Our approach is always audience-centric rather than media-agnostic: Rajiv Rajagopal

The CTV or Connected TV growth numbers indicate the rising popularity of the medium not just among the audiences but also among the advertisers. In Jan 2022, there were 10-12 million CTVs which went up 23-25 million in Jan 2023 and crossed 35 million as of June 2023. 

According to Rajiv Rajagopal, Head of Client Development & Engagement, Finecast India, by the end of this year, India will likely surpass a 40 million user base. It is important to note that the figure was originally projected to achieve by the end of 2025. 

“We are almost a year advanced in that stage and we should reassess our estimates regarding the rapid growth of CTV. The market share of CTV is only growing,” said Rajagopal.

He noted that a lot more technological advancements are going back to this growth, for example, the popularity of FAST channels-  the free ad-supported streaming TV.  He added that there is a huge increase in the viewership of FAST channels because now viewers have an opportunity to stream these linear TV channels without subscribing to them. “Now this expands the potential of the audience base and reaches beyond traditional OTT viewerships on television. Now with the 5G launch by Jio, the market share of CTV is only going to go up.”

According to Rajagopal, CTV will always offer a one-to-few and not one-to-many kind of targeting. CTV is the subject of much discussion because of the nature of the media, which is co-viewing.  "Everything at the backend is programmatic and digital," he explained. He added, "But it's co-viewing at the end of the day, so it's one too many. There are also targeting options that are generally limited to a household level, which makes integrating it with linear TV planning much easier. As a result, we are able to reach a more precisely targeted audience." 

While speaking on why more and more brands are focusing on addressable TV to increase their visibility, he said that CTV provides a gateway to connect with addressable TV viewers, making it the primary means of reaching these audiences in India and for current situations it's CTV only. Therefore,  addressable TV allows television to continue to keep up with digital advertising, bringing the addressability piece and therefore CTV opens a large number of addressable audiences or viewers for us. 

He also highlighted that everything on television is largely fragmented hence, at GroupM they evaluate multiple TV touchpoints and hence CTV is gaining prominence here as well. 

“Addressable TV offers us precision targeting, reaching specific audiences across demographics and geographics, household behaviour and ownership data was also collected along with the addressable TV ownership.  It actually ensured the ad viewability on large screens, thereby delivering an immersive experience. The additional touch point, which he mentioned is the real-time analytics. With the right measurements, today's advertisers can gauge the effectiveness of the campaign in real time dynamically and optimise strategy accordingly. “So these are the reasons why the brands are getting more attracted to addressable TV and considering addressability as an extension of TV and being part of one single media plan.”

Rajagopal also shared that with Finecast solutions, they could help brands grow through CTV and addressable TV. For instance, makeO toothsi- a makeover brand shifted to addressable TV to drive purchase intent among affluent audiences. 

Anooj Shetty, Client Engagement Director, Finecast India, who has also worked on the same campaign, stated that the brand's target audience was predominantly those aged between 22 and 45. He says this is the audience that has more disposable income and are also interested in beauty. 

“We went to them with the Finecast solution as they wanted to target only a few top metros in India and we used Finecast capabilities to target the relevant household as per the profiling. We also optimised the campaign on genres which were mostly- English lifestyle, movies, infotainment, and music because the target audience are largely watching such content. With this, we were able to showcase more ads to them through these genres.” 

The campaign was delivered to 11.25 million households alongside premium broadcast content across smart TV’s and set-top boxes. It achieved a 93% completion rate. Finecast also partnered with Kantar to conduct a brand lift study, assessing performance across key metrics. Among those exposed to the market Toothsi advert, there was an 85% lift in consideration, 76% rise in positive opinion, 38% increase in likelihood to recommend the brand and 59% purchase intent in the next 6 months.

“This is a classic example of precision-targeted campaigns. Targeting only a set of audiences, on a large screen and that's how clients see this as a medium where you can implement certain objectives which can't be done on a lot of other mediums.  Here it is possible to bring in an audience cohort and scientific reasons on why you should target a specific region?” Similarly, Finecast also helped another brand- Dell to achieve their advertising goal through CTV. 

On the CTV landscape, Rajagopal shared that in the last couple of years, he has observed a significant shift of CTV audiences in demographics. Approximately, a year ago 85% of the connected TV viewers were concentrated in the top eight-tier metropolitan cities of India. Today that number is around 60%. “We are witnessing a substantial increase in the viewership from the regions outside metros as well in India and hence, initially tech and e-commerce were early adopters to come on CTV because they wanted to explore metro centric tech savvy, young and affluent audiences. But changes in the landscape has brought in more viewership and has expanded scope to move to other categories like your BFSI, personal care and CPG categories who want to look at broader audiences.” 

He is bullish about the CTV growth in India and seeing more and more categories using CTV to achieve their advertising goals. But advertising is cost effective on traditional media or CTV? Rajagopal answers,  “Our approach is always audience-centric rather than media-agnostic.” He noted that the moment media agencies start with an audience centric approach, they are breaking down the barriers. 

He said, it's been more than two years since Finecast became operational in India and as a GroupM company, they have executed more than 200 campaigns in the last one year itself.  “Through this, we are able to identify a lot of data to a certain category. It's not a one tailor made solution for every brand or category. Every category or brand brief is unique to us, and we can tailor make them accordingly.”