You may like it or not; It may be a reality by 2020

Print media; especially the newspapers have witnessed unprecedented surge in full-page, multipage advertising past few months. Let it annoyed the readers; but the advertising has been flourished despite of slump in the ground market.

During the Navratri and Diwali season, considered as most important for revenue generation in Indian media, this surge will reach to its peak. Pages after pages will have full-page advertisements. One of the largest contributor to the revenue during these days is E-commerce websites.

I see it differently five years down the lines and think it may damage the newspaper business in coming years if they fail to respond smartly.  

Here are my wild thoughts:

I have a doubt, if any media manager dealing with newspapers, is unhappy seeing his agency or the media house getting full page and multipage advertisements from the E-commerce giants such as Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal and other small businesses or E-commerce start-ups.

But he or she must worry as well for the future and must act smartly to avoid disaster in waiting.

I am not at all pessimistic about the contemporary business trend originated from E-commerce giants. Rather, they are utilizing print media stylishly and for that, they must be congratulated.

However, five years down the line, at-least 70% of the E-commerce websites will not prefer newspapers to advertise with.

They will not require ‘newspaper advertising’ platform to push their business.

They will not require ‘newspaper advertising’ platform to declare their sell bonanzas.

This is not assumption or the prejudice; but the fact emerging from the trend of E-commerce.

Today Flipkart is offering special deals, discounts, schemes and other facilities for the customers downloading their mobile application. Myntra is fully app-only E-commerce business. Amazon has started app-only many months ago. Snapdeal too following the same trend. Start-ups such as bigbasket, localbanya and thousands of other are on ‘app only’ route.

At present, the three biggies Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal each has more than 1 million app users. The newspapers flooding with advertisements from these giants fuelling more app downloads. The market steadily; but firmly shifting towards mobile-only business transactions.

On October 15, Flipkart declared they sold half million mobile handsets, most of them were 4G devices, in just 10 hours.

Do you think, these devices will be used for Whatsapp, Facebook and Google Hangout prominently? Obviously, the devices will incorporate more E-commerce apps. Imagine year 2020, exactly the fifth Diwali season starting from now. Crores of mobile devices, powered with E-commerce apps will drive the business. Now, why would Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal and others will require flooding the newspapers with full page advertisements to attract users when they have their own, dedicated customers in millions?

Still as I said only 70% of the present newspaper revenue, generating from the E-commerce websites would go by year 2020 as newcomers and start-ups will trust the way their ancestors had followed. They will keep fuelling the newspapers with advertisements; however not exactly the same way their ancestors did in year 2015.

In the meantime, the small business, retailers working on streets might have stopped and newspapers might lose the advertising they used to receive for years.

For instance, a clothing and accessories seller in Mumbai or Delhi, for years, utilized newspapers for advertising. I don’t think, the business would survive enough to pay for the newspaper advertising in next five years. Either it will end or will survive marginally relying on customers in nearby locality. Clearly, a large chunk of business traditionally coming from such small traders will be lost permanently.  

So, if media managers are happy with the revenue of year 2015 and expecting it to grow in future, it may be disastrous thought. The revenue coming from E-commerce websites will stop growing by year 2020 and will shift to the mobile platforms.

The take home message is along with celebrating today’s success, an intelligent manager should start developing an app which could serve the purpose of ‘app only’ transactions.