By 2025, India’s online video market will reach $4 billion, with subscription services contributing more than $1.5 billion whereas advertising accounting for $2.5 billion.
Acquiring a potential 25% of the total online video revenue share by 2025, Disney+ Hotstar, the streaming service owned by Disney India, will contribute crucially to this hike, second only to Google’s YouTube.
These estimations are published by independent research and consultancy services firm Media Partners Asia (MPA) in a report titled “India Intelligence and Insights: Disney+ Hotstar: The Future of India’s Largest Premium Digital Video Platform”.
“In the current covid situation, audiences are spending more time online and OTT platforms have almost doubled their viewership. This viewership trend is likely to continue at least for a few years. Hence, advertising on the services is likely to surge in the coming years as they increasingly become the choice for content consumption,” said Anita Nayyar, head, customer strategy and relationships, ZEE5.
As per Ficci-EY media and entertainment industry report 2020, television advertising in India is projected to touch ₹388 billion ($5.1 billion) by 2022.
Co-founder of Bengali video streaming platform Hoichoi, Vishnu Mohta said, “The pay economy for online content will be successful if we work with quality content, and price it in the right manner”.
It would happen because the covid pandemic has catapulted OTT growth by some five years. Things that people would have expected to see in 2025, might happen now, “Vishnu added.
D Girish, vice-president, strategy at documentary streaming service DocuBay noted that the present crisis has accelerated the espousal of digital platforms by a large percentage of content consumers.
“SVoD is not dependent on advertising spends by brands that are among the first to be impacted whenever there is a certain corporate or economic downturn; however, greater digital adoption also opens the door for a larger turf for AVoD monetization than in the past,” he said.
Further, MPA stated that by 2025 Disney+ Hotstar could touch 93 million paying subscribers at monthly ARPUs (average revenue per user) under $1. In subscription revenue, This equates to $587 million by 2025 and on the other hand, advertising sales could touch $314 million. Any impact from new services such as gaming or expansion to south-east Asia is excluded in the analysis.
In 2020 there will be a decline in revenues due to the impact of covid-19 on the advertising market with TV bearing the brunt whereas, digital video will also come under pressure. Disney+ Hotstar’s advertisement packages are loaded with TV and this year is no exception.
Meanwhile, from the launch of Disney+ in April there has been a benefit in subscription through the first half of 2020.
As per MPA analysis, Disney+ has contributed significantly to premium tier subscriber growth and continued to churn positive through the period even after the absence of the popular IPL cricket tournament.
The report stated sports, local originals, Hollywood entertainment and super aggregator strategy its strengths. The report stated that the platform must sustain and expedite the pace of its investment in product innovation, content creation and acquisition and also retain its key sports rights in order to increase subscribers, drive viewership and stay ahead of aggressive global and local competition. It must also develop new features and services comprising of gaming and the aggregation of more local live and on-demand content.
The vast aggregation of premium local and international entertainment and sports has been Disney+ Hotstar’s differentiation which is driving its present-day addressable market to 100 million-plus subscribers.
Disney+ includes the content from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic.
