In a conversation with exchange4media, MX Media COO talks about the platform’s monetisation strategy, market expansion plans and more
MX Media COO Nikhil Gandhi, Gandhi, who joined the platform in August last year, has been focussing on three areas as part of his growth agenda for MX Player.
The first is growing users in India and internationally, including identifying new markets, growing the presence in the current markets, and increasing the watch time on the app.
The second is to deploy data in creating strategies for distribution and content and the third one is to increase distribution by identifying new business areas.
“SVOD is a service which we just launched in the form of MX Gold. In the revenue function, we have come up with a self-serve ad platform MX Advantage. We are launching our own audience network called MX Audience Network,” he revealed.
Gandhi explains that MX Advantage, the self-serve ad platform, is targeted at Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). “New advertisers can simply log on to MX Advantage and place their ads on our platform. We will fulfill the ad commitment by placing it on our network. We just launched the site and it’s a pilot test. We have already got a lot of inquiries.”
MX Player is also building its own audience network by partnering with third-party publishers. “We are growing our audience network outside of the MX Player network by partnering with other publishers. The MX Audience Network will allow us to place ads as Google does. We will be giving higher CPMs to publishers who join our audience network than what they would otherwise get from the market.”
He noted that the MX Audience Network will allow publishers to get better value for their inventory while advertisers will get the value in the form of reaching audiences that they would not have reached otherwise.
The platform has also launched a content studio to sell premium inventory to brands. “We sell the premium ad inventory directly. We have launched a branded content arm called MX Studios. We have seen stupendous success in the last six months. We will be launching original content to offer premium advertising inventory to clients,” he noted.
Response to MX Gold
MX Gold, the subscription video on demand (SVOD) service launched by MX Player, has garnered a sizeable number of paid subscribers in four months of its launch.
MX Gold has three ad-free subscription plans. This includes an annual pack that allows users to consume content without ads. It also has a genre-based plan for accessing just the original web shows. The MX Player VDesi plan offers international content dubbed in Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu.
Gandhi sees a huge opportunity to scale up the SVOD piece due to the large user base that sits on the MX Player platform. “We were clear that on a 200-million base if I have to convert 10% of my base, I will be highest in terms of subscribed users.”
Content Strategy
MX Players intends to launch 41 original shows in FY23, which will include the new seasons of existing shows and new formats or genres. The content strategy is to offer something new to the existing base and attract new users to the platform.
“We will launch 41 original shows in FY23. We have scaled up the shows in terms of names and quality. We have got 25 percent new audiences because of ‘Lock-Upp’. We are cross-pollinating those audiences to get them to watch our original content like’ Aashram’. Our content strategy is not just to feed our current user base but also to get new audiences,” he asserted.
The platform’s long-term content strategy is to become an original content platform by phasing out third-party content. It has launched long-format shows to reduce dependency on broadcaster-owned content.
“We have launched long-format shows of 52 episodes to cater to the TV audience. This will help us reduce dependency on other broadcasters. We intend to phase out third-party content from our platform and over a period of time become an original content owning service,” he stated.
Gandhi also claimed that MX Player’s multi-lingual strategy has helped it to expand the reach of its original content. The platform is available in 12 languages and the original content is dubbed in several languages. “We get 27% of our audiences from the South, so we have to look at how we can expand our content offering for that audience,” he stated.
International Plans
MX Player also has big plans for the international markets. It plans to localise content for international markets that have huge potential for Indian content. Apart from that, it also plans to launch an OTT aggregation service targeted at the Indian diaspora. “In the international markets, we see opportunity in localising content. We are also launching an OTT aggregator service globally comprising Indian streaming apps,” he added.
Read more news about (internet advertising India, internet advertising, advertising India, digital advertising India, media advertising India)
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