Women, small towns influenced by digital as men, big towns in viewing options: Report

New Delhi: Women, small towns, and older age groups are just as influenced by digital as men, big towns, and younger age groups in their viewing choices, a report showed on Wednesday.

According to a Meta-commissioned report by BCG (Boston Consulting Group), women, small-town residents, and people over 35 years of age have significant digital influence driving their content discovery and consumption choices.

For instance, 78 percent of surveyed men who watch OTT content said they use digital to interact with the content after consuming it. This figure was equally high at 77 percent for women.

“Consumers increasing time spent on digital video is well-known. But what was counterintuitive is how much digital is influencing their discovery of content, the decision to watch, and engagement post watching. It is not limited to digital native mediums but across all content as category,” said Shaveen Garg, Managing Director, and Partner BCG.

Moreover, the report mentioned that before watching something on OTT, about 81 percent of people from smaller towns use digital for content discovery than people from large towns (74 percent).

The report also showed that 60 percent of consumers seek information about the content before deciding to watch.

The findings further revealed that higher digital engagement is correlated with higher watch time on both LTV and OTT.

“The prevalent view presumes that consumer behavior across small and large towns, across gender and age groups, is vastly distinct. While this may be true for some industries when it comes to content consumption in India, there are more similarities than distinctions,” said Shweta Bajpai, Director and Vertical Head – Media, Finserv, Travel, Real Estate and Services for Meta in India.

Around 80 percent of content-related research occurs online before content viewing, with digital discovery and engagement playing a significant role for both linear TV and OTT, the report said.