“No other platform provides the kind of precision and segmentation that OTT offers”: Rajiv Bakshi, ZEEL

Home-grown OTT player, ZEE5 has come up with its fortnightly knowledge series called 'ZEE5 Intelligence Monitor'. It will decrypt the latest and imminent consumption trends and preferences. It will also discover new insights across various product and service categories to add incremental value for the advertisers on the ZEE5 platform.

‘ZEE5 Intelligence Monitor’ will track evolving consumer behaviour across industry verticals, ranging from auto, beauty, health and wellness, to smartphones, gaming, cryptocurrency and more. 

This model aims to bring together renowned industry leaders for expert viewpoints, especially pertaining to the ‘new normal’ accelerated by the rapid adoption of technology.

Rajiv Bakshi, chief operations officer - revenue, Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEEL), tells afaqs!, “We already were into data-rich campaign planning and extensive use of tech to help the advertisers to get new ad units. We felt that we could add one more step that finds a solution to a problem.”

“Most brands have a business problem and we understand that. We initiate planning on the basis of that problem. We can give the advertisers insights about how the audiences are thinking about their product category.”

ZEE5’s diverse regional content caters to audiences across the country. It serves various age groups and has content to cater to all genders. “Our aim is to understand the audiences using tech and relay back in micro cohorts as to how it is feeling and adapting,” adds Bakshi.

The research is conducted with the primary aim of gauging how the audiences are responding to the newer categories. ZEE5 has noticed that one e-category can have a direct impact on another one. The research is undertaken on 300-400 market clusters and, hence, gives an in-depth view of these industries.

“The core purpose also involves coming up with a trend analysis and suggest possible outcomes to the clients. The marketers can then take actions based on these trends, or just add these findings to their arsenal of information,” mentions Bakshi.

Some interesting findings of the e-commerce report:

1.     Over 95 per cent of the respondents shop online and use multiple shopping apps. Ever since the COVID pandemic struck, platforms started expanding throughout the country, which resulted in Tier-II and III cities taking to online shopping.

2.     Sixty per cent of the users shop online at least twice a month. Owing to pandemic-induced lockdown, 55 per cent of the consumers spent over 1.2x higher in value on online shopping.

3.     Men are leading the way, when it comes to e-commerce, with 22 per cent making more than five purchases (versus 14 per cent of the women).

4.     Seventy per cent of the men shop online after checking the products in a store. The trend of online shopping gained momentum during the lockdown. And even after the stores reopened, the pattern has not completely reversed. 

5.     Three out of four users are likely to purchase products seen in OTT content. Further, 87 per cent of the users like discovering products in OTT content.

How do these findings help marketers, and how do they further leverage OTT content.

Says Bakshi, “OTT content is a true reflection of what’s happening around us. It represents narratives and stories that are much closer to reality.”

According to him, the reason why OTT shows have become successful is because they are true to the zone around them. They don’t worry about how strange they may come across to rest of the country. The truer a show is to a limited geographical area, in terms of nuance, language and characters, the more successful it becomes. 

ZEE5 also aims to come up with shows which are more ingrained and inherent in what is expected to happen. “The success of any TV show depends on how it captures something that has not been captured already,” adds Bakshi.

Due to OTT’s wide reach now, it has become an important part of a marketer’s media mix. It helps the marketers to micro target the audience easily. They may be consuming content on a various devices, like a mobile phone or a smart TV. 

“OTTs also provide a data-rich platform, with cohorts that are well defined and, hence, what the marketers are targeting is acute and micro. No other platform provides this kind of precision and segmentation that OTT offers. This becomes a lethal combination for any marketer,” concludes Bakshi.