Has video lived up to its promise?

On the last day of Digipub Week, we look at the rise of video and whether it has paid off on all early expectations.

“Video killed the radio star” crooned the Buggles in 1979. Four decades later, video has cemented as one of the primary forces of content consumption, especially in India. But, has it?

While there's no doubt about India's propensity for consuming video content, CPM rates are under perpetual pressure. Has video delivered on its promise?

This is what the first session of Digipub Week, day three aimed to understand. What’s this you ask? Digipub Week is a three-day-long series from afaqs! about the intricate business of web publishing.

The panellists for the session were Boby Paul, general manager, marketing, Manorama Online; Nitin Mathur, co-founder, 91mobiles.com; and Vikram Chandra, founder, editorji. Moderating this session was Anirban Roy Chaudhary, associate editor, afaqs!.

Making his initial remarks Chandra recounted four distinct times when people said this is the “early promise of it” but quite often it took time for the early promise to play itself out and it then did deliver.

Paul went on to said for any publisher, the primary dharma is to put out content that is engaging for the audiences to listen and watch. He said you cannot just keep investing in content, infrastructure and people without giving back the money to the businessman.

Mathur speaking about video and its promises said around 2015-16 there was a buzz around video will be the next big thing and he said the big push came from Facebook. But, he told us many, at that time, were unsure how to make money off video. From a publisher perspective, he said the promise of video has been mixed.

You can watch the entire session here.