VIVEK LATH: “THE BIGGEST COVID IMPACT HAS BEEN ON THE ADVERTISING REVENUE”

Coronavirus crisis has forced companies to stop production all around the world. While in Europe the things seem to return slowly to the normality with the continuity of the productions, in India and in many parts of the word, productions are on hold. “The biggest impact has been on the advertising revenue because consumer spending has gone down significantly. That is actually the advertising spend which has also impacted the revenues in free TV and advertisement-dependent media,”  explained Vivek Lath, Managing Director at Goquest Media Ventures, to Señal News.

Currently, GoQuest Media is focused on increasing its partners base across Europe, Canada, India, and in many other countries. “There is a particular focus on fiction dramas. We’ve distributed a catalogue of very strong fiction stories from across the world which can travel globally,”  Lath said.

 Goquest Media has recognized that at the beginning of the pandemic they did struggle a bit but they got up and running very soon. “From the very beginning, the year 2020 already started to set up a lot of more working tools, we essentially moved most of our physical operations to digital, such as managing content uploads and content deliveries,”  he indicated.

In the current “new normality,” the international markets have become digital or they had been canceled. “Markets are important for us, they were essentially before to deepen relationships–these are really where you get to meet in person, you get to know them well, you get to understand them very clearly and better. Markets are also one of the best places to meet many people in a very very short amount of time, and that’s how you get a lot of visibility into the trends of the business and where the business is going,”  asserted the Managing Director at Goquest Media.

“We’re not sure how many participation markets we will continue to have. People are still a bit more paranoid but we’re adjusting our sales process to try more remote conversations with part of our client base. It’s challenging but it’s a need of ours, and it is something that we will figure out as we go through this process. So far so good, but we would like those markets to come back and full function again,”  he completed.

This new normality will also bring changes in the industry. “The biggest change has been the acceleration of OTT platforms and more and more audiences getting used to watching and making OTT platforms as the primary source of content,”  Lath said. "That has been a good positive change, at least there has been now more competition on the client based side, more players are out there needing content, looking to satisfy audience demands. After the shutdown ends, we’ll definitely see beauty and striking platforms to see exponential growth globally and in a visionary way,”  he concluded.

Another coronavirus crisis effect has been the creation of new formats. “We’ve seen some interesting demands, we have a lot of our clients asking for what we call the 'lockdown formats'. Essentially because productions are on hold, people and producers have changed their strategies and are trying to find innovative ways to produce content when the performers and the talents are sitting at home,”  the executive indicated.

By Romina Rodríguez