In India, men consume the highest OTT content in 2020: MICA report

Men consumed the highest amount of OTT content in India in 2020, according to the The third edition of the Indian Over-the-Top (OTT) Platforms Report 2020, published by MICA Ahmedabad.

Released in association with Ahmedabad-based start-up Communication Crafts, the report found that the consumption of content on OTT platforms was the highest by men.

The report, prepared by MICA’s Centre for Media and Entertainment Studies (CMES), analysed data shared by Comscore, an American media measurement and analytics company and captured the trends between April 2019-March 2020 across 26 OTT platforms such as video, music, gaming and news.

As per the report, overall, India stood second highest with 8.43 hours of video consumption per week after the United States at 8.55 hours per week.

“For all the OTT platforms, the consumption of content was the highest by men,” the report said.

The total male viewers almost doubled the total female viewers for Netflix.

Maximum viewers belong to the 15-24 age group. For Amazon Prime, most subscribers were males aged 18-24, as per the report, almost double the females in the same category.

“The least audience traffic is in the female age group 25-45,” as per the report.

For HotStar, the total male audience was 1.5 times more than the total female audience. Among male viewers, 37 per cent were under the age group of 15-24.

Content consumers on YouTube in India primarily included men between the ages of 15-24 and 25-34, while females’ maximum consumption occurs in the 15-24 age group.

Homegrown OTT platform Voot was among the exceptions, with close to 51- 52 per cent of the audience on Voot now being female.

Around 65 per cent of their audiences now come from Tier II and Tier III markets.

Zee5, another homegrown OTT platform, has also witnessed a “significant upward shift in visitors on the app and the website in early 2020.”

“The kids’ content available on Zee5 has also managed to garner substantial traction from children between the ages of 6-14, mostly younger boys,” the report said.

In terms of the preferred content, “Comedy’ was the most preferred genre by Indians in 2020 across these OTT platforms. According to the report, MX Player was the highest consumed platform after YouTube.

Apart from comedy, “the genres consumed heavily on various platforms were crime, sex, religion, food, and other drama content,” the report said.

After MX player, people chose Hotstar, followed by two streaming giants Netflix and Amazon Prime video. This was followed by Jio TV.

Creators are also turning towards regional content to woo audiences, using a new “hybrid formula” to ride the wave.

“The game for originals is on with Tier II and III hinterland audiences influencing the growth of OTT,” the report said.

“The report shows how the growing awareness among Indians of self-reliance and the gradual weaning away from foreign influences has influenced the Media and Entertainment domain’s consumption patterns. In a way, this has led to a rapid shift towards commissioning more and more original content in Hindi as well as other regional languages,” said Dr Shailendra Raj Mehta, President & Director, MICA,
Ahmedabad.

Dr Preeti Shroff, Dean, MICA, Ahmedabad, said, “In the post-pandemic era, the Media and Entertainment (ME) sector companies in India are responding well by developing and integrating digital strategies for culturally relevant ad content-based storytelling. They are better connecting with digitally-enabled consumers to create meaningful experiences for long-term relationship building. The OTT ecosystem in India is also responding well to creative business opportunities in the regional language markets.”

The report also analysed gaming trends in India. As per the report, Indians played games for 63 billion minutes, against 42 billion minutes in March 2019, recording a 49 per cent increase. Users also cloaked 4 hours 5 minutes of gaming consumption in the week of April 25, 2020.

Even in terms of gaming, male members topped the charts.

“The clear leader among all the players goes to the male members between 18 and 24,” the report said.

Music streaming platforms also recorded an increase of 39.6 per cent.

Overall, there was an increase of 19 per cent of people being connected digitally in 2020.

“As against 3435 million people connected digitally in March 2019, the same was 5677 million digitally in March 2020,” as per the report.

The report further estimated that smartphone users in India will touch 925 million by 2023. The Hindu Business Line