Amidst multiple factors, like budget constraints and creative crisis, that have led to low success rate for the OTT industry these days, one that’s most concerning is the growing digital fatigue in today’s audience.
With rapidly increasing popularity of short form and micro contents like Instagram’s Reels and YouTube Shorts, the attention span of the audience, specially the younger section, has shrunken notably.
The time spent on social media apps is much longer these days and continues to rise steadily. According to reports it reached 800 billion hours in 2024 as compared to 700 billion hours in 2023, signifying a major change in digital consumption patterns.
Patience to watch long form content like films and web series is almost cut to minimum unless it gets an absolutely fabulous word of mouth or is a tentpole project backed by heavy promotions from the platform. This not only delays the success of good OTT content but sometimes even the deserving ones do not get the recognition until much later.
This shift towards social media apps is terrifyingly worrisome for OTT platforms because while it can work and improve on other factors like budget allocations and lack of new content, reversing factors driven by human psychology is not within their, or for that matter anyone’s, means.
This is not to say that people are going to completely stop watching films and web series, but yes their viability will definitely suffer. With time there will be lesser engagement on OTT platforms when compared to social media apps that have become a great source of all kinds of content and moreover you don’t have to decide what to watch and just keep scrolling.
This will mean that OTTs will undergo a major transformation themselves in coming future with focus on live events and mega projects that will offer sure shot chances at bringing in viewership.
That’s the unfortunate reality one will have to face because when OTTs first emerged they were meant to bring every sort of content to the screens, no matter big or small. They came up as a platform that provided creative freedom for those unheard and neglected stories that found no other place to express themselves. But soon enough this is going to happen less and less as these OTTs will change their strategies to thrive and survive.
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