OTT sector expected to witness close to 26% growth in revenue: Chanpreet Arora

With the year drawing to a close, it is time to recap the major developments across the industry. As in the previous years, Adgully reviews the year 2021 for M&E, Advertising, Digital, Marketing, PR & Communications along with leading names in the industry as part of the REWIND 2021 series.

In conversation with Adgully, Chanpreet Arora, Head - AVOD (Voot), Viacom18 Digital Ventures, speaks about how OTT players and regional players witnessed growth, trends and expectations in the M&E Sector for the upcoming year and much more.

Performance & key developments in the OTT sector in 2021

In the continuing wave of the pandemic, the media and the OTT sector specifically continued to enjoy massive adoption across audience segments and content genres in India. We witnessed two to three major developments because of the pandemic and some due to just change in behaviours. The first one is the continued investment in content that the industry made towards OTT, whether it was through films, original web series or innovations of new formats of content like short format videos or gaming.

In terms of performance, the sector is expected to witness close to 26% growth in revenue along with a 12% growth in the number of users for the overall industry, depending on the different categories of OTT players. Small OTT players and regional players are also witnessing a phenomenal growth.

Dominating trends in the OTT sector

OTT platforms primarily started as a catch-up TV for the publisher-led player, however in the last year we have distinctly seen a complete change and strategy, where OTTs have now stabilised their position as an entertainment destination. Beyond movies, early releases and exclusive content, we are seeing a shift in the investment of big IPs that are OTT-specific.

Voot witnessed success in launching and scaling ‘Bigg Boss’ franchise as ‘Bigg Boss OTT’. The digital-first IP was created and customised for the digital-first and younger audience, which proved to be a success. The other trend that not only us but many other players have witnessed is interactive storytelling. Users are not just consuming content passively, but are engaging in it not just through polls, but also by having an impact on how the story moves forward. We have seen that with successfully with ‘The Big Picture’ and other non-fiction properties on Voot.

The third trend that we are seeing and will continue to see at an industry level is the inclusion of casual gaming and short form video content into the main OTTs or their alternate offerings to be able to service the consumers need.

Projections & expectations in the M&E sector in 2022

In the coming year, we will definitely see a huge adoption of connected TVs. Today, mobile phones dominate the video and entertainment content consumption in India. But we are expecting CTVs to go from less than 10% to 33% of the market share in the coming 18 to 24 months. This is an aggressive projection on the back of reduced cost of connected TV and at the same time, OTT becoming mainstream. We have seen this trend on the back of adoption of Jio Fibre, Amazon Fire Stick and the changing consumption behaviour of our own consumers, as we track them.

The other interesting trend we can look out for not just for 2022 is how virtual reality (VR) is going to have an impact on casual gaming and e-sports and how that is going to replace screens entirely and change the experience that we provide to gamers. It is a very important trend to note because gaming is now the fastest growing culture of media consumption in the country and across the world. It would be myopic for us to assume that the adoption of ‘we are in gaming’ will not have an impact on the larger storytelling templates in the video content industry.