Power Of TV Remains Resilient

Megha Tata Jan 04, 2022

India’s new and emerging direct-to-consumer brands are capitalising on the country’s massive digital growth to expand their market presence and are leveraging TV’s scale to do it. Such is the power of the medium! Having established itself as a lead channel for brand building and sustaining reputation for decades, TV is now also being recognised for boosting conversions, for more nuanced customer targeting and engagement, extending reach across regions and so on. The medium is progressively evolving to serve as a sophisticated multi-platform marketing network for brands and advertisers. Taking a leaf out of their book, even traditional brands are looking at integrated methods of outreach where linear and digital are combined together to maximise their spending on mass media.

Even though the consumption habits of consumers are going through a massive change across screens and devices through the pandemic, Pay TV continues to occupy the largest share of the media consumption pie and has crossed over 700 million individuals (source: BARC India). With total TV viewership witnessing a growth of over 8% YTD CAGR (2015-2021, source: BARC India), TV remains at the top of the pecking order for multiple favourable reasons. The Indian advertising is also expected to bounce back to pre-pandemic levels by 2022 with TV taking the lead as it is expected to garner over 40% of the share of spending followed by digital, according to the latest study by Dentsu India. Despite the emergence of SVOD services and social media influencers as content creators, TV consumption remains steadfast across the board. What makes broadcast TV so resilient is its ability to swiftly adapt to disruptions to offer services that combine its distinct strengths of quality and reach. I truly believe 2022 would emerge to be one of the most historic years for TV’s growth and evolution, and the trends that are going to drive the industry include:

Localisation for personalisation: There’s a growing appetite for local audiences to consume global content in their local languages while regional titles are finding mainstream audiences far and beyond. This phenomenon of being able to access a universal library of content in your own language is only going to gain further momentum in the long term. Localisation efforts is fast becoming broadcast TV’s key strength as the medium is not just able to utilise its extensive reach to deliver content, but is also able to now integrate varied customer segments and different geographies into its local and global offering. Personalisation of programs through localisation efforts will continue to allow brands to offer authentic local viewing experiences to their audiences and that’s a huge currency to own today.

Emerging genres: During the pandemic, we saw a renaissance of sorts with living room viewing experience of family members becoming a ritual again. Therefore, family-oriented content suddenly saw a major spike during the pandemic and the trend has continued to remain strong. With the return of live sports events in 2021, this segment is also witnessing a massive surge in viewership and will continue to run on this trajectory. Kids are another segment that saw a huge bump up during the pandemic that will stay relevant in the future as well. So, clearly, there are genres that continue to emerge that present huge headroom for growth and massive opportunity for linear TV programming.

Building ad-free credibility through co-branded partnerships: In this ‘skip-ad’ culture of digital viewing, co-branding offers an interesting opportunity to brands to become an integrated part of a consumers’ entertainment journey. Co-branded strategy truly enables us to keep customers at the centre of it all, while being able to express the brand’s narratives without the intrusion of ads. This offers a unique opportunity for brands to reach their TG, expand to newer customer cohorts, earn credibility and get engaging conversations going, and I believe linear TV is well-positioned to create content and IPs that can trigger ‘pull’ appeal rather than ‘push’ that interrupts their viewing experience.

The rise of the premium, as well as FTA audiences, unlocks monetisation across the board: Pandemic has created clear demarcation amongst mass media consumers in India with monetisation driven by both premium and mass segments. For instance, the Free-To-Air (FTA) market consumers grew by +35% in 2021 (2021 (~187 Mn) over 2019 (~139 Mn) (source: BARC India) due to pandemic induced slowdown, reintroduction of GEC & Movies channels from leading broadcasters like Star, Zee, Sony & Viacom and launch of regional entertainment channels catering especially to this customer group & New Tariff Order (NTO 1.0). TV as a mass medium continues to remain at the top of the pecking order for multiple favourable reasons. The hunger for good content will drive the industry to experiment and explore new genres/themes, double down on localisation efforts to hyper-serve customers, create engaging marketing campaigns through co-branded partnerships, and much more. And now that the audiences are more empowered to create their own entertainment cart as they are willing to pay for the content they want to watch, next year will give us more dramatic insights that would continue to change the course of history for many years to come!