At the upcoming Indian Magazine Congress 2024, a lot of the conversation will centre around the subscription model of magazines and print publications in a future, which is becoming increasingly digitized. The annual gala event held by the Association of Indian Magazines will have its 13th edition take place in Mumbai on May 3.
Riyad Mathew, Chief Associate Editor and Director, The Week and Malayala Manorama, will be moderating a session on “The shift from media planning to audience solutions: How can magazines make themselves relevant in the evolving paradigm,” which will feature Shashi Sinha (CEO, IPG India), Prasanth Kumar (CEO, South Asia, GroupM), and Manoj Sharma (CEO, India Today Group).
“What we primarily will be diving into during this panel is how ad guys go more by numbers and don’t look at engagement. Especially when it comes to digital, which shows high numbers. But the fact is that in terms of engagement, or the time spent by a reader reading a magazine is much higher than other media,” notes Mathew.
Mathew adds that in the West, in markets like the US, UK and others, there is an equal split between advertising consumption on print magazines and print newspapers, but in India, there’s a huge difference in favour of print papers compared to print magazines, which is another issue that will be delved into.
“The touch and feel of a magazine, actually flipping through its pages, is a huge differentiator. It’s all explanatory journalism, graphs and other visuals, all of which don’t come out the same way when you do it digitally. This is something unique to print magazines, and is something that we hope advertisers will give thought to,” says Mathew.
As mentioned above, a lot of attention will be paid to the subscription model of the future. “We’ll be looking at e-commerce, ease of payment and other ways of making subscriptions simpler and more accessible. We have a lot of speakers from across India and abroad who will be speaking on subscriptions,” says Mathew, adding that Kerin O Connor of Atlas consultancy, who specializes in subscriptions in North America and the UK, will be giving a talk on how to get subscribers, how to keep them, and other related issues.
Mathew believes that in a diverse country like India, with its many languages, geographies and populaces, every magazine - be it in Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, or any other script - has unique strengths and leadership.
“Malayala Manorama has a huge leadership not just in Kerala and the South of India, but also the Middle East and other parts of the world where the diaspora is a major part of the population. We already have a huge digital readership in these regions and a number of things are on the anvil as we further streamline our digital content and processes. But thanks to the literacy rate in Kerala and its expat population in other countries, we have a massive digital readership, which is paying dividends,” noted Mathew.
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