9 in 10 viewers of CTV recall being exposed to ads: Report

84% of households in India have more than 1 person watching CTV and spend 4 hours daily on CTV content, says Affle report.

mediasmart, an Affle company, today launched the second edition of its India CTV Report 2022 titled ‘India Says Yes to Connected TV.’ The report highlights consumer adoption trends across metros and non-metros and a significant shift in CTV’s ad potential for brands and marketers. The Covid-19 pandemic played a catalyst with more homes getting wired broadband connections. As we go into the festive season across the country, that trend continues with more users discovering CTV as the new way to consume content at home with families. In many Indian households, the co-viewing phenomenon on CTV is driven by adults, including users from older demographics. 

Globally and in India, marketers are using CTV for high-impact storytelling, amplified brand engagement, and driving action and conversions on mobile. With CTV’s potential to offer measurable advertising on television and to connect the journeys of the users both online and offline, CTV presents opportunities for brand impact in the ongoing festive season.

Also Read: Case Study: How Uber’s WhatsApp 2 Ride campaign for Delhi NCR garnered 31M Impressions

According to the report, key CTV viewership trends and insights include:

• CTV viewing is a part of the daily routine: CTV is a preferred source of entertainment and viewers spend an average 4 hours daily watching CTV content, as against 3.5 hours in 2021.
• Bringing families together: 50% of respondents said they prefer Smart TVs for watching content at home, while only 36% prefer mobile devices. 84% households have more than 1 person watching CTV; 64% respondents claimed to prefer watching CTV together with their families, unlike solo viewing experience. CTV consumption is driven by adults, including grandparents.
• Users prefer on-demand content: On-demand content on OTT continues to remain the preferred choice for most viewers (41%) with Music (17%), Games (11%), News (10%) and User-Generated Content (21%) being other options.
• Plethora of OTT platforms to view content: People use multiple OTT apps across global, national, regional apps and switch between multiple apps based on the content genre of their preference. 82% of CTV devices generate active bid requests from 4+ OTT platforms.
• CTV ads are impactful: 9 in 10 viewers of CTV recall being exposed to ads; 81% of those exposed to ads claim that the ads influenced them.

• Improving the Purchase Intent: Nudging the users on their connected mobile devices within 24 hours helps improve the purchase intent for users who have seen ads on Connected TV

Nikhil Kumar, Vice President, India & SEA, mediasmart said, “Our report this year goes deeper into the reach and impact of CTV. It is interesting to see how far CTV has grown into the metros and non-metros. It's a stark revelation to see CTV's growth into a family-viewing phenomenon that is bringing people back to their living rooms. The audience for CTV is fairly well spread across the diversity of content offered by multiple OTTs and now beginning to explore newer genres like Games, Live News, as other top choices. This consumption shift has also led to significant growth in co-viewing which is not restricted to a certain demographic or geographic segment either. This holds huge potential for advertisers who can leverage emerging technologies like mediasmart's CTV Household Sync to connect the worlds of TV & mobile and drive impact."

Shailesh Varudkar, Chief Business Officer, VTION said, “Our partnership with mediasmart in 2021 was the first-of-its kind research on CTV viewers in India and their habits, sliced-and-diced by various demographics and came at a time when there was little industry knowledge about this category. This year, as we go deeper and wider into the country, the newer learnings from our CTV2.0 report will further give an impetus to the growing appetite and enthusiasm for CTV among consumers and advertisers.”

Elaborating on India’s potential as a robust market for CTV adoption Amardeep Singh, Co-Founder & CEO, Interactive Avenues, said, “CTV has the potential to truly democratize TV advertising by allowing even low-budget advertisers to connect with audiences on TV. This edition of mediasmart's report will help advertisers understand the nuances of the medium better along with the changing consumer behavior and also instill confidence regarding CTV's role as an impactful advertising medium through measurable technologies like mediasmart's CTV Household Sync.”

Gopa Menon, Head of Digital South Asia, Mindshare, added, “India is a young market with a tremendous potential for CTV adoption and CTV offers great opportunities to advertisers where they can get strong consumer insights on viewing habits and also target specific cohorts to drive the brand message effectively and efficiently.”

Vishal Chinchakar, CEO, Madison Digital, added, “We have come a long way from last year, when the ecosystem in India was embarking to explore the CTV Opportunity, to now when top clients are insisting on the inclusion/ better understanding of CTV in their media plans.”

Commenting on CTV’s impact for brand lift, Mohit Joshi, CEO, Havas Media Group India, said, “CTV ecosystem creates meaningful exposures to reach the target audience. The platforms and the formats have opened up a vast opportunity for us in terms of innovation, strategy, and creating best practices for CTV advertisers.”

Shibu Shivanandan, Founder & MD, PivotRoots, said, “The good thing about CTV advertising is unlike traditional TV, advertisers get to choose their potential audience. Hence, a complete shift from spot buys to audience buying on a large screen is now possible with digital targeting capabilities and can be bought and served programmatically.”