Assembly elections in India not helping digital ad revenues

Just recently few state elections concluded (Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram) and two big ones are going to be held on December 7, 2018 (Rajasthan and Telangana).

Earlier I wrote general elections 2019 will be good for digital ad revenues in India. From what I saw these recently held state elections did not fetch any ad revenues for digital publishers. Few reasons could be,

1. Is the internet penetration in these states not sizable? Karnataka, which had its elections in May 2018, has 17 million Facebook users.

   State	FB Users (Dec 2018)
   Mizoram	340,000
   Chhattisgarh	4.1 m
   Madhya Pradesh	12 m
   Rajasthan	15 m
   Telangana	10 m (Hyderabad 7.7m)
   India	270 m

2. Candidates, rather than the political parties tend to spend on digital ads (we saw that pattern in Karnataka)
3. Each of the two major political parties assumes they will win (or lose), hence no point in spending on digital ads.
4. However, they did spend on print and TV ads. Unfair.

Have digital publishers figured out a way to reach the people we see in this photo? In just 2-3 years I believe internet penetration will reach many more in India. India expects to “add” another 500 million internet users soon. By 2021, India will have 536 million Indic users & 200 million English users.

Conclusion

Ultimately one tends to spend on a platform/site if they consider it to be an influencer. A politician wants their ad to be seen on a particular digital platform (FB vs individual publishers vs Google, forget Twitter) if they feel the reader gets influenced.

A digital publisher can attract that kind of user base only if they publish unbiased opinion articles, backed by data. It is best to focus on getting users / traffic for assembly election coverage with the assumption the ad revenues will come from sources other than the political field.

I still think digital publishers in India have a great opportunity for covering General Elections 2019. But are the publishing houses ready to invest in good content?

Irrespective of who wins in these 5 state assembly elections, I believe digital publishers lost.