NEW DELHI: Online video consumption in India is growing fast and brands are latching onto the trend according to Twitter, the microblogging site, which has reported a fivefold increase in revenue from its promoted video feature.
And, according to Parminder Singh, managing director for India, Southeast Asia, Middle East and North Africa at Twitter, the number of Indian advertisers using this product has doubled.
He told the Economic Times that a campaign's engagement goes up by 40% when the advertiser uses promoted video while purchase intent increases 44%.
Much of this growth is coming via mobile – "over 36% of mobile data in the country consists of video," Singh said – and that is unlikely to slow any time soon.
India is on track to surpass half a billion mobile subscribers by the end of the year, according to a recent GSMA study, which also observed the market was rapidly migrating to mobile broadband technology and "providing a platform for India to transform into a digitally empowered society".
But Rishi Jaitly, vp/media, Asia-Pacific and Middle East at Twitter, said it was important to keep in mind the realities of India's complex mobile network. He told the Hindustan Times that "we are optimising for latency and slow 2.5G networks".
He added that Twitter had been surprised at the way the Indian market uses mobile video, "so now we will organise a strategy around it".
That entails three stages, which he outlined as educating brands on using Twitter's video tools better, bringing strategic publishers on board as premium users of those tools, and getting mature partners to think about monetising video content.
And, according to Parminder Singh, managing director for India, Southeast Asia, Middle East and North Africa at Twitter, the number of Indian advertisers using this product has doubled.
He told the Economic Times that a campaign's engagement goes up by 40% when the advertiser uses promoted video while purchase intent increases 44%.
Much of this growth is coming via mobile – "over 36% of mobile data in the country consists of video," Singh said – and that is unlikely to slow any time soon.
India is on track to surpass half a billion mobile subscribers by the end of the year, according to a recent GSMA study, which also observed the market was rapidly migrating to mobile broadband technology and "providing a platform for India to transform into a digitally empowered society".
But Rishi Jaitly, vp/media, Asia-Pacific and Middle East at Twitter, said it was important to keep in mind the realities of India's complex mobile network. He told the Hindustan Times that "we are optimising for latency and slow 2.5G networks".
He added that Twitter had been surprised at the way the Indian market uses mobile video, "so now we will organise a strategy around it".
That entails three stages, which he outlined as educating brands on using Twitter's video tools better, bringing strategic publishers on board as premium users of those tools, and getting mature partners to think about monetising video content.
Data sourced from Economic Times, Hindustan Times, GSMA; additional content by Warc staff
