"We need third-party measurement body to truly unlock the advertising VOD play": Akash Banerji

In an interview with afaqs! Akash Banerji talks about the AVOD space and the challenges posed by the lack of a third-party measurement body.

By 2021, advertisers are going to spend Rs 10,500 crore on digital video in India (EY estimate) which is going to shoot up from Rs 5,000 crore in 2018. Unlike search and social media, where Google and Facebook dominate about 86 per cent of the total spend, digital video is a much more level playing field. Come April, as the Indian Premier League kicks off, Hotstar will start claiming it has more monthly active users than Google's YouTube. Last year, Hotstar (now owned by Disney) announced that it had crossed the 300 million monthly active user mark while YouTube's CEO who was in India at that time said that she had 275 million MAU. There is Times Internet's MX Player which claims 175 MAU tuning on the local video player that it earlier was, however, it is still in the process of converting the video players to streamers. Recently, Viacom18's VOOT claimed it crossed the 100 million MAU mark.

While there is a lot of encouragement and action in the advertising video-on-demand space, Akash Banerji, Head - AVOD Business, VOOT believes that the unavailability of a third-party measurement body is stopping it from attaining the next level. The Indian media, advertising and marketing ecosystem tried through industry body Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India, to come up with a measurement body for digital - EKAM but it is yet to materialise. If reports are to be believed, then many players, most belonging to the non-broadcasters denied being a part of it. Banerjee believes it is worth giving it another try for the industry to grow.

In an interview with afaqs! Banerji talks about the AVOD space and the challenges posed by the lack of a third-party measurement body.

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