Video ad spends see drop across most categories in Week 5 of lockdown

The New Normal of 3 hours, 40 minutes+ per day on Smartphone continues, a 10 per cent increase over the pre-COVID-19 times, reveals te 5^th edition of BARC-Nielsen’s report on ‘TV + Smartphone Consumption During Crisis’. An increase of ~35 per cent or more was seen in time spent on social networking across consumer groups, with 1 in 5 spending more than an hour per day.

‘Coronavirus’ continues to be most searched among Top 100 Google searches, with almost 4 in 10 searches being around ‘Coronavirus’ in Week5 of the lockdown, 4x times the proportion seen for Week 1 of the lockdown.

1 in 5 smartphone consumers now use the Aarogya Setu app, an 80 per cent+ increase compared to the launch week.

With Work From Home becoming the new norm, a staggering 200 per cent increase was seen in time spend on video conferencing, even as time spent on virtual drives is seen to have doubled. Professional suite of apps has also surged in the COVID-19 lockdown period.

News franchise continued to be nearly 50 per cent of all smartphone audience, with views growing by 40 per cent. A whopping 805 million views logged on news in Week 5 of COVID-19 lockdown. 16 per cent visit any news platform more than 30 times in a week.

Strong double-digit growth is seen across various segments of OTTs (movies, originals, etc.). At present, 75 per cent user preference (basis time) is stacked between Movies and Syndicated Shows, which includes shows from parent brand, which were not originally created for the OTT platform. Time spent on Movies has grown by 48 per cent, while for Originals the growth is by 69 per cent.

Meanwhile, Audio streaming apps show a decline, possibly on account of commuting coming to a halt.

Video advertising spends have seen a drop across most categories in Week 5. However, the growth categories were Corporate Images, F&B, Gaming, Media, Education, Land & Building Equipment.