Indians spending an average 95 minutes daily on OTT: OMG report

Media consumption habits have witnessed a significant change during the COVID-19 period and successive lockdowns across the country. Omnicon Mediagroup’s study, titled ‘COVID-19: The Impact on Media Consumption of Indians’ provides insights into the evolving media consumption habits, content formats that are driving media consumption and media platforms & brands that are seeing an increased adoption by Indians during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Also read: Direct-To-OTT or Back to Theatres – The safety over economics dilemma

Key Highlights:

• TV, Online video & Social media emerge as the top entertainment mediums amongst Indians. Music streaming and Online games also strike a chord as Indians find new ways to keep themselves entertained.
• News and movies are the top performing genres on TV. Re-runs of popular mythological shows from the 80’s and comedy shows attract the most viewership in the GEC space.
• OTT platforms see a meteoric rise in time spent as Indians across geographies consume close to an hour and a half of OTT content every day. Originals and latest movies keeping audiences hooked across platforms.
• Google’s most popular service, YouTube, is another top gainer with close to two hours of daily time spent driven by comedy, music, movie and educational video content.
• Higher time spent on TV observed for metros while Tier 1 cities driving consumption for YouTube.
• While we see an almost equal time spent on different social media platforms, higher time spent for Instagram in Tier 1 cities points towards the medium gaining traction beyond metros.
• Online music streaming apps and online games are the other mediums where Indians are spending close to an hour daily.

OTT consumption

With an average daily time spent of over 95 minutes, several OTT platforms are wooing Indians with Oscar winning movies and top rated IMDb series as OTT transitions into the go-to entertainment medium.

According to the study, increase in OTT consumption is driven by Tier 1 cities, females and younger audiences.

When it comes to what people are watching on OTT platforms, the study reveals that Netflix’s Spanish crime drama, ‘Money Heist’, is in pole position. ‘The Professor’ also successfully kept the Indian audiences hooked with yet another engrossing season that released in April 2020.

‘Paatal Lok’, the gripping crime thriller from Amazon Prime Video, received rave reviews from critics and fans alike and became the talk of the town and finds itself at the 3rd spot.

These apart, movies that were released just before the outbreak find a huge audience on OTT platforms with as many as 6 of them featuring in the Top 10.

As far as YouTube is concerned, with close to two hours of daily time spent on YouTube, which is Google’s most popular service, Indians are consuming a host of different video formats on the platform.

TV consumption

The OMG report observes a significant increase in General News consumption, with 65 per cent of the respondents claiming to spend more time consuming news around the pandemic.

Movies & Comedy serials round off the top 5 list as Indians explore new ways to keep themselves entertained. Cooking shows and music programs are the other top movers as Indians experiment with cooking new dishes at home and beating the blues by listening to music.

On the other hand, GECs and Sportsm which usually dominated TRPs on TV, find themselves languishing in the bottom half of the table in the absence of fresh content.

What people watched the most on TV

Re-runs of popular mythological content from the 80’s caught the fancy of the audiences as record viewership numbers were observed for shows like ‘Mahabharat’ and ‘Ramayan’ and three of them feature in the Top 5.

The comedy genre also garnered high viewership, with popular comedy shows like ‘The Kapil Sharma Show’, ‘Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashma’ and ‘Bhabhi Ji Ghar Par Hai’ featuring in the Top 10.

Cult shows like ‘Crime Patrol’, ‘CID’ and ‘Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai’ round up the list of Top 10 TV shows.