Went to Asia Pacific Media Forum last week was a very meaningful experience for me as a new player in the industry. I believe not only me that got this kind of reactions; most of the people I talked to have the same impressions.
Changes are happening in media industry; from its medium to business model, from creative idea to executions. It all happened as a result of consumer evolution which change people from viewers to collaborators, from passive to interactive, from general to personal, and from primetime to my time. On 1965, it only take 3 TV commercial spots in order to reach 80% of woman aged 18-49 in US; today, the same effect will take 97 TV commercial spots with the same durations.
How can you talk your target that browse internet while watch TV, listening music using earphones, and checking their mobile phone every once in a while to text their friends?
Increasing TV placement budget will only make TV stations richer without any additional value to the brand.
Early age of Digital Media
Not a rocket science that alternative media is needed. Some of brands then look at digital media as one of their ‘complementary’ channel to support traditional media. When Internet users penetration boom in US, Europe, and Japan, some other countries -not necessarily has the same penetration rate – join the web portal band-wagon and create ad-hoc product websites that usually will disappear after a while.
There is no strategy, measurement, or even business model to capitalize digital media. Everybody build it for hygiene factor only, so they will have a temporary presence in digital world.
New Era of Digital Media
As the industry grow; strategy, measurement, and business model become more clear -although some redudancy on its measurement until now- media agencies not only talk about presence in Internet world, they also talk about how to take advantages on its technology superiority.
People start to talk about engagement time rather than just visitors per day, analyze traffic sources rather than only know how many hits they got per day, and in race to become the most search engine friendly websites.
Website that well known as ‘new media’ become now media. Brands are in the race of viral marketing on Internet business and create variants of websites and enhance it functionality from brochure sites into user generating contents websites.
Mobile Media
More than 30% of penetration and innovative mobile devices create another space of media to be explored. Unlike the beginning of internet media, on mobile media agencies did more proper research and create some of industry ecosystem proposals.
Unlike internet media, mobile media born in a more complex business model because it involving more parties in the picture that I don’t think are in the same page as innovative marketers and technology innovators.
Its nature as a paid media and involving multi-billion investments, network operators are calculating very carefully mobile media business potentials and risks.
Where’s Indonesia in digital media evolution?
One thing that unfortunately not being discussed in depth is digital media in emerging market like Indonesia, where technology infrastructures can’t be as advance as developed countries. Some of things hard -or impossible- to be happened in emerging market countries.
So let me share my personal view on it;
- Contents; localization will become important task to be done. There maybe less than 10% people that can understand English in Indonesia
- Infrastructure; Indonesia internet penetration will be growing faster on wireless based technology
- Will Internet ever go faster than Mobile? From my personal view, I don’t think Internet penetration will be higher than mobile penetration, but mobile internet (mobile sites that accessed through mobile phones) penetration might be. Indonesia -if I may say- culture, will definitely drive people to buy mobile phone than a computer when they have to choose between those two sophisticated devices. Because mobile phone can be carried and somehow show status symbol.
- Which media has the highest index? Quantitatively, TV off course still the biggest coverage media , but according to media research, mobile and internet has the biggest qualitative points compared to TV
- Intelectual property; there are still no clear regulation on intellectual properties in Indonesia
If I want to promote my brand in Indonesia, which digital media should I choose?
Once again, in my personal view; still internet will the best digital media to penetrate Indonesia’s market with some tweaking on user-interface and development. Mobile on the other hand, can be used as an additional channel to create 360 degree presence on digital media and creating integrated digital media campaign.
By really considering some of points mentioned above, I think in Indonesia digital media is not only now media, it become now and forever media. 
