547 mn OTT users but active paid subscriptions stagnant at 100 mn: Ormax report

While domestic OTT users has surged to reach 547 million, active paid subscriptions have remain stagnant at 100 million (similar to last year), according to media consulting firm Ormax Media's report.

'The Ormax OTT Audience Report: 2024' based on a sample size of 12,000 across urban and rural India, revealed that the Indian OTT audience universe is currently pegged at 54.73 crore people. This translates to a penetration of 38.4%.

The 13.8% growth in the universe vis-à-vis 2023 is entirely driven by the AVOD audience, which grew by 21%, while the SVOD segment witnessed a degrowth of 2%.

The report defined an OTT audience who watched at least one online video (free or paid) in the last month. The report broke down this universe by gender, age, NCCS, pop strata, states, and cities.

Speaking about the findings of the report, Keerat Grewal, Head of Business Development (Streaming, TV & Brands), Ormax Media, said: "While the overall expansion rate of the OTT universe has stably been around the 13%-mark post-pandemic, this year’s report highlights the significant role of AVOD segment in expanding the universe. The growth is driven by AVOD audiences, with most of the new entrants into the category watching video content only on YouTube and social media. The stagnation in SVOD audience size is also reflective of the trend whereby free content is driving OTT growth in small town and rural India." The report revealed that India has 99.6 million active paid (B2C) OTT subscriptions, a number very similar to last year. The average number of platforms subscribed to per paying audience member has come down from 2.8 to 2.5 in 2024, highlighting the waning need among audiences to subscribe to too many platforms.

This year’s report also elaborated on various devices used by the OTT audience in India to watch online video content.

Smartphones emerged as the most preferred device to watch online video content with 97% of the Indian OTT audience using it, and a sizeable 81% audience watching OTT content only on their smartphone. The connected TV audience base is estimated at 69.7 million.