Traffic is growing for Indic language publishers in India, but it doesn't necessarily translate into better revenues, although larger publishers have it easier. Sriram Hebbar, CEO of Greynium (OneIndia), which publishes in 7 Indic languages, apart from English, says that it does around 460 million pageviews a month, said that monetization is not an issue any more, at that scale, and "The CPM's are right now on par with English, in the last 12 months. That's a significant improvement", but it only happens once a publisher has scaled, and "We don't have the problems that an Udayavani has." Manorama Online, according to its COO Mariam Mathew, has grown 50-60% year on year. For OneIndia, growth has been coming from smaller towns. "In the South, from Tumkur and Madurai. The other part is that now in the school syllabus, you teach people how to use Google etc. What started 10 years ago, is paying off. They know about the internet when they graduate." A shift to verticals also helped OneIndia. "Most people thought that mostly English speaking people cared for fashion etc. Everyone wants good phones and cars. They want quality content, and we (now) have verticals like lifestyle, personal finance etc. (in Indic languages). We have seen that usage grow. Three years ago, we shifted to verticals," OneIndia MD BG Mahesh adds. Advertisers are interested Challenges in case of monetization include those with getting specific creatives for Indic languages. "We try and explain that the CTR's (Click Through Rates) are…
