Brands need futuristic spaces to reach their target audience as TV consumption patterns continue to evolve offering a range of new possibilities, says Prasanth Kumar, CEO South Asia, GroupM. Kumar was speaking at the ‘Addressable TV and Beyond’ summit in Mumbai on Wednesday. 

Kumar noted, “During the 1990s, TV was a traditional medium. Then DTH came in 2000 and thus came various genres of TV channels like movies, music and sports etc. Later half of the 2010s, TV broadcast underwent a revolution with many more options emerging in the cable and DTH space. A lot of popular serials like ‘Saas bhi kabhi bahu thi’, and plenty of regional channels came up. Sports and global content started getting consumed in regional languages.”

“Linear TV is growing at 9.7% rate and so far only 210 million households out of 320 million have TV sets which corresponds to nearly 70 per cent penetration. That means there is room to grow in 90 million non-TV households in India,” Lewis said, speaking at the summit virtually. 

Atique Kazi, President Data, performance & Digital products, GroupM, hailed the Connected TV platform and said it has “unparalleled potential”. 

“Television advertising in India continues to grow both on linear and even faster on connected TVs. Connected TV has a higher impact, its users are highly engaged compared to linear TV. They prefer uninterrupted consumption. Hence, to grow into the connected TV genre, brands have to find the right balance to reach people and manage brand safety as well,” Kazi said. 

Speaking at the event, Prithi Murthy, President, GroupM Nexus India, shared the dilemma of the media planners amid changing media landscape. 

“TV planning is changing fast. Today, consumers have more options to access television content. A key question before marketers and media planners now is: how to plan for linear TV, for connected TV and for a combination of both. Then comes the optimization part for all three scenarios with multiple languages and genres which requires all permutations and combinations,” Murthy said. 

Murthy added that it was a great time for brands to understand, learn and invest in TV formats with the help of Finecast to reduce spill over, reach targeted audiences and bring accountability to advertising on television. 

With the aim of harnessing the potential of broadcast quality content across platforms and touchpoints, GroupM launched Finecast in India this April. The Finecast entered the Indian market at a time when the consumption of broadcast content is getting fragmented. 

GroupM’s Finecast, in partnership with Kantar, will also unveil their study report titled ‘The Changing Landscape of Indian Television’ at the summit. The report aims to provide a roadmap in measurement and growth of TV. 

Today’s summit was the inaugural one on Addressable TV in India. GroupM plans to hold more such summits with a belief that they will help distributors, advertisers, and broadcasters understand the changing media landscape. 

According to the report, currently, there are 20-22 million addressable TV homes in India. More than 10% of TV homes are today addressable. The report forecasts that there will be 40 million addressable TV homes in India by 2025.     

Talking about TV viewing, the report states that 61 of respondents said they have multiple connections. Within those connections, 62% have smart TVs.

“The main reason for having multiple connections are that it offers consumers flexibility to watch content on their preferred connection and for times when other family members want to watch different content,” states the report.

According to respondents, Connected TV is the preferred connection at 65%, comprising of Smart TVs, devices such as Firestick, Internet enabled set top boxes vs 35% Linear (Cable + DTH). Even though they have multiple connections for accessing TV, there is a preference to which access point they prefer most.

The report further states that when it comes to TV consumption, Connected TV is watched 12.4  hours on an average in a week and liner TV is watched 12.6 hours. Also, Co-viewing is high across genres except web-series.