Those accustomed to hearing Innovation Media president Juan Señor telling conference audiences to get a couple more strings to their media business would have been impressed by this afternoon's Digital Media India speakers.

As Gannett's first chief revenue officer, Kevin Gentzel had presided over the US group's growth as a digital agency, while Times Internet's Anghad Bhatia told of an ecommerce operation perhaps 30 times the size of comparable businesses.

Everything about Times' MensXP - which attracts about a million shoppers a month - is simply huge, following its move into the segment in 2019. Apart from MensXP and Mud, there are about eight more house brands in areas such as men's grooming, fashion and wellness. Oh, and an inhouse talent/influencer agency, and facilities to produce 5000 original videos a year.

"We forwarded into commerce, using community trust to build a unique business model," says Bhatia, "based on our ability to translate our audience into commerce with a street of transactional offerings."

He drops a few figures, such as the 60 million impressions and 15.9 million views drawn by a Philips offer, and cosmetics attracting 25,000 views and more than 450 purchases.

You'd think things would have got sticky when operations had to stop because of COVID-19 restrictions in March, but since they reopened with "a stack of rules", business is up by about 600 per cent. Revenue comes from a combination of ecommerce and advertising. Times also has a separate channel for social media, with search traffic having quadrupled in recent months.

The secret is keeping attention, he says, but yes, "anyone could do it"... provided you have a niche and can hold attention. Taylor Swift had a good idea with that cardigan, he muses.

When Kevin Gentzel joined Gannett in 2015, he says customers laughed at the idea of a news media company operating as the digital agency. Since then, they've got serious... and bigger, lately with a partnership with McClatchy and another he named "off the record" (which has turned out to be Snap, the owner of Snapchat, not the copyshop brand as we suggested when this was first published).

Using the LocaliQ brand of its regional business (not USA Today) they have built a business which "fuses together who we are as a media company with all the trust from more than 100 years". They're committed to being subscription led - on B2B and consumer - and have growth from one to ten million as a mission critical priority "to take us beyond 2025".

Since the worst of COVID, a focus has been on "getting local businesses back on path", with a lot of dashboard-based tech to deliver business benchmarks, competitive analyses, and show customers cost of achieving objectives. A full inhouse creative agency called GetCreative has led the business in VR and AR, as it expands across SEM, branded content, display and sports content sponsorships.

Juan Señor would approve, and we'll be back to ask about his other dozen ideas.

Peter Coleman

Pictured from top: Times Internet's MensXP and Anghad Bhatia; Kevin Gentzel and Gannett's Grader tool and GetCreative studio