New Delhi: SonyLIV, the video streaming platform owned by Sony Pictures Networks India, is looking at a combination of subscription and advertising revenue to remain commercially viable. The service said its offerings of sports, music and food shows, along with fiction programming, offer brands various opportunities to come on board either as sponsors or to be integrated with the content. While a lot of brands partner for both television and digital inventories, some new-age players are specifically interested in OTT collaborations.
“The covid-19 pandemic was a big boost to platforms like ours that saw a massive upsurge in consumption, and as scale kicked in for us, there has been no ‘either’ or ‘between’ advertising and subscriptions. but in fact an ‘and’ reality’, as is the case for media organizations globally,” Ranjana Mangla, head of ad revenue at SonyLIV, said in an interview. According to her, the company’s strategy is very clear—while certain content is built for premium viewing, catch-up television programming and some reality shows help bring value to brands that often find it difficult to grab viewer eyeballs in a cluttered market.
Mangla said since June 2020, which SonyLIV refers to as its 2.0 phase when it rolled out a new logo, user interface and brand identity along with premium content, its reality shows have found sponsors that not only look for the reach of linear television but also the scale of OTT. The current season of Kaun Banega Crorepati, for example, has digital insurance company Acko and Vimal as co-presenting sponsors and IDFC First Bank as banking partner, while electronics retailer Croma has stepped in as co-powered sponsor. For the 19th edition of the Asian Games, the platform had collaborated with brands like Eatfit, JSW, Maruti Suzuki, Acko and Limca Sportz.
The sizeable audience base of OTT is a draw especially for new-age auto and banking brands, Mangla said. The platform also allows the first episode of web originals to be streamed for free along with sponsors, and is looking at integrating brands within narratives too.
To be sure, with video streaming platforms realizing that subscription alone may not be sufficient for sustained business growth, they are increasingly adopting ad-supported models to cater to the price-sensitive Indian audience, according to entertainment industry experts.
While Amazon has a separate ad-based offering miniTV besides plans to roll out ads on Prime Video soon, other platforms like aha Video offer both ad-supported and subscription-based access to the same content. ZEE5 also offers free streaming of select shows and short-form videos. Advertising is good news in a market like India that cannot afford for ARPUs (average revenue per user) to drop further. However, nearly 65-70% of the digital advertising market is dominated by giants like Google and Facebook, besides e-commerce players.
Mangla pointed to the power of connected TV sets that currently stand at 20-30 million households in India, and expected to grow to 40 million over the next 18 months. “This is the absolute top crème of viewers but most brands would flock for that mindshare. Plus, the time spent is nearly three times that on mobile so it’s an exciting opportunity for us,” she added.
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Updated: 10 Oct 2023, 11:20 PM IST