YouTube has emerged as the most popular platform for Indian news, says a report
Google-owned YouTube is the most popular platform for digital news consumers in India, with a whopping 93 percent using it to read news, a report revealed on Thursday.
The Google News Initiative report, in collaboration with marketing data and analytics company Kantar, describes the different news content consumption habits and behaviors of the country’s Indian online news consumers.
It showed that an average Indian consumer uses 5.05 digital platforms to read news online.
YouTube became the most popular, followed by social media (88 percent) and chat applications (82 percent). Another 45 percent of online news users in India get their news through news publishers’ websites or apps.
The report is designed to help news agencies better prioritize and inform content strategies to index relevant content areas in different languages.
It showed that the country’s digital news user is a very diverse group, in stark contrast to the often held notions of a monolithic, homogenous “regional” consumer. The report highlights that every second Indian internet user consumes news from the country. that consumers with different language preferences also show different content preferences.
For example, while entertainment, crime and national or state or city headlines are the top types of news readers prefer, Malayalam news readers prefer international news and education, while Bengali readers prefer sports news.
“The Indian-language news consumer has traditionally been seen as less affluent and less willing to engage in complex content compared to the English-language news consumer. The research shatters this myth – the language news consumer is sophisticated, urban, diverse and shows a willingness to pay digitally. This can open up huge opportunities for publishers and advertisers,” Kantar’s B2B- and CTO Biswapriya Bhattacharjee said in a statement.
The report also showed that digital news readers are more sophisticated and affluent compared to general internet users. They also clearly show an increased inclination towards online transactions (UPI, shopping and OTT).
In addition, one in seven (15 percent) users are willing to pay for news online, and this figure is 1.5 times (22 percent) higher among users who consume news on publisher websites/apps.
“Content companies, including digital news publishers, have the potential to unlock new growth opportunities by better engaging with India’s sophisticated and affluent digital news consumers,” Sanjay Gupta, country head and head of Google India, said in a statement. .
“As a growing digital economy, we need to connect and build new propositions and brands across media to connect with consumers who are looking for authentic, trusted and quality content,” he added.
For the report, Kantar conducted more than 64 qualitative conversations in 16 cities and more than 4,600 face-to-face interviews in 43 urban cities in 14 states from November 2022 to March 2023.
The report covered eight languages – Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu – and included both males and females above the age of 15.
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