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Tag: Marathi TV viewership

  • Tele-Wise Marathi: Why TV still remains the best medium for advertising

    Tele-Wise Marathi: Why TV still remains the best medium for advertising

    Mumbai: The Marathi TV language landscape presents a stark contrast to the regional TV landscape in the southern states where the regional language is almost a necessity to communicate and connect with the viewers. Over 70 per cent of Maharashtra’s TV viewership overlaps with Hindi TV channels, while only 30 per cent of viewers opt for purely Marathi entertainment and news.

    Amid all this, is the vernacular language still the most important medium to communicate with the Marathi speaking, urban populace of television viewers in Maharashtra? This was one of the key questions debated at the recently concluded Tele-Wise Marathi, a virtual summit organised by Indiantelevision.com and presented by COLORS Marathi.

    “Most people in Maharashtra, not just Mumbai are multi-linguistic and comfortable watching Hindi entertainment also,” said Godrej Tyson Food Ltd CEO Prashant Vatkar. “So, there is not so much of a need to create Marathi-exclusive advertising content, as long as the consumer is comfortable.”

    Edelweiss Asset Management Ltd head -product, marketing & digital business- Edelweiss AMC, Niranjan Avasthi concurred. However, he added that one can definitely have a higher impact and reach if one customises the content in the local language. “The authenticity of the message being conveyed will also increase. So while it is not a necessity as far as Maharashtra is concerned, it definitely is an add-on, which can be an advantage for the marketers,” he added.

    Over 45 per cent of the Maharashtra population lives in urban areas, as against the national average of 31 per cent, observed Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, executive director – marketing & sales Shashank Srivastava, adding that the state also has several independent urban centres apart from Mumbai, such as Pune, Nashik, Kolhapur, Nagpur, Solapur.

     

    Recent data from Broadcast Audience Research Council (Barc) however, suggests that the ‘spillover’ viewership in Maharashtra has really reduced with regional channels seeing an uptick in numbers, especially in the last few months, as was pointed out by Madison Media Sigma- Madison World CEO Vanita Keswani, who was moderating the panel.

    “Even in the urban centers, the viewers’ market share for Marathi content is actually higher than the non-urban areas of Maharashtra. So, there is no way a marketer can afford to ignore it, especially when it comes to the auto sector TG, the affinity for local content is pretty high,” said Srivastava indicating the continued need for specific investments in regional content.

    Maruti continues to invest in regional markets along with Hindi and English content. The auto-maker uses digital for the lower end of the funnel, but television reigns supreme when it comes to brand building, reach and awareness and in TV it is the GEC and news genres, even in the vernacular belt, shared Srivastava.

    According to RamBandhu (ESFL) director, Anand Rathi, when it comes to genres within the Marathi content, more regional news was consumed, especially during the pandemic when people were more curious and anxious to know local news. “The pickle and papad brand has targeted audiences across all classes. Pre-Covid there was a leaning towards GEC content, but all that changed with the onset of the pandemic and regional news channels took precedence over regional GECs for hyper-local reach,” he added.

    Being more of an urban-centric brand selling to higher socio-economic class consumers, Godrej’s Vatkar shared that the brand uses more of digital and OTT to reach out to their specific and well-defined target audience. For this, they used experiential content by roping in celebrity chefs along with micro-influencers. The flexibility offered by digital platforms worked well for the brand, while regional language content did not play a big role since food is not so much language-oriented as much as it is an experiential concept, he pointed out.

    While agreeing to food being more experiential in nature, Rambandhu’s Rathi had a different point of view when it came to the importance of regional language in Maharashtra’s food segment. “Language plays a crucial role in Maharashtra, for me to have a strong connect with my consumer. If I’m able to talk in the language that my consumer wants to hear, he would probably give preference to my product,” Rathi said.

    The brand has recently launched a TVC campaign with celebrity brand ambassador Madhuri Dixit-Nene for its papad and pickle category, who’s the new face for the brand.

    Rathi said that the actor, for the first time, has done a commercial in the Marathi language, while stressing on the importance of the local language’s connect with the consumers.

    Srivastava agreed that if the integration with the local content is strong, the brand connect can be good. “Our internal research has found that consumers actually look at brands differently if they find that connect- and the connect need not be based on just the product characteristics or the message- it is also the language in which it is being conveyed,” he said.

    Marathi language channels have the highest viewership share in the HSM (Hindi Speaking Market) after Hindi language channels. Talking about the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) when it comes to television as a brand vehicle, Srivastava shared that the reason the brand continues to spend heavily on the medium is that TV has performed convincingly on all its KPIs – both on the brand salience as well as the consumer conversion parts.

    Keswani noted that, interestingly, the bulk of Marathi TV advertising is occupied by national advertisers, and not regional players, as would be expected. One of the reasons for this, RamBandhu’s Rathi shared, could be the high costs of regional GECs today from an advertiser’s point of view. Talking about the brand’s advertising journey from scratch, he said that since their product targets households across categories, they felt TV was the way to go, right from the starting point. So, while other mediums like hoardings and OOH helped, the kind of reach that TV gives would be difficult to emulate on any other medium, said Rathi.

    With 115 million TV viewers, the Marathi TV language landscape is certainly not losing ground to newer kids on the advertising block, like digital. As per a Nielson study, television gives a whopping 83 per cent reach in Maharashtra, as against 51 per cent with digital. Television as a medium cannot be ignored when it comes to mass reach to a wider audience, regardless of the product category, it was roundly agreed by the panelists.

  • TV viewership for Marathi channels see a 10% rise over 2019 : BARC

    TV viewership for Marathi channels see a 10% rise over 2019 : BARC

    Mumbai: Marathi language channels have the highest viewership share in the Hindi Speaking Market (HSM) after Hindi language channels. In Maharashtra/Goa, Marathi language channels constitute 34 per cent of the viewership share whereas Hindi language channels have 54 per cent viewership share. This is lower compared to other language markets such as West Bengal where Bengali language channels have 53 per cent viewership share and Tamil Nadu where Tamil language channels have 90 per cent viewership share.

    These data and insights were shared by Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India, head client partnerships and revenue, Aaditya Pathak at Indiantelevision.com’s Tele-wise Marathi: The Power of Television, a virtual summit presented by COLORS Marathi and media partners AnimationXpress.com, TellyChakkar, and radioandmusic.com.

    Overview of the market

    There are 210 million TV-owning households in India out of which 26 million are in Maharashtra. The state has a 12 per cent share of the total TV homes. The 109 million audiences living in these homes contribute 13 per cent to the overall TV viewership and five per cent of that viewership goes to Marathi language channels. The average time spent watching TV in Maharashtra is much higher compared to all India or the HSM and stands at an average of four hours and six minutes every week.

    BARC TV Universe monitors ~580 channels. There are 25 Marathi language channels comprising GECs (nine), news (six), movies (five), music (four), and a kids channel.

    TV viewership for Marathi language channels has increased by 10 per cent over 2019, whereas Hindi channels have seen a decline and other language channels remain relatively flat.

    Within the sub-genres, Marathi GECs have grown by 22 per cent over 2019, while Marathi movies and news viewership remained the same. The growth of Marathi GECs also beat Hindi GECs.

    “The viewership of Marathi channels remained relatively unchanged post-Covid, even as viewership of non-Marathi channels peaked in the first wave of the lockdown. The peak was a complete India and HSM phenomenon which could be attributed to initiatives taken up by channels such as Doordarshan to rerun their old shows like ‘Ramayan‘ and ‘Mahabharat‘ which were lapped up across different town classes and geographies,” said BARC India’s Pathak.

    “Among the Marathi genre channels, Marathi GECs used to constitute 20 per cent of the average weekly viewing minutes. In the first lockdown due to the absence of original programming that share dropped to eight per cent but has returned to 23 per cent,” he said, adding that, “Viewership share for Marathi movies and Marathi news is higher than what it used to be before the lockdown.”

    Battle for eyeballs: Marathi vs Hindi

    Most Marathi audiences are bi-lingual and hence consume content in both Hindi and Marathi. Marathi language channels have grown their market share in Maharashtra/Goa market from 30 per cent in 2019 to 34 per cent in 2021. In the same period, Hindi channels share has decreased from 57 per cent to 53 per cent.

    “We have observed that the rural markets skew towards local languages and similarly there’s a greater skew towards Marathi language channels in such markets. When you move to a town class, Marathi language channels increase their share to 40 per cent and when you move to an urban landscape their share moves down to 25 per cent while Hindi channels increase to 62 per cent,” said Pathak.

    He also dissented with the view that there is a big overlap in Hindi and Marathi TV viewing audiences. “If we were to look at pure Marathi audience, there were 4.8 million in 2019 which has grown by 21 per cent to 5.8 million in 2021. This clearly goes to show that there are more people lapping up local content available on the 25 Marathi channels,” he said.

    The viewership of Marathi GECs is almost on par with Hindi GECs on weekdays. However, on weekends there is a significant movement of audiences from Marathi channels towards Hindi movie channels. “It should also be noted that a lot of Marathi original programming is scheduled on the Fixed Time Chart (FTC) from Monday to Saturday,” Pathak said.

    Advertising opportunity on Marathi channels

    The positive sign is that Marathi channels are seeing a return in the number of advertisers and brands, although it is yet to reach 2019 levels. “Total TV ad volumes grew by 14 per cent in 2021 over 2019. If you look only at Marathi language channels, the growth has been 44 per cent. Even though the base is different, we know that this is a very healthy growth,” said Pathak.

    The growth in ad volumes has been highest for the news and movie genres while GEC saw only a marginal increase. Exclusive advertisers on Marathi channels have also grown by 18 per cent.

    Ad volumes from the top five categories barring auto have increased significantly. FMCG ad volumes have grown by 77 per cent, e-commerce by 38 per cent, infrastructure (building, industrial, land materials/equipment) by 29 per cent, and BFSI by 60 per cent.

    The affluence of consumers in Maharashtra has also increased. “32 per cent of audiences that watch Marathi channels are from the NCCS A classification. This augurs well for advertisers who are targeting affluent Marathi households. The cluster of NCCS A and B constitutes almost 67 per cent of the TV viewership in this market. The ratio of male to female TV viewers is almost aligned at 41:59,” Pathak said.

    According to Pathak, while the market is not under-indexed, there is room to grow in terms of ad volumes. He said, “We need to be cognisant that there are 25 Marathi channels compared to Bangla language market where there are 35 channels. As the affluence of the market increases, we expect the number of TV connections going up.”

    Sources: BARC data (TV UEs 2020, All India 2+, Maha/Goa 2+, HSM 2+, Average Weekly VM’Bn, 2019 and 2020 entire year, Wk 14-30’2021)