This new wave of audience consumption behaviour of digital video has drastically changed the ways of entertainment deliveries. It accelerated multi-fold when the pandemic and the forceful sitting at home revolutionised the fate of digital videos, be it the increase in demands of the Over-The-Top platforms, short content format apps or social commerce.

I saw a change when my teenage niece and her gang from tier 2 city, who often socialised with friends, used to go to movies and were fairly outdoorsy ended up spending a fair amount of time watching content online as well as creating content online. The numbers I read recently from a BCG-CII report, spoke off how digital video consumption in India has risen to more than 24 minutes, almost 2x compared to the pre-pandemic times.

OTT On An Exponential Curve

As the globe becomes digitally connected and content demand peaks, India is now accessing the darkest corners of the country via smartphones enabling a shift towards on-demand video. An extensive survey conducted by the Dentsu digital report 2021 states that digital media is expected to grow at 20% to reach INR 23,672 crores by the year 2022. Reports also suggest India's OTT market may reach $12.5 billion by 2030. RBSA advisors' report stated that this exponential growth would mostly come from tier two, three, and four cities. 

Social Media For Brand Marketing

Social Media saw a trajectory like never before; with influencers helping engage potential audiences and draw them in with recommendations for commerce and video, thus almost doubling the number of viewers for online VOD platforms. ML and AI are being exploited to the fullest to keep the audience engaged in content discovery. It started with colourful dresses and outfits against colourful walls. During a time when muted tone filters were becoming popular, her highly saturated photos jumped out. But things change, right? When the ‘typical look’ of influencer marketing no longer becomes unique, what comes next? In comes short format videos, now adapted by almost all leading social media platforms, to keep viewers informed on the brands and notify consumers about various content pieces offered by OTT platforms. 

Digital Advertising Delivering Views & ROI

With the world needing to find new things to do while stuck behind closed doors, digital streams boomed, and so did the revenue on these streams. When you use digital advertising, you only pay when a user completes a desired action on your ad. This action can range from clicking on your ad to viewing your ad to buying your product, basis how an advertiser has set up the campaign, thus extremely ROI oriented. 

Organisations have seen time and again potential in targeted digital mapping, thereby diverting more funds into digital advertising. Digital advertising revenue is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13 per cent to reach $13.3 billion by the year 2025, said the Asia Pacific Advertising Trends 2021 report from MPA.  

Time For V Curve Recovery

The digital ecosystem has come of age and has also kickstarted multiple start-ups, thereby creating new opportunities with new career objectives. All of a sudden young ones are being enrolled in coding classes, content writing classes, or teenagers and young are learning gimmicks of being social influencers, a whole surrounding industry around the digital ecosystem. Digital video has also enabled a plethora of new faces to come under the spotlight. This heavily accelerated digital video market will undoubtedly soon be filled with high-quality content leaving viewers spoilt for choice and a thriving revenue top line for platforms.

The Author is Divya Dixit, SVP, Revenue & Marketing, ALTBalaji