Head of IDA, Dian Gemiano Talks about the Landscape, Disruption, and the Future of the Digital Media Industry

Last Monday (07/9), the Indonesia Digital Association (IDA) held the process of selecting a new general chairman for the 2020-2023 period. CMO KG Media Dian Gemiano (Gemi) was officially elected, through a voting process which was attended by representatives of 22 digital media companies in Indonesia online. IDA was established to be one of the umbrellas of the digital industry, especially in the fields of media, advertising, and marketing. The big task is to help companies increase the “advertising cake”.

DailySocial the opportunity to interview Gemi, explore her perspective on the current media industry, amidst the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic; and deepen the vision of the association that is now under his leadership.

"The digital media industry during this pandemic period generally benefits from the traffic volume or readability, but unfortunately the increase in volume does not reflect the increase revenue advertisements, usually the two parameters move hand in hand," said Gemi.

He further explained that advertising revenue which tends to stagnate (even decline) is due to two things. First, many advertisers are holding back on fish spending due to the uncertain economic situation (wait and see), especially during Q1 and Q2. Second, increasing readability volume pushes down prices programmatic ads, because over-supply of inventory.

"The second pressure is quite heavy because in some media the proportion of income from Programmatic it's pretty big. This Covid-19 must be wake up call for digital media business people because it is increasingly felt that our control over advertising revenue is getting smaller and smaller. There needs to be strategic efforts from media managers toassess business practices that have been carried out so far and take back the lost control," added the man who graduated from ITB.

Media industry disruptions and challenges

Many surveys show high user penetration social media in Indonesia. One of them is summarized in the latest report WeAreSocialAt least this year there are 130 million Facebook users in Indonesia and 63 million Instagram users. Twitter, YouTube, Tik Tok, and other platforms are also gaining popularity. Indirectly, these services are changing the way people consume digital content such as news, as well as for businesses to place their ads.

This condition forces the media business to clean up, rearrange their strategies to remain relevant to their readers. Gemi also agrees that social media is one of the external challenges faced by the digital media industry. Because it has become a necessity, in every business ecosystem there will be disruptive competitors. However, he stressed, ideally competitors can make business advertisements healthier, because they encourage innovation so that the industry continues to grow.

"To achieve these (ideal) conditions, all players must be in playing field equal so that the benefits of mutualism occur in a neutral manner. So, in my opinion, it is not the existence of social media or other platforms that is an issue, but is the relationship between players healthy and equal?," Gemi explained.

He continued, "Like it or not, the existence of social media for publisher digital also provides advantages, at least in the area of ​​content distribution and consumer engagement. However, media managers must also be able to analyze carefully whether these benefits are fair and equal? If you haven't, then you have to fight for it, and if you feel you don't have the strength to fight, means that they must be fought together. There are many parameters that must be considered in this regard, ranging from policies, business practices, consumer management to ethical issues," he added.

He also highlighted that apart from being external, there were also the biggest challenges on the internal side that needed to be resolved together, namely competence. For example, related to data management competence. For a long time there has been much touted about data optimization and the role of data for improving the media business, as well as jargons such as "data is the next oil". According to his observations, until now there has been no media business in Indonesia who has managed to manage audience data properly and effectively scaling up business from there.

"One of the challenges of managing this data is the volume of each media. When compared to global competitors, the individual volumes are not significant," said Gemi.

What IDA will strive for

The vision related to increasing advertising cakes is very clear and is needed by all actors in the media industry. But of course the vision must be able to be detailed with strategic steps that can have a real impact. According to Gemi, there are two main things that will be fought for: increasing competence and encouraging government policies to favor local companies.

"Advertising products must be attractive. In the context of digital advertising, attractiveness increases if the ad performance is also good. For good ad performance, one of the main aspects is data utilization. IDA will facilitate and encourage media managers to have good competence in the data field by training talent or connecting with the right technology partners. Another idea that needs to be explored is facilitating scale up data between media so that the volume of data owned by local media can compete with global players," explained Gemi.

Meanwhile, regarding policy, IDA will actively provide education to policy makers regarding digital advertising business practices -- so far it is complex and sometimes not easily understood by people outside the industry. IDA will hold regular discussions with policy makers within the scope of the partnership so that it is hoped that IDA can become one of the main reference sources in determining policies related to the digital industry.

Sebagai the association that houses many industry players, IDA also expects participation and agreement to grow together.

"It sounds cliché, but to do this requires investment and transparency between digital media companies. It is hoped that in the future IDA can become an effective facilitator for such initiatives. This community must also agree to educate the market to move in the same direction, namely a direction that provides fair benefits for all stakeholder this industry," he said.

The digital media industry is still growing

Industry changes so fast that it is difficult to predict what will happen in the coming years. However, he is quite sure that the digital media industry in Indonesia will still grow because the growth space for internet users is still very wide.

"Indonesia's internet penetration growth will be accelerated outside Java. Because of this capability, hyperlocal media is very important to have. In the near future we will also experiencecookie-less internet' that will change the landscape digital advertising us significantly (KG Media predicts a decrease in programmatic revenue about 16% due to this condition). Media owners must be able to map out this new landscape in detail so that they can position themselves well when it happens," concluded Gemi.