The streaming landscape is ever evolving in India and the latest Ormax Media’s streaming audience research highlights the same. As per the Ormax OTT Audience Report: 2024, the streaming audience in India is now a staggering 547 million users, compared to 481 million last year.
Reflecting on the year-on-year change, these numbers represent a 14% growth from 2023 and underscore the growing digital content consumption throughout the country. But these numbers tell something else too.
The expansion and growth reflected by these numbers is not that balanced as it might seem at first. The report states that the entire growth is driven by the ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) segment, which saw a significant 21% rise. On the other hand, the subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) segment, which relies on paid subscriptions, rather witnessed a slight decline of 2%.
Now this raises the issues of how sustainable and profitable is India’s streaming market, given the stagnation of paid subscriptions in the country, as the report reveals the number of active paid streaming subscriptions in India remains largely unchanged at 99.6 million.
These numbers are further strengthened by another finding in the report that shows the average number of platforms subscribed to per paying audience member dropped from 2.8 in 2023 to 2.5 in 2024. Now this can mean two things, one, even those who do pay for content are becoming more selective due to economic factors and two, the high volume of free to stream content available online.
Report also states that smartphones continue to dominate as the preferred viewing device for streaming. 97% of the Indian audience are using them for content consumption while 81% are exclusively watching on smartphones. Moreover, people watching content on TV, where the chances of paid subscription are more, is a comparatively small number of 69.7 million only.
This data does suggest that the accessibility to content streaming is high in India but it also highlights the challenges faced by platforms in monetizing content, given that smartphone users are more likely to opt for free, ad-supported services over paid subscriptions.
The above numbers are concerning for the OTT ecosystem in India as reliance on ad-supported models poses long-term challenges for the industry, no matter how impressive is the expansion of the streaming audience. The stagnation in paid subscriptions will overall hamper the entertainment industry in economic terms since the cost of producing good content continues to rise.
Also, the decrease in number of subscriptions per user further shows how the consumers are becoming more price sensitive and it can lead to more reductions in willingness to pay in the future. Moreover, when the issue of more smartphone users is considered it becomes a necessary evil of sort. That’s because smartphones do democratise access to content but they also limit the ability of platforms to monetize their content effectively, as mobile viewers are less likely to pay for subscriptions and more likely to consume ad-supported content.
Considering the long term profitability of the industry and to minimise the challenges faced due to heavy reliance on AVOD and stagnation of SVOD, platforms should probably try and explore new pricing models, content strategies, or even creative partnerships to encourage paid subscriptions and ensure sustainable growth in the future.
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