Mumbai: Several recent reports suggest that TV ratings have been dipping while digital has been steadily establishing a bigger footprint than TV in the country. As this inversely proportional trend takes shape, JioCinema, the digital destination for the IPL this year onwards, has announced its game plan to cut access, affordability, and language barrier that will fuel this shift even more. 

If one is to take the potential scale digital offers as an advertising medium into account alongside JioCinema’s plans this year, then the IPL might be the most watched and engaged event on CTV and digital platforms. This year the Jio Cinema will offer the cricket extravaganza for free in a bid to reach and engage every single one of the 600 million OTT viewers in India out of the internet enabled population of 700 million+. 

More and more households are shifting from linear TV to CTV and data shows this phenomenon is not limited to just urban households but spread across geographies due to low data costs and the rising scale of Smart TVs. The flexibility that comes with consuming content via CTV is also helping this cause as CTV allows the viewer to cast screens by using TV apps or devices such as Chromecast and Fire TV Stick. CTV also offers 4k streaming possibilities, which is not possible on linear TV or HDTV.

On the other side of the screen, JioCinema is set to provide high quality premium long form content which has not happened anywhere in the world digitally. To make this a reality, it is reported that the brand has made major technological investments to deliver a high quality experience on digital. 

Advertising on digital will, therefore, become every marketer’s primary preference. Serving ads via CTVs and other digital mediums allows the advertiser to break language barriers, age limitations, targeting constraints and even affluence constraints while including a measurable call to action. The advertiser also pays for what they get, unlike TV where inventory wastage is common. An increased number of matches in case of a property like the IPL means digital benefits because it is sold on impressions, not on an average rating. Digital is arguably the best medium for broadcasters to deliver a world class live sports experience.

Indian Television dug deeper and spoke to a few industry experts about the rise of digital spending by brands in comparison to linear TV and how this is expected to amplify the interest for the IPL this year. Head Media Martech and Growth Vida World Manav Sethi said, “As India is not a homogeneous market of 1.3B, the same way sports video viewers are spread across various platforms and cohorts of 1M/10M/100m each. We have tried layering by keeping CTV in the media plan and we have seen an uptick in conversion numbers. This year for IPL especially, it would be interesting, because JIO is redefining what connected tv is and what it means as it brings in medium/lower pyramid viewers into the tv connected to mobile world! Interesting times ahead.”

The Media Ant Chief Business Officer Abhishek Mukherjee says, “There are two things happening in the landscape, first marketers are now becoming digital first because of Google and Facebook ecosystem, this ecosystem has trained them very well on the measurement for performance. 

Now when it comes to traditional brand awareness building, which we used to call at the top of the funnel, the marketeers are expecting the same from their media spends, which linear TV is not able to deliver. On linear TV you are paying for great mass reach but not for measurability. We are also seeing this when we work with platforms like YouTube where people get far more measurability and targeting and hence the preference to move from linear TV to connected TV or the preference to move towards OTT. These are the trends now and there is an interest by brands to associate with the IPL, we have been associated with IPL earlier and have been the most preferred agency by advertisers. In this IPL we are expecting a 25 Mn to 100 Mn reach for brands.”

Madison Digital & Madison Alpha CEO Vishal Chinchankar said, “Today there are about 2.8 mn broadband wired connections as per TRAI Dec 22, and this is seeing a meteoric rise month on month. Connected TV commands 22mn households providing a reach of 80 mn. India’s smart TV shipments were up by 38 per cent YoY in Q3 2022. Keeping these data points in mind and an opportunity to target HNI audience cut, it’s quite a lucrative proposition for brands to be present on IPL CTV, personally, I am very bullish about it.”