MX Player Beats Hotstar, Amazon Prime In Loyalty; 25% Indians Want Free Netflix Access, Ads No Problem!

The craze and investment is increasing exponentially for over-the-top content (OTT) platforms, like Netflix and Amazon Prime in India. About 30% OTT users in the country have registered with three or more such platforms. Among the top OTT players, the Times Internet-owned MX Player has taken the lead, securing 21% customer loyalty, followed by Amazon, Netflix and Hotstar with 15%, 14% and 14% respectively.

Along with this, there’s a great news for all the advertising bodies out there. Apparently, majority of Indians do not mind getting interrupted by on-screen advertisements while surfing through video content on such OTT platforms, in a bargain for money subscriptions.

There’s a New Market OTT Leader: Beware Hotstar!

 OTT refers to film and television content provided via an internet connection rather than a cable or satellite provider. It has so smoothingly been climbing up the graphs that we cannot help but ignore that Indian based Hotstar, the most engaging and customer loyal OTT platform, has lost its 1^st position in India to the Times-Internet owned MX Player.

The number of OTT subscritions on different such platforms are increasing every month, in the country. A market research report has revealed that MX Player has swept away maximum number of Indian customers, constituting about 21%. While 50% of users surfing through MX Player are found engaging in over 3 other OTT platforms, more than 62% of Amazon and Netflix users were found engaged in again, more than 3 different OTT platforms.

This line of business has gained traction equivalent to e-commerce and social media and is spreading in every corner of the country. There are about 32 such platforms live, based in India and then there’s foreign trending ones like Prime, Netflix and Hulu.

25% Indians Won’t Mind Watching Ads on Netflix and Hotstar

One in three Indians won’t mind seeing ads on OTT platforms, like Netflix and Amazon Prime, if they get a good deal from the advertising vendors. While 25% Indians won’t mind watching ads as a bargain to consume free content, about 14% responded that they were willing to pay a higher fee to remove the ads, wherein another 14% were okay with a considerable number of ads along with a minimal fee amount.

About 9000 participants from across Asia were surveyed including 1000 Indians. About 80% Indians are willing to sign up for a reduced price subscription model that may portray a limited amount of ads. Around 22% Indians wouldn’t mind watching 2 consecutive ads, while 13% were okay with 3 consecutive such breaks. With such a golden opportunity for advertisement vendors, they can now provide enticing advertisements.

Indian customers majorly demand offline download (42%), access on mobile (42%) and lesser data usage on mobile (40%) from OTT platforms, among other ones.

Being the 2^nd largest internet market and a tech hub, India is showing exceptional growth of the OTT sector and the said market is expected to hit $5 billion by 2023.