AgTalk | On elections, advertising, content and more: BBC's Bowman

While the world is getting smaller, the media also gets close knit. While at your office desk in Lucknow we know what is happening in London, the other way round is also very important. As India grabs the limelight in every sphere possible, the largest democracy is now getting on the top charts in the media space as well, as the world wants to know what is India doing! International broadcasters who have set shops in the country are now upping their games to beat the competition coming from across the globe and locally as well.   

Adgully caught up with Tom Bowman, VP Strategy and Operations, Global Advertising Sales, BBC Worldwide to know where does India stand on global media charts, how content is ‘appified’ and how advertisers need to think deep.

Adgully (AG): Give us sense of advertising spends in India compared to other counterparts. What are the categories according to you that have started spending more on digital platforms?

Tom Bowman (TB): I think India is a country inside a country with the populations of more than 1.2 billion people! India is a very large country in terms of digital world like Europe. The nature of our business has always been in the direction of necessities. We tend to have well educated audience helping us to make reasonable amount of money. For advertising, we use television and other screens as well. In our sector we have luxury advertisers, car advertisers, financial services and other service advertisers. We learnt and owned successful records and we started doing commercial advertising on digital services back in 2007.

AG: The world is getting ‘appified’! A lot of Indian broadcasters are already there in the app world and are doing pretty well. Do you think being a good news service provider is good enough to go in app world? How is the Indian market for the International service providers?

TB: We were there on the apps since the very start of the trend being the first news app on I-phones and then I-pads. BBC News and BBC Weather apps are hugely successful for us globally including India in terms of  growing numbers, downloads and regular usage. We found the traffic of the people coming to mobile websites and people who are using mobile apps are pretty much 50-50. Some of the users love to surf online on the other hand are also looking out for curated experiments in terms of using certain apps. On our service, news is categorised by geography and subjects.  For consumer being on BBC apps is very official thing. We have heard that offline research takes about 22 minutes, but if you use digital service you take less than 8 minutes to get what you are looking out for. The purpose of international media is different class then the local media, different audience and people who need to know what’s going on in the rest of the world and larger business people of international interest or politics and academics. BBC in India competes on the basis of these models and people are evolving with it. We provide different news on different services, other new services are more oriented towards entertainment.

AG: You mentioned about the usage of different devices, in that context, do you think the content also gets modulated with new and different devices entering the arena?

TB: I think it’s already happened earlier and still happening! The first time when we did country edition for our mobile service, we launched national model in India. Mobile usage has grown up by 300- 400 percent from last couple of years and still growing strongly. The technology will build and we will resize depending upon the size of the screen. The new service redefines the dynamics and also depends upon the kind of search being done. The content could be very much the same but the way it’s appears to the consumer is depending upon the choice of devices they use to consume the content. It’s a fact that we had affluent consumer base across the world including India. We found that across the countries the top 20% of consumers in each market use mobile devices to access news. So, a year more to go or now the number of people who just wants to scan news on their mobile devices is going down and the number of people who wants to read the news in depth on mobile devices is going up, as consumers will become more familiar with the mobile devices. The second fact is that the more modern is your smart-phone it’s more easy to use, the chances are to get exclusive live news and watching videos. It’s very tough to provide news on mobile phone but yes advertisers are more confident to use message services on smart-phones and it’s accepted by the all players.

AG: You talked about India being in top charts as far as affluent countries are concerned. What is India-specific plan as elections are just round the corner and advertising spends will go up and down the scale?

TB: BBC is a big network and we don’t take political advertising by anyone as we are partial observers! India is one of the largest democracies in the world in terms of elections polls. UK does this in a single day where a population of 8 million people vote. In India it’s very significant and the way India goes matches with everybody. BBC in India has the strength of top class presenters covering the event on the ground. Of course it’s an opportunity here for us and that is the reason why we launched our edition in India first; if it’s successful here we’ll do it in rest of the world.

AG: With election polls coming our way, we shall observe huge investment in terms of plans round the elections for broadcasters. What is BBC’s strategy?

TB: We look out to engage loads of traffic internationally and that kind of advertisers we look out for in India and abroad. We have searched and set up terms in India in Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai at look forward to tap this time.

AG: BBC has a legacy that speaks for itself. But do you it is difficult for international broadcasters to be present in India now as the number to national and local news broadcasters has mushroomed phenomenally who bear an edge of advantage of being ‘Indian’?

TB: We at BBC have massive viewers in India. We produce content in Tamil, Urdu, Hindi and other language which is an achievement which is a global view!  Market by market, I think it’s recognition amongst educated and affluent consumers in particular. Our role is to say what world actually thinks, while the messaging pattern is different, as a long standing international news service, through the various platforms.

AG: BBC has had its stint with BBC entertainment in India but that didn’t work well. Any plans to re-work and re-launch that in India as digitalization opens up new opportunity?

TB: I know that there are some plans building for the future in terms of content and digital, the two strong pillars inside the BBC Worldwide strategy.

AG: How do you position BBC India market from all of its other markets?

TB: India stands up very strongly and a major player in the market amongst our other markets. We see huge potential in the country.

AG: If you have to offer any suggestion to advertisers, India and international, what would that be?

TB: There are lots of opportunities for the advertisers if they choose right messages on the mobile devices. The essence is to know how the consumers have evolved with the time and see the opportunities in new devices and mediums and that I believe is also a learning for advertisers.
Bowman heads up a globally based team responsible for Sales Operations, Pricing, Inventory, Branded Entertainment and Custom Solutions across the BBC’s TV, digital and mobile media services and also including Global Brand opportunities and new ventures.

He joined BBC Worldwide in November 2007 originally as the Vice President of International Advertising Sales for BBC.com. He has a particular interest in the impact of digital on the advertising industry and the opportunities arising from convergence for both established and new media.

Prior to joining BBC Worldwide, Tom held a number of commercial roles at MSN including leading global sales strategy, opening new markets and heading up the EMEA, LATAM and Asian sales teams. Prior to this, Tom was the launch sales director for both Yahoo! UK and ZD Net UK. He has also worked on the agency side with the Saatchi and Saatchi Group and has held a number of non-executive directorships. He is currently an elected Board member of IAB Europe.