Indian short video-app market clocks 3x growth in ad revenue in 6 months

After the ban on TikTok and other Chinese short-video making apps, the advertisement revenue from Indian short-form space has been growing at a rapid pace and tripled in the last six months, new data showed on Thursday, October 21. According to the latest report released by homegrown consulting firm RedSeer Consulting, short-form content has grown 1.37 times in terms of monthly active users (MAU) and 1.1 times in terms of daily active users (DAU) from June 2020 when Chinese app TikTok was banned in India.

While global social media dominates in the top 50 cities, Indian social media platforms and short-form video platforms garner a major chunk of the share. While the growth in overall time spent in social media has been organic at 8 per cent, non-social media (short-form video) time has grown at 57 per cent, indicating a shift from social media consumption to short-form video, the findings showed.

"While short-form video ad monetisation is still at a nascent stage, and accounts for less than 1 per cent of the digital ad spend, the ad revenue in the sector has grown more than three times in last six months and as the user base continues to rise, ad revenue will continue to grow," said Ujjwal Chaudhry, associate partner at RedSeer.

The monthly active users of the short-form segment in the country are expected to grow more than two times to reach 650 million users by 2025, clocking the second spot after television.

This significant growth is largely expected to be driven by the new 300 million Internet users that will be added by 2025.

While traffic has increased, content creation velocity has grown 4.4 times in the last two quarters due to improvement in filter tools leading to users becoming creators at a higher pace.

Both Josh and Moj apps have seen a good jump in user and creator net promoter score (NPS) largely driven by users seeing more personalisation, fresher and more filtered content, and creators having access to new tools, increased reach and more collaboration opportunities.

"Live-stream gifting and live e-commerce are also showing early signs of growth and will form an important monetisation opportunity for short-form players," Chaudhry said.