Mumbai: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Meta, has announced the launch of a new report around the increasing influence of digital in driving media and entertainment consumption in India across over-the-top (OTT), linear TV (LTV), and Movie Studios. 

With the meteoric growth in online content and on-demand streaming platforms in India, the media and entertainment landscape in the country has transformed dramatically over the last few years. The report unravels key consumer trends around how India is consuming content while busting prevailing myths and highlighting the growing digital influence that is increasingly driving people’s viewing preferences. Digital influence implies the role of digital in content discovery, sharing, and engagement both before and after viewing content.

‘Seeing the BIG Picture - Harnessing digital to drive M&E growth’ a Meta-commissioned report by BCG was done with over 2600 consumers across 15 towns and cities. The study also includes in-depth interviews with consumers and industry leaders from Linear TV (LTV), OTT platforms, and Movie Studios.

BCG managing Director and Partner Shaveen Garg said, “Consumers' increasing time spent on digital video is well-known. But what was counter intuitive is how much digital is influencing their discovery of content, decision to watch and the engagement post watching. It is not limited to digital native mediums but across all content as a category. It is clearer than before that many media companies haven’t embraced this power to unlock potential. 

Content is king, no doubt, but kings also need an army of soldiers to become and reign. This digital interventions by companies is the army behind the great content”

The report aims to bust some myths and mindsets in the market around digital influence being limited to metros, men and English content viewers.

Among the most significant findings of the report is that contrary to industry perception women, small-town residents, and people over 35 years of age have significant digital influence driving their content discovery and consumption choices. For instance, among OTT watchers, after consuming the content, 78 per cent of the surveyed men said that they use digital to engage with the content. This number was equally high at 77 per cent for women. 

Similarly, before watching something on OTT, more people from smaller towns (81 per cent) use digital for content discovery than people from large towns (74 per cent).  Moreover, contrary to popular belief, digital discovery is on the upswing, even for linear TV, with linear TV viewers increasingly seeking information and engagement online for the content they watch. 

Meta real estate and services in India director & vertical head - media, finserv, travel Shweta Bajpai said, “The prevalent view presumes that consumer behaviour across small and large towns, across gender and age-groups is vastly distinct. While this may be true for some industries, when it comes to content consumption in India, there are more similarities than distinctions. The biggest similarity is that irrespective of where people consume content - OTT, TV or in movie theatres - they rely on digital to share, engage, and express themselves. more than 40 percent of respondents discover content on digital via Word of mouth. This is a game changing insight for media companies and marketers in how they want to reach their customers.”

The study also showed that 60 per cent of consumers seek information about the content before deciding to watch. Up to 80 per cent of this research occurs online across OTT, LTV, and Movies. The findings further revealed that higher digital engagement is correlated with higher watch time on both LTV and OTT.

Based on the insights, the study recommends that media and entertainment companies need to evolve. 

• With boundaries blurring between different formats in the consumers’ minds, M&E companies should refrain from defining themselves as LTV/OTT/Movie Studios and reimagine themselves as content creators not chained to a delivery medium. 
• Given the high digital influence, digital marketing could be effective across demographics, genres, and languages, and could be a crucial addition to the existing marketing efforts at every step of the consumption journey. 
• The report also calls for diversifying digital activations including communities, influencers, personalised reach-outs and short videos to reach all kinds of consumers. 
• Lastly, the report advises brands to develop in-house muscle, build a content factory, leverage the user engagement flywheel, develop a robust measurement strategy and impact attribution.