How brands should leverage the potential of regional OTTs and CTV

Moderated by Deepali Naair, Digital Sales Leader, IBM, the panel discussion on leveraging the advertising potential of new-age platforms saw industry dignitaries emphasise how important it is for brands to reach out to their audiences on regional OTTs and CTV.

Upon being questioned as to what are some of the prominent changes in the audience consumption pattern that kicked in the past five years, Salil Kumar, CEO of TV Today, replied that covid had led to a paradigm shift across all the content consumption patterns.

“With the growth of mobile phones, people want to consume content that comes in from various OTTs and networks on their mobile phones and that’s when we are seeing a huge spike in Smart TVs, CTVs and connected devices as well,” he added.

Kumar also went on to add that because Smart TVs allow shared viewing, marketers need to realise that CTV gives one a great opportunity to advertise and reach out to a target audience that has moved away from linear TVs which have fixed IP.

“Since the cord cutters are also cut from many other avenues, the only way to connect to them would be to actually go through one of the OTTs or be available therein for your content releases,” he added.

Touching upon what led to the change in audience consumption patterns, Ritesh Singh, Co-Founder and MD, ARM Worldwide, emphasised that the major driving force for the change in dynamics of content consumption was the smartphone penetration that kicked in.

“Out of the 1.42 billion population of India, there are 1.2 billion people who use phones in India and of these 800 million users are smartphone users. So if it can reach Tier III and IV, R1 and R2, it has probably reached everywhere” he opined.

He further went on to add that because of such massive smartphone consumption and futuristic CTV, there has been an influx of content and that the major propellor herein was Covid as people had ample amount of time and were thus consuming content from all possible genres.

“With smartphone and content growing and that too in regional languages, things worked and that is precisely what brought a bigger change,” he stated.

Furthermore, he also went on to add that because India is one of the youngest nations, the youth has the power of consuming whatever they want to upskill themselves apart from entertainment to bring new things to the table.

When questioned as to how the aforementioned changes have added to the complexities of the media planning or even planning for the creatives, Nitin Burman, VP and Head- Non-Subscription Revenue, Arha, replied that when it comes to the regional OTTs, almost everyone sees southern India as one market whereas it constitutes four different markets.

“Because people in today’s scenario have become so content-friendly, advertisers are becoming innovative and don’t want to limit themselves to ads which are coming right in the middle of a program that the audience might want to skip. This is the reason why advertisers are today becoming a part of the stories through content integrations/syndications,” he added.

He also went on to point out that because the audience is not just limited to metro cities or Tier I cities in the current times, brands often have to take the route of regional OTTs to reach out to their target audiences in Tier II, III and IV regions.

Moving ahead, Saurabh Singhania, COO, HexaWebony, also emphasised that when looking at things from a supplier’s POV, one can not just frame the creatives in a distinctive manner but also buy inventory on OTTs as per their target audiences.

Citing an example to support his stand, he opined that the ad inventory and creative for an audience who plays Rummy would be very different from that of a Poker player as the target group for both is very different from one another.

“Since there have to be different kinds of communications for different markets and not a dubbed version for all regional languages, meticulous planning is required to determine what attracts the consumers the most,” he emphasised.

Furthermore, TV Today’s Kumar also went on to point out that keeping in mind the consumers who are now consuming content on Smart TVs are very different from the ones who consume on linear TV, the TV Today Group has come up with a ‘Connected TV Device Feed’ because the cord cutters therein just don’t consumer regular content or news, they consumer ‘more’.

“For example, one may want to watch an AQI report that is not available on linear TV, CTV will come into the picture, as this AQI report or as a matter of fact even gold rates can be shown on the feed and a sponsor from the similar domain can be roped in for generating revenue from the same rather than opting for longer ad breaks,” he added.

Similarly, Arha’s Burman also stated that what has the ability to keep the audience hooked on to these OTTs and CTVs is the stories that are showcased on the platform.

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