Megha Tata, the COO of BTVI, shared her closing note on the previous year and predictions for the New Year as following:
A surprising moment from 2018
A year back, I thought we are still a couple of years away from Digital revolution in India from a content consumption perspective. However, I was surprized at how quickly and rapidly the digital space has grown in India and how OTT platforms launched in the recent past have already crossed huge milestones in terms of app downloads. The amount of investment that players are doing in creating content and promoting them is surprising. They are now spending equally if not more than big television channels.
From a BTVI perspective, we were amazed by the affinity of Business news viewers towards BTVI on nonlinear OTT platforms like Hotstar, Jio TV, Sony Liv, YUPP TV as well as on trading apps such as Kotak Securities, IIFL Markets, HDFC Securities and Axis Direct. We were thrilled and pleasantly surprized to reach more than 11000 Hrs of content consumption across these nonlinear platforms which is almost 1/3rd of that consumed on linear television feed. With agreements with more such non-linear platforms in the pipeline, we plan to increase our content consumption and brand reach on such platforms.
Prediction for 2019:
As cross device viewership of content is on the rise, measuring only Television viewership will be insufficient going forward. I believe, in 2019, Television brands will focus on overall brand reach across linear and non-linear platforms. This will also help TV brands offer their Direct to consumer (DTC) reach to advertisers and monetize their content better.
Also, with the new Tariff order, my prediction is that the age old question of “whether content is the king or distribution” will get answered and content will come out as a winner. Just like the way consumer choose any soap or a biscuit from a bouquet of offerings from a FMCG company, and pay for only the chosen product, consumers will now have a choice to select and pay for what they want to watch. So the prediction is that the quality of content will improve drastically, the product offering will improve and few traditional leaders will get a reality check. From a BTVI perspective, while other English business news channels choose to put a price tag on news, we choose to put our viewers first by offering our priceless insights and opinions free to air.
