5 ways in which COVID-19 is impacting the digital landscape: Carat India

Carat India has come up with a few observations on how the digital landscape has been impacted during the COVID-19 outbreak. The agency also highlights the opportunities that the COVID-19 disruption presents to sectors like Food, Engagement, Entertainment, News & Search, and Events.

Food

Food deliver apps and services ran out of favour. On the other hand, food recipe videos have climbed the ranks to become the most watched category on YouTube.

• Online food ordering apps saw 33% decline in traffic and 70% decline in orders since lockdown was announced
• A surge in interest for cooking related content was reported by YouTube. Primarily driven by Metros, the trend suggests that many are learning to cook basic recipes and feasting over online cooking videos.
• YouTube has reported doubling of traffic to cooking related content on their platform
• Dalgona Coffee: The new craze started in January, when Korean actor Jung Il-woo showed how to make the drink, starting the Dalgona Coffee challenge across social media platforms.

Opportunity

Food brands could seize this opportunity and target popular recipe videos and food vlogs for relevant placement of their products. Also, look at collaborating with food vloggers during the pandemic with most people preferring to eat at home.

• Aashirvad’s chatbot helped users find recipes
• ITC Hotels developed relevant content by getting their chefs to share recipes online
• Dabur got actress Tamanna to share #StayHome Recipes using Dabur

Engagement

High on engagement, but low on downloads has been the story for most social media apps. But LudoKing has emerged as the go-to platform for families, and Twitter came into the spotlight once again.

• The time spent on smartphones per week has increased by 1.5 hours.
• Consumption of social media has almost doubled at 280 minutes per day
• However, volume of downloads of popular social media apps saw a dip, with TikTok daily downloads falling below the 450,000 mark
• Twitter saw its traffic soaring with users wanting to track news updates real-time
• Visits to online gaming sites and apps grew by 24% and LudoKing emerged as one of the most popular games as its daily download figure jumped three times
• Not just adding new visitors, Indian online gaming platforms have also benefitted from increased gaming times per user and many are advancing their new game launches
• Nintendo and Microsoft’s online gaming service saw outages with traffic peaking on its platforms as more countries went for #Lockdown

Games like LudoKing brought newer audiences, ensuring gaming doesn’t remain a boys only platform during the pandemic.

Opportunity

• All these platforms are ideal with captive and need-based audience for brands to look at
• Segmentation and richer targeting would deliver brand managers greater bang for their buck
• Extend well performing ads on social media
• Build email marketing list with lead ads
• Stay relevant by offering tips on things one could do at home #LockedDown
• While in-game placement might not be possible, in-app advertising on gaming apps will work better in reaching the newer segments on gaming platforms these days

Entertainment

While video streaming apps enthralled viewers with new content, audio streaming reached a crescendo with 42 per cent increase in time spent.

• The rise in the OTT content consumption has been secular – across demographics and across devices
• Indians are spending nearly 3 hours a day on their smartphones, and more than 30% of this time is spent on consuming entertainment
• While there is a spate of new releases across the OTT platforms, all platforms have seen a rise in people watching older episodes of programmes
• Peak times have increased across platforms and are around 8-11.30 am and 6 pm to midnight
• Netflix led YouTube, Amazon Prime and Hotstar on downloads in the first quarter of 2020, but with the lockdown and schools being shut, it was YouTube Kids that won the battle in terms of time spent on the app
• Digital music concerts and music streaming have led to the increased time spent on audio OTT platforms
• With 18-22% increase in listenership and almost 30% jump in downloads, podcasting platforms have benefitted from #lockdown
• With rise in engagement and viewership of new content and repeat viewing, OTTs are highly dependable selection in your COVID-19 media plan

E-commerce marketplace, Snapdeal, has partnered with Hungama Play, a video on demand platform owned by Hungama Digital Media, to offer a video streaming service to its users.

Opportunity

• Audio-led content again presents a very economical alternative for the smart brand manager looking for richer engagement
• It takes 21 days of doing the same thing to form a habit and 90 days for a change in lifestyle. With the current lockdown phase and #StayHome scenario going to be prevalent for the near term, primary consumption of content through OTT platforms might be the new normal

5 things marketers need to know about advertising on OTT platforms:

1. Deduplication – no repeats of same ad creative
2. Enforcing competitive separation
3. Frequency Capping – Number of times the user is exposed to a brand’s ad
4. In-content Placement – Partnering successful content creators
5. Cover your bases – Don’t spend on OTT unless you have a search and social campaign on

News & Search

News has been the primary online content consumed across the globe, while COVID-19 and related keywords dominated search trends.

• As interest in Coronavirus increases, related searches and questions on Coronavirus have been growing
• With newspaper circulation discontinued in most regions across the country, mobile became the first-choice device for news consumption
• General News category saw a 61% increase in visits to websites and mobile apps in the early lockdown phase
• As per the search trends during the lockdown, news publishers are seeing the most significant gains in search traffic
• News channels flooded YouTube by their content around COVID-19, accounting for 3 in every 4 videos published by creators on YouTube around the topic
• Health and wellness tips and hyperlocal businesses, mainly grocery and medical stores, saw a rise in search volume
• News Viewership on OTT platform Hotstar has grown 8x in terms of watch time and 4x in terms of reach
• Average time spent by a user on Dailyhunt has increased by 25%
• Coronavirus Tips, Lockdown, Hydroxychloroquine, Coronavirus Symptoms, India COVID-19 Tracker, PM Modi, Latest Coronavirus news, Hanta Virus, PPE Kits have been some of the most searched terms on Google in Covid19 times

Opportunity

News platforms have been the go-to category of most advertisers in this lockdown phase. Placing your brand in newer platforms of news consumption could have higher recall (Podcasts and sponsoring specific digital sections/ properties on news platforms).

It is important for brand managers to follow search trends to quickly develop content around it and find ways to contextually place their brand.

Trying an inside out approach in current times by just talking about product features will yield less than average results.

• With the nationwide lockdown, newspaper circulation has been hampered. MyGate has partnered with leading publications to make available e-newspapers inside the app
• Dell is advertising on financial times targeting enterprises with contextual messaging of working remotely
• Nestlé has introduced “Maggi – Cooking Made Simple” on its website, and it is using search effectively for the audience to discover these recipes

Events

While big ticket events saw cancellations, a plethora of events have also gone digital.

• ‘One World: Together At Home’ celebrity concert for COVID-19 relief drew 21 million viewers
• The big ticket event of the year, IPL, has been suspended indefinitely, wiping out over Rs 2,000 crore advertising revenues and an irreplaceable opportunity for publishers and brands
• Major sporting events, leagues and championships like the Wimbledon, Champions League, Formula 1 Races, NBA, Tour De France, MotoGP have been either postponed or cancelled
• Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games postponement throws more than $1 billion in advertising into limbo
• F8, Google IO 2020, The Mobile World Congress, Adobe Live Summit, Several Fashion shows at Paris and Milan Fashion weeks, ipcoming tours by Bon Jovi, Justin Bieber BTS and other music artists have postponed or cancelled their events
• There is huge opportunity cost for marketers needing to reallocate all of their lost sports ad placements. But the alternatives in online events become attractive proposition for many brands

Opportunity

News platforms have been the go-to category of most advertisers in this lockdown phase. Placing your brand in newer platforms of news consumption could have higher recall (Podcasts and sponsoring specific digital sections/ properties on news platforms).

Important for brand managers to follow search trends to quickly develop content around it and find ways to contextually place their brand.

Trying an inside out approach in current times by just talking about product features will yield less than average results.

• As the India Today Conclave 2020 had to be cancelled because of the pandemic, an e-conclave was organised and Kalyan Jewellers sponsored this digital event, making use of the opportunity at the right time
• Esport events like Fortnite World Cup drew over 2 million people to its livestream. Uber Eats partnered with gaming influencer Tyler Blevins to see success in their campaign by securing maximum discount redemption codes in a single day
• With events drying up in the physical world, Bookmyshow quickly has looked at brining access to a varied set of events online for its users