NEW DELHI: In a further sign of growing mobile data consumption in India, the chief executive of Zenga TV, the online video and movie streaming service, has reported that its mobile advertising levels have grown eightfold in just the last eight months.

Speaking at the Mobile NXT conference in New Delhi, Zenga TV CEO Shabir Momin said there had been significant change over the past eight months with growth happening "extremely fast".

So much so, he told MediaNana, that he is now hiring more sales staff and said "some of the predictions in the market about the industry growing 20-30 folds higher in the next two years might actually be true".

Describing the mobile advertising industry as "shaping up" to the challenge, he also expected more revenue to switch from mainstream advertising as the Indian TV industry adopts a 10+2 minutes rule.

This regulation limits ads no more than 12 minutes per hour – up to ten minutes per hour of commercial ads and up to two minutes of a channel's self-promotional programmes.

He said: "The last eight months, there's been a significant change. It's as if it [mobile advertising] has suddenly woken up and started running."

The company – which he acknowledged has struggled to sell mobile ads over the past four years except for major popular events, such as cricket matches – is mostly relying on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) model for its sales.

CPM, he explained, is preferred over CPC (cost per click) and CPD (cost per day) because Zenga considers its role is to "deliver impressions and reach out to people" rather than controlling the product or being responsible for the end result of clicks.

Zenga's optimism comes as the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and market researcher IMRB International said on Wednesday that the number of internet users in India will rise to 213m by the end of the year, livemint reported.

The report also found there were a total of 110m mobile internet users in October with the total expected to rise to 130m by December.

Data sourced from MediaNama, livemint; additional content by Warc staff