Ratings alone are not enough — broadcasters need a dialogue with the viewer

Valeriy Mashtakov is the founder of MediaNova and Nomad Dig Group, a specialist with 30 years of experience in television advertising who helped launch independent television measurement in Uzbekistan. He explains why raw numbers are no longer enough for the market, and where to find a language for talking to the youngest population in the CIS.

A pragmatic Mission and state support for technology

The initiative to create a Mission for Uzbekistan's marketing and advertising industry is both timely and necessary, but its success depends on pragmatism and an applied focus.

There is no point in spreading the effort across abstract statements about "the good of the whole country" — the political agenda is best left to the country's leadership. What the community needs is a hard look at specific industry segments: advertising, marketing, media measurement and technology.

State initiatives on tax incentives for the creative sector, AI development and the IT industry deserve deep respect. They are a direct continuation of the One Million Coders programme, which has built a core of in-demand specialists in the country. For all the alarmism around artificial intelligence, people remain the key driver of growth — the workforce and its productive capacity. The opening of Uzbekistan's first licensed Nike factory confirms that international capital rates the country's growing labour potential highly.

TV measurement as the industry's currency

My intensive work in the Tashkent media market began in 2018. The major industry milestone of that period was the launch of independent television measurement. Anywhere in the world, measurement raises plenty of questions among producers and channel executives — everyone sincerely believes their own product is undervalued. Even so, the arrival of single-source data changed the rules of the game completely. Today measurement is moving beyond cities of 100,000-plus into niche segments and giving broadcasters what matters most: an understanding of their viewer and a solid industry currency.

At the same time, linear television is going through a tectonic shift: it has lost its monopoly on the big screen in the living room. National TV now shares a single device with YouTube, TikTok, Netflix, Megogo, Kinopoisk and dozens of other services. For a viewer switching on the set to choose local channels — ZO'R TV, Milliy — broadcasters need radically new approaches.

Television is a tool for managing emotions. To understand which emotion a piece of content actually lands in, the dry analytics of ratings are not enough.

The industry needs a live dialogue with its audience: it allows new TV projects to be popularised, formats to be tested and feedback to be gathered quickly.

A demographic super-resource: the 29-year-old phenomenon

Uzbekistan's main competitive advantage is its demography. This is the youngest market in the CIS, with a median population age of 29: for comparison, Kazakhstan is at 32, Russia at 46 and Ukraine, because of circumstances, at 49. This young audience lives in Telegram, TikTok and social media, and sets demanding standards for the pace at which information is delivered.

Looking down on young people is a mistake. Generation Z are tech-savvy, advanced people who win international robotics championships. To hold their attention, media production has to adapt. China is a telling example: to meet Gen Z demand, studios shoot short vertical series of 6–8 minutes with special cameras built for mobile devices. With their clip-driven perception, Gen Z viewers are simply not built to watch 50-minute classic programmes.

At the same time, the Gen Z audience in Uzbekistan is not uniform:

• Young people from the capital. Those who grew up in Tashkent in comfortable families with a financial safety net are more prone to burning out quickly and changing jobs easily.
• Young people from the regions. Those arriving from the regions bring exceptional drive, responsibility to their families, rent to pay and enormous motivation to learn and earn.

Institutional trust and the hygiene of the digital environment

Media are a key instrument for informing the public about the work of the government and the processes under way in the country, and here it is essential to speak to people in a language they understand.

Despite claims that audiences have moved online entirely, traditional television across the region, Kazakhstan included, still holds first place for public trust. The reason is the legal institution of accountability: a TV journalist or an editorial team bears direct personal and legal responsibility for every word, up to and including court proceedings.

In the digital environment and the blogosphere, institutional control is diluted: anonymity, fakes and VPNs make it easy to avoid responsibility. For the digital space to develop in a civilised way, the market needs a clear code of ethics and regulatory framework. State initiatives to clean profanity out of the digital environment deserve support — Kazakhstan's experience is a case in point: the standard of public speech is a basic indicator of a market's maturity.

Organic authenticity and the mistakes of global brands

Uzbekistan has a profound thousand-year history and a vivid national identity. There is no need to dig artificial cultural clichés out of the past and pour budgets into crude ethnic styling. Uzbekistan is authentic in its own right, and that identity is there from the start.

Blindly copying European templates leads to financial losses just as surely:

• A beverage producer. For years a large multinational brand sent over standard European TV commercials that did not work in the region. Only after the local team persuaded headquarters to rework the content around the audience's mentality and family values did the advertising start delivering commercial results.
• A fragrance brand. An international commercial for a women's perfume was blocked by our team immediately and sent back for reworking: it directly violated the region's ethical norms and would have provoked strong rejection from viewers.

Business is pragmatic and interested in sales. Having taken losses from ineffective campaigns, entrepreneurs turn to industry leaders and professional bodies — in particular to Diyor Mirzaakhmedov and the Marketing Association of Uzbekistan. The role of the expert community is to act as a navigator, helping business learn from its mistakes and adapt its communications to the local context.

Media Kitchen: a digital bridge to the young viewer

After giving 30 years of my professional life to television advertising, it is impossible to watch the outflow of viewers from traditional broadcast to digital with indifference. Understanding these shifts, we launched a dedicated YouTube project, Media Kitchen — a platform for open discussion of the industry's problems.

Within the Mission, Uzbekistan needs a comparable platform: a live digital channel for direct conversation with the young viewer, for running short street interviews and for bringing the professional community together. Through feedback and honest dialogue, the media industry can hear the voice of the new generation and build a sustainable model for the future.