NEW DELHI: There was a growth of forty per cent in advertising in the United Kingdom in fifiteen years from the turn of the millennium, but the the print medium saw a fall of 65 per cent in advertising in the same period.

Online advertising is the dominant source in the UK cornering 74 per cent, according to Financial Times Chief Data Officer Tom Betts.

In a presentation on Data Insights: Disrupting News at the just concluded ZEEMelt, Betts said however, that sixty per cent do not remember what they read on the social media and agreed with a comment that the digital medium had sight and sound but the touch was missing and that was why the primt medium continued to grow in many countries.

However, it was equally true that there is very little feedback in the print medium unlike the data driven growth in digital technologies. “Customer data is at the centre” and was the customer DNA in digital platforms, he said.

“It is really exciting times for news just as it is for advertising”, he said, with mobiles and i-pads providing competition to the print medium.

Digital technology has also helped to bring personal finance to the top and the advertising wold has to cater to that.

But customer engagement comes from ‘Recency, Frquency, and Volume’ and advertising is analytically power driven through personalised products and data-supported discovery often depending on what he termed as ‘digital serendipity.’

Echoing these same sentiments in another session on ‘The future oif storytelling’, Conde Nast Digital Director Gaurav Mishra said today’s consumer wanted on-the-go content.

As a result, interest graphs were narrowing as the consumer only wanted to see what interested him.There was also ‘digital serendipity’ resulting in a lot of sharing on the social platforms. This led to a shared purpose and passion.