers in India is still less than the global average;
Prepare for the long haul to make money in digital;
Local language content online will be a huge opportunity in the future, but equally will be tougher to monetise, with India potentially leapfrogging the transition.
A closing roundtable discussion on Can digital pure players disrupt the news media industry in India? brought contributions from chairman Gautham Pai (group managing director of The Manipal Group), Ritu Kapur (co-founder of The Quint), Siddharth Varadarajan (founding editor, thewire.in) and Sruthijith K K (editor-in-chief of Huffington Post India). They agreed that traditional media and digital pure players will co-exist, each playing to their strengths and filling the gaps left by the other.
With the costs of smart phones and quality bandwidth becoming affordable, mobile nternet will be the game changer, but will come with a set of challenges. At the same time, technology will be a great enabler.
The conference drew 170 delegates, the highest number in the past five years and an increase of 35 per cent on last year.