AP7AM

About AP7AM

AP7AM is a Hyderabad-based digital-only news portal publishing at www.ap7am.com, recognised as one of the oldest digital-native news sites operating out of Hyderabad, Telangana. The bilingual portal publishes in Telugu and English, covering politics, entertainment and spirituality with a strong editorial focus on Telugu movies and film reviews. It is run by Chilliguri Infosystems under founder Ch Srinivasa Rao. AP7AM gained wider industry attention as a case study in the Google News Initiative's Advertising Lab programme, where its work on core web vitals and site performance — undertaken with technology partner Readwhere — delivered sharp gains in page speed, page views and revenue, making it a cited example of digital publishing best practice from India's regional media sector.

One of Hyderabad's oldest digital-only news sites

AP7AM's most distinguishing credential is its longevity as a digital-only publisher. Google's News Initiative describes it as one of the oldest digital-only news sites based out of Hyderabad, Telangana — a significant marker in a market where most established news brands began in print or television and only later built websites. Being digital-only from the start meant the outlet grew up with the internet news economy: search distribution, social traffic, programmatic advertising and mobile readership, rather than adapting a legacy newsroom to the web. That early start gave AP7AM a head start in understanding Telugu digital audiences, and its survival through successive waves of competition — from newspaper websites to television portals to social-native publishers — testifies to a durable editorial and business formula.

Chilliguri Infosystems and the founder

The portal is operated by Chilliguri Infosystems, the company behind ap7am.com, founded by Ch Srinivasa Rao. In the Google News Initiative case study documenting the site's performance transformation, Srinivasa Rao is quoted as the founder, describing how the Advertising Lab experience changed the company's approach to measurement: moving the site to Google Cloud, adding CDN services, and objectively assessing page impressions, users and revenue. The founder-led structure is typical of India's independent digital news ventures, where the proprietor is closely involved in both editorial direction and the commercial and technical decisions that keep a digital publisher viable. Chilliguri Infosystems' stewardship has kept the portal independent of the large media groups that dominate much of Telugu news.

Bilingual publishing in Telugu and English

AP7AM publishes in two languages, Telugu and English, a structure that widens its audience beyond the Telugu-reading core. The Telugu edition serves the primary readership in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and the global Telugu diaspora, while the English edition makes the portal's coverage of Telugu politics, cinema and culture accessible to non-Telugu readers and to diaspora audiences more comfortable in English. Bilingual operation requires parallel editorial workflows, and sustaining both editions over many years reflects the outlet's commitment to reaching the full spectrum of its potential audience. In the competitive Telugu digital market, where most portals publish in Telugu alone, the English edition gives AP7AM an additional distribution surface.

Coverage: politics, entertainment and spirituality

The portal's coverage spans politics, entertainment and spirituality, three categories that map closely onto the interests of the Telugu digital audience. Political reporting tracks developments in the Telugu states and national politics, serving readers in one of India's most politically engaged regions. Entertainment coverage centres on the Telugu film industry — Tollywood news, star updates and industry developments — reflecting cinema's central place in Telugu public culture. The spirituality vertical, covering religious and devotional topics, addresses a large and loyal readership segment; spiritual content consistently ranks among the highest-engagement categories for Telugu publishers. Together, these three pillars give the site a balanced mix of hard news, popular culture and service content.

Telugu movies and film reviews

Within its entertainment coverage, AP7AM places a strong focus on Telugu movies and movie reviews, a specialisation noted in Google's profile of the publisher. Film reviews are a high-traffic category for Telugu portals: review-day searches spike with every major release, and a trusted review voice builds habitual readership among cinema fans. The portal's long-standing attention to movie coverage — news, reviews and related features — has made it part of the Tollywood media ecosystem that shapes opening-weekend conversation. For a digital-only outlet, owning the movie-review moment around big releases is both an audience strategy and a brand-building exercise, associating the masthead with the cultural events its readers care about most.

The Google News Initiative case study

AP7AM became an industry reference point through its participation in the Google News Initiative's Advertising Lab, documented as a public case study titled around the publisher's page-view growth. The programme identified two core problems: poor core web vitals scores caused by header bidding scripts, and weak page-view growth stemming from inferior site performance. Working with Readwhere, the AP7AM team implemented detailed optimisation recommendations covering desktop and mobile advertising changes, including ad-unit placement suggestions aligned with IAB viewability standards and new ad formats such as Flying Carpet units on article pages and Multiplex native ads at the end of articles. The publisher moved its infrastructure to Google Cloud and added CDN services. The reported results were striking: a 78 percent increase in PageSpeed Insights score (from 51 to 91), an 83 percent improvement in page views, and 26 percent year-on-year revenue growth.

Technical transformation and its lessons

The GNI case study's technical details illustrate how performance engineering translates into publishing outcomes. Header bidding — the programmatic advertising technique that had been depressing the site's core web vitals — was reconfigured; ad placements were redesigned for viewability rather than mere impression volume; and the move to cloud hosting with CDN delivery cut load times. Founder Ch Srinivasa Rao described the Advertising Lab as an eye-opening experience, noting that the team began objectively monitoring page impressions, users and revenue and saw remarkable improvement across all three. The outlet committed to continuing to monitor performance via Google's PageSpeed Insights tool and to address page-performance issues promptly. For other regional publishers, the AP7AM story became a demonstration that technical investment — not just editorial effort — drives digital growth.

Digital-first longevity in a crowded market

AP7AM's endurance as a digital-only Telugu publisher is notable given the competitive pressures of its market. It has outlasted many contemporaries from the early Telugu web era and continues to publish alongside the digital operations of television networks, newspaper groups and well-funded startups. Its longevity rests on a combination of factors: an early start that built brand recognition and search authority, a focused editorial mix of politics, movies and spirituality, bilingual publishing, and — as the GNI work showed — a willingness to modernise its technology stack. Independent digital publishers in India face constant pressure from platform algorithm changes and advertising market shifts; AP7AM's continued operation indicates an ability to adapt that many peers have lacked.

Role in Hyderabad's digital media landscape

Based in Hyderabad — the media capital of the Telugu-speaking world — AP7AM operates at the centre of Tollywood industry news and Telugu-state political reporting while remaining independent of the city's large media houses. Its recognition by the Google News Initiative gave an independent regional publisher a national industry profile, and its published performance metrics made it a concrete example in discussions of sustainable digital journalism in India. For readers, the portal offers a long-established, bilingual source of Telugu news with particular strength in film coverage; for the industry, it stands as evidence that a focused, technically competent independent publisher can build a lasting digital news business from Hyderabad without the backing of a legacy media group.