Movies & Originals gain big, grow their share in VOD pie: BARC-Nielsen

After seeing huge peaks in previous weeks, a gradual drop is seen in smartphone consumption (3 hours 43 minutes/day) this week, although the consumption is still more than the pre-COVID period at 11 per cent. As per the 9^th edition of BARC-Nielsen’s report on changes in media habits in India, Social networking, Gaming, Education on Smartphone continue to be at much higher levels vis-a-vis the pre-COVID-19 period. News genre has stabilised both on TV and Smartphone after seeing peaks in previous weeks, while Movies & Originals are gaining big, growing their share in the VOD pie. Revival post the lockdown is evident on Smartphone behaviour as Online Shopping begins to move up after the COVID-19 led crash.

The report reveals that more increase in smartphone consumption is seen in non-print time hours – 10 am-2 pm and 10 pm-2 am. After seeing a peak of 21 per cent usage in the Week of April 25 Vs the pre-COVID period for the 10 am-2 pm time band, the usage slipped a bit to 16 per cent in the Week of May 16. While for the 10 pm-2 am time slot, the peak period was the Week of April 25, which was at 24 per cent, which came down to 15 per cent in the Week of May 16.

While the drop in time versus the previous weeks is across categories, Gaming, Social Networking, Education, and Video Conferencing are still much higher than in the initial weeks of the lockdown. It’s no surprise that Video Conferencing has shot up during the lockdown period as people have been working from home, even as the lockdown is lifted, working from home phenomenon is expected to continue. However, in the Week of May 16, time spent on video conferencing came down to 415 per cent, from the peak of 485 per cent in the Week of April 25.

On the other hand, shopping has started to revive. With the opening of delivery of non-essentials, time spent on e-tail apps saw an increase to 38 minutes. Number of users visiting shopping apps has also seen a similar increase in recent weeks.

Meanwhile, news consumption, though higher than the pre-COVID period, has been stable over the past few weeks. Increase in users has been much more for video news than websites or apps. Video News includes TV news channels streamed on YouTube, JioTV, Hotstar, MX Player and Zee5. Top video news channels in recent times on smartphone, ranked in order of Unique Audience in ‘000s are:

Aaj Tak
ABP News
ABP News Hindi
India TV
Zee News
BBC News Hindi
NDTV India
TV9 Telugu
Rajasthan Patrika
NDTV

When it comes to video streaming behaviour on smartphone, viewership for Live TV, Movies and Originals increased as lockdown set in; consumption of Movies & Originals continues even now. In Weeks 7-10 of the lockdown period, Syndicated Series saw the highest consumption at 50 per cent, followed by Movies at 27 per cent and Original Series at 19 per cent.