MUMBAI: As online content becomes a more popular strategy in India, marketers must emphasize content localization as they expand into rural areas, according to one of the country’s top agency executives.

“Content relevance needs to be of paramount importance,” stated Arun Iyer, Chairman & Chief Creative Officer at Lowe Lintas, in an exclusive interview with Warc.

“As internet access increases in rural and semi-urban areas, so will the need for individual content viewing, which is a departure from group content viewing in the TV era.” (Read more of WARC’s exclusive interview with Iyer and other top agency figures discussing India’s content trends: Three keys to content success in India.)

Going forward, Iyer believes local language capabilities for video and social media content marketing will be very important, especially in semi-urban and rural India; 45% of OTT users consume content in regional languages, he said.

“With increased digital adoption across the rural geographies, this is bound to go up rapidly and even disproportionately. Some estimates say that by 2021 rural content consumption could comprise almost 70% of the national consumption.”

And with India’s rural internet connectivity booming as residents get mobile phones for the first time, marketers need to be mobile inclusive – ideally, mobile first – in their engagement strategies for rural and semi-urban areas.

“The content, hence, will need to be on-demand, binge-worthy and snackable,” said Iyer.

“Be mobile first. Explore content syndication possibilities with platforms such as Biscoot, Vuclip, etc, for local content dissemination.”

Sourced from WARC