In recent times, home entertainment has grown to a totally new level, with CTVs ushering in the next big revolution. CTVs have grown significantly in the West and are now on an upward curve in India, with 12-14 Million monthly active CTV users. According to projections, by 2025, this number is expected to hit 40 Million, signalling a record high CTV adoption in India.
Several factors have contributed to this change including a low entry price point for CTVs with TV manufacturers now offering entry-level 32-inch Smart TVs at just Rs 9,500 onwards. If this trend continues, television, as we know it today, will be replaced by Smart TVs soon.
Improved infrastructure and low fees for data have led to increased adoption of high-speed internet services with India being one of the cheapest markets in the world with the cost of internet as low as $0.09 (Rs 6.7) per GB.
Digital content has also become more accessible with OTT players offering free ad-supported (AVOD) plans to cater to the price-sensitive Indian customers.
When it comes to the most premium audiences on CTVs, the biggest OTT players like Disney+ Hotstar are bringing unmatched engagement with a series of industry-first advertising solutions and sharp targeting options for paid subscribers. These include long form ad support (non-skippable up to 60 seconds) for mid-rolls, backed by robust measurement solutions to track CTV campaigns at all times.
While CTV advertising is growing, one of the challenges faced by advertisers is the difficulty in determining the campaign’s unique reach, especially since CTV is a shared viewing platform. Unlike mobile, CTV devices are common across multiple household members, and a platform’s native measurement solution has limited accuracy with respect to reaching the brand’s intended target audience.
To overcome these challenges and provide advertisers an accurate method for measuring campaign impact accurately for intended audiences, Disney+ Hotstar partnered with Kantar to develop a pristine CTV measurement solution. By using Disney+ Hotstar and Kantar’s industry first CTV Measurement Framework, advertisers can optimize their campaign frequencies to maximize impact on Brand Metrics.
The framework leverages Kantar’s 1 Million+ panel to reach CTV households and uses regression-based advanced modelling to pristinely determine the effectiveness and ROI of a CTV campaign.
As of now, Disney+ Hotstar is the only OTT platform to develop a CTV campaign measurement solution that measures the campaign impact within the intended audiences.
Speaking on the importance of measuring campaign performance, Soumya Mohanty, Managing Director & Chief Client Officer- South Asia, Insights Division Kantar, said, “We see a major shift from mobile to connected TV, especially when it comes to VOD. Audiences are easily streaming content through Smart TV and connected devices. This has added a newer touchpoint for advertisers. Thus, it becomes increasingly important to measure its performance on brand building. Kantar’s unique CTV Brand Lift approach helps in measuring the effectiveness of connected TV campaigns. It provides insights on campaign performance and effective frequencies to maximize impact on brand outcomes.”
One of the first campaigns tested using this framework which has seen phenomenal results is Mama Earth. The brand wanted to reach premium audiences on Disney+ Hotstar to promote its Ubtan face wash with the key benefit of ‘Shaadi Wala Glow’ via a 30-sec ad film.
The longer edit helped establish its key ingredients, turmeric and saffron, which enjoy a strong resonance with beauty benefits, being considered natural and safe in the Indian context. The advertisement delivered significantly higher salience, message association and intention to buy amongst Premium CTV Audiences.
“Being a new brand known to create disruption in the D2C space, we are always looking for newer ways to reach our audiences. Content consumption on OTTs has seen massive growth in the recent past, and we wanted to leverage the same. Disney+ Hotstar enabled us to reach the right audiences in an impactful manner via their CTV targeting option. The results have been quite positive, with a 9 % increase in brand awareness and favourability and 19% increase in purchase intent, which reflected through positive movement in brand sales too”, says Vidushi Goyal, AVP Marketing, Mamaearth.
There is growing confidence in CTV as a medium amongst marketeers in recent times. Testimony to this fact is that Max Life Insurance has launched its latest campaign featuring Boman Irani exclusively on the Disney+ Hotstar CTV offering, setting new benchmarks in the world of advertising/digital advertising.
Commenting on this one-of-a-kind exclusive association, Rahul Talwar, Chief Marketing Officer at Max Life Insurance, said, “With the increasing preference for OTT platforms in India, Connected TV (CTV) has witnessed a huge growth among the consumer base; becoming the go-to-medium for marketers to build the awareness-to-engagement funnel. Being the leading OTT service in the country, Disney+ Hotstar offers a host of opportunities for advertisers to get creative with ad formats and maximize engagement. We are excited to launch our ‘Term Plan for Homemakers’ campaign exclusively on Disney+ Hotstar CTV! This opens avenues to reach a wider, gender-balanced audience; promoting our ad film’s positive and reaffirming message of financially empowering women.”
