In 2019, 98.5% of the audience watched ads on TV: Sunil Lulla, CEO, BARC India

To deliberate about the scenario of the television industry in today’s digital world, there couldn’t be a better person than the one who heads India's only television measurement body – the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India. Sunil Lulla, CEO, BARC India, spoke at the second edition of the e4m TV First Conference on the topic: Television - Access to the mind, hearts and purse strings of India.

Lulla began his session with the interesting insight that if one wants to access India through people's hearts and minds, television is still the default and go to medium. He further explained the point with the trends the television industry witnessed in 2019.

TV is the screen of a household which engages every single individual. It's a medium that's watched and enjoyed together. The advertising may have a spillover but somebody in that group is influencing what's going to be bought, what you think about the information you're getting, or how you laugh at the joke that we share.

Sharing some valuable data, Lulla said households in 2015 used to spend 4 hours 51 minutes and it has now gone up to 5 hours, 11 minutes a day. “That's a large amount of time being spent by a household on TV which accounts to about 940 billion minutes in a year. We have about 197 million homes with TV and there are about 100 million homes which don't have a TV set and that's the headroom forward for people.”

In India, it's a single TV home and this is why that screen belongs to the households, said Lulla. “If you look at it individually, it's 3 hours and 15 minutes that an individual spends on TV in a day and in America it’s 3 hours 45 minutes.”

He further added, “We may like to believe the common narrative that young people are becoming cord cutters. It's a good statement to make but if you look at it across age groups, from 2 years onwards to 51-plus people they are spending more than three and half hours a day watching television.”

Another interesting fact Lulla shared was that co-viewing has become a phenomenon across genres and about 80 per cent are watching TV together and the rest 20% accounts for single viewing.

In the kids’ genre, there is a lot of co-viewing because parents, elder brothers or sisters are watching along with the kids. In case of event based co-viewing, World Cup saw 70% of co-viewing, whereas during IPL 82% people watched it together. This shows TV as a medium is a screen for the household, he said.

Lulla also mentioned that advertising on TV continues to stay strong in 2019. “The audience loves to watch ads, 98.5% of the audience watched ads on TV in 2019. Last year as compared to 2018, there was a 3% reduction in volume of FCT that was delivered but this has a correlation with the economy. But what's interesting is that the share of top 10 advertisers continues to go up and 34.8% of the ads are those which come from these top 10.”

The four-year CAGR for genre-wise FCT has shown consistent growth, Lulla said. In the movie genre, FCT has grown by 12%, news genre by 6%, GEC by 5% and Music by 5%. “The big growth is coming from all those other languages, not just in Hindi, but it's coming from Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil and Bengali. So there's growth happening in various parts of India across different regions, from local advertising as well as from national advertising,” he said.

The big three categories that dominate both viewership, as well as advertising, are - GECs, Movies and News. 82% of viewership comes from these categories and the FCT (volumes) stands at 87%.

Among the top ten categories, household items remain the dominant category - toilet soaps, washing powders, shampoos/ floor cleansers. Social and government advertising has also picked up a lot, Lulla added. Online commerce player, online retail or video player have started to enter the top 10 category but mostly the top ten advertisers on TV are dominated by FMCG firms.

Lulla concluded the session with the statistics that 200 million homes spend 5 hours on TV, whereas individuals spend three and half hours a day watching the small screen. Also, 100 million more homes don't have a TV set and that shows the potential TV has. “This is not a screen that you can afford to ignore. It's not a screen that you can't know less about,” Lulla said while signing off.

The e4m TV First Conference was supported by Zee TV.