Nickelodeon will continue to invest more on local content, says Nina Elavia Jaipuria of Viacom18

Nickelodeon has stayed on the number one rank in the kid's entertainment space for the sixth year while Sonic has reached number four from number seven. Backing on popular IPs, the channel continues to lead with a 32% market share. While Disney has a 23% share, Turner is at 21%. Sony and Discovery are at 8% each and Sun TV remains at 7%, says Nina Elavia Jaipuria, Head, Hindi Mass Entertainment, and Kids TV Network at Viacom18.

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Explaining how they manage to lead the market, she said at a media round table, “We continue to talk to kids, we continue to talk to them through research, through small wonders; we do IMRB equity studies, we do quality and quantity studies, we dipstick every show that we're putting out there and this is really what comes out of us.”

Jaipuria said the response of advertisers has been positive in the last few months and the brand has achieved a 35% market share of the ad sales pie. “We're very happy to say that despite all the headwinds continuing in FY19-20 and despite all the conversations on how the economy was not doing the best, Nickelodeon has a runaway with 35% market share of the ad sales pie, which grew by 5-7% in a year.”

She said the adex has increased from the month of August but it is still down by 20% from YTD last year’s numbers. They are seeing newer categories such as edu-tech, e-commerce and e-wallets.  

The top line grew by almost 12-15% and the subscription rate for the channel has grown by 30%. “We've actually grown multi-fold, and we operate at very robust margins. Of course, there is a lot of subscription catch-up to do and we still heavily depend on ad sales. But at least we are narrowing the gap between ad sales and subscription revenues,” she added.

A lot of stuff is happening beyond the FCT space sale through integrations and product licensing, movie sponsorships, and Kid’s Choice Awards, which brings them the 35% market share, said Jaipuria. 

Speaking about the channel's content strategy, she said they focus on filling the gaps and white spaces that have not been tapped in the local market. The channel has content from different genres, including slapstick, slice-of-life, action and adventure, chase and detective. They recently launched an IP in the short-format space, ‘Ting Tong’.

Nickelodeon is now focusing on more hours of content on the channel. “Last year, we actually ended a record of creating over 150 hours of new content and we now have 700 hours of local content with us. We're hoping to create another hundred more,” she said.

Speaking about their plans for Diwali, she said along with television, they are focusing on digital and social media. “We are planning a contest ‘Shining Star’, which will be a watch-and-win competition where viewers can win things like laptops. On Children’s Day, the channel is launching a fun ‘Do not touch’ Nickelodeon International Clio award-winning app. They are introducing a hotline number on Diwali through which the children can speak to any of the five IP characters.” 

The channel is also launching a new IP Pinaki & Happy — The Bhoot Bandhus, which focuses on the interesting concept where the ghost world meets the real world. Jaipuria explained that they have a multi-screen marketing plan for this, which includes the channel’s network channels and other television channels. They are also marketing on cable and DTH channels like DEN, Hathway, Tata Sky, GTPL, etc., across the country.

Considering that kids today are technologically advanced, in the digital space, they are advertising across music, gaming and OTT apps along with social media. 

Jaipuria said their OTT platform Voot Kids has grown significantly during the lockdown months. “Voot Kids has seen high adoption with TSV (time spent per viewer) crossing the 100 minutes mark in the lockdown months. In the month of August, Voot Kids was seen to be a highly engaging app with 90mins+ TSV per day. Voot Kids has seen close to 100% increase in the installs as on today as compared to March-end.”

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