Entertainment biggies climb on the online bandwagon

What’s making news on the Web these days? The answer would be big daddies of the entertainment industry taking baby steps by creating online content.

The Reliance ADAG-backed bigadda.com has announced its first ever online reality show. Ten Sports, too, has launched its live streaming of cricket matches online and is confident of going forward with its plans. Ibibo, an entertainment- and talent-based social networking site, will also make a debut with an online TV serial.

Mandar Natekar, head of marketing and revenue for Bigadda, says: “Social networking is big and so is reality TV. Therefore, we thought of launching a show around these two themes.” The show called India Bike Rally — Bharat Ki Khoj will have 20 contestants riding across India in a bid to discover the country. Each day, the bikers will stop over at a village or a town in their route map and camp there for the night. At their pit stops, they will be given a set of tasks which they will have to complete. All these participants will maintain their daily diaries through blogs on bigadda.com and will also upload their journey photographs and videos of rare sights. While Bigadda has already roped in Yamaha as its title sponsor, a few other advertisers too have come on board, whom Natekar refuses to name.

On the other hand, Ten Sports along with NBC and digital media company Vdopia has launched a live streaming service. With claims of reaching about 70 million online homes globally, Ten Sports believes it is giving a wider audience base an opportunity to watch cricket matches online. The recently concluded Compaq Cup was the first example of Ten Sport’s live cricket streaming online.

According to NBC’s Digital Product Strategy & Development Vice-President Sab Kanojia, it gives the audience a different option.

One can understand the optimism of portals like Bigadda and Ibibo. According to ViziSense, an online audience measurement and analytics platform, social networking and photo-video sharing sites draw over 50 per cent of the Indian Internet audience in an Internet subscriber base of 50 million. And the advertisers know that the digital medium is growing at a much rapid pace than the rest.

Vdopia’s Saurabh Bhatia says that Ten Sports’ Compaq Cup managed to draw advertisers such as Airtel, Xerox, Maruti and Samsung online for the live streaming, and the firm remains confident that it will cut across genres. “Why stop at cricket when so many people spend half of their time online,” he asks.

For now, Ten Sports is sticking to an advertising-driven revenue model with the user getting a free video streaming service. However, the ad rates are almost one-tenth of that of television. So, if a ten-second TV spot goes for around Rs 2.5 lakh, it will be around Rs 25,000 online. But players admit that it is not something brands are crazy about yet. Perhaps that is the reason why the number of advertisements in the online space pales into insignificance when compared to that in television.

But this is not stopping Ibibo from doing a talent hunt for its first serial that is expected to go online within the next four months. The social networking site is already inundated with users uploading videos of their talent in direction, acting and music etc. Ibibo will shortlist the winners and give the contestants a chance to act in its online serial. Vivek Bahl of ibibo.com says that the excellent response received during their earlier talent hunts prompted them to plan the online serial.