OTV’s Litisha Panda seeks bridging gap in digital advertising at NBF Conclave

Participating in the panel discussion on ‘Future of News: The TV + Digital Future’ at NBF National Conclave on Friday, OTV Business Development Officer Litisha Mangat Panda batted for bridging the gap in digital advertising and voiced crucial questions on piracy that happens outside India.

Litisha said, “It is like caste system. English is at the top of the CPM rate followed by Hindi and then comes other regional languages. Odia just got monetized in the big tech platforms. Maybe, we are either being treated as second class citizens.”

“How do we bridge that gap in digital advertising?” Litisha asked, stating that “As a consumer, I only know streaming platforms, digital platforms. But as a second generation media entrepreneur I’m worried. Because, I can’t survive only on digital advertising. As a regional advertiser, I cannot survive on digital advertising revenue. Don’t you think there has to be some regulations in terms of revenue and monetization? Where is that transparency? How can we get that transparency being a tech platform and from the government’s perspective?”

She further raised concerns over the growing piracy that happens outside India in terms of news items, and narrated a personal experience while expressing concerns on the ranking of non-news contents instead of news contents by big tech firms.

Sharing her experience, she said, “I had a conversation with a tech giant. I asked him that my numbers were not growing. In fact, it is receding. But, they said, the algorithm has changed and now we are ranking only on non-news contents. This means people are shown only non-news. Do you think controlling the narrative of what people will see is sort of being controlled?”

She further pointed out how people these days prefer social media for news content to media/news channels. She also expressed the need for new tools and technology to equip journalists and the media industry with.