Even as more and more Indians come online for the first time every single day, driving up the numbers of digital consumers, reports show that they are increasingly eschewing the walled gardens of Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft Teams, Google and Apple’s app stores, for the open internet, comprising general entertainment and news websites, OTT and CTV content, online gaming and streaming of all kinds. In fact, the number of Indians on the open internet exceeds those in closed platforms by over 60 million users.

For Gavin Buxton, Managing Director - Asia (SEA, South Asia and North Asia except JP) at Magnite, an area that his company is focusing heavily on is the growth of the open internet, looking at the audience cycles and the internet outside of walled gardens as media owners and publishers outside that ecosystem are helping drive news entertainment audiences around the world and in India.

“So we're very much supporters of the open internet and our publisher partners within that sphere, and we are enabling them to monetize their content to be able to survive and thrive. The exciting part is that we're seeing continued growth in the open Internet, in India specifically,” he says.

“We're excited about supporting the community and its supply side and helping open that up. Another area we've been talking about over the last couple of months, and is really resonating, is video streaming. We're seeing continued growth there and we did this study at the end of last year with a research company, Dynata. They ran a survey with a panel of 2500 persons, which really captured the growth in streaming and CTV in general.”

According to the report, nearly two thirds of India’s streamers (64%) are more responsive to advertising on streaming platforms, with many stating they often search for the product (48%) and make a purchase (33%) after the fact. “However, this means that ads have to be relevant to the person consuming said content, so we can help with that as well,” says Buxton.

While the phone remains the top streaming device, time spent streaming on CTV is growing as smart TVs are introduced into Indian homes. 59% of streamers are now watching CTV and spending an average of 8 hours per week streaming content on a big screen, which is more than linear TV.

“So that's really interesting to see. We're seeing some similarity with traditional TV, where 62% people on CTVs are co-viewing, so they're watching with their partner, their spouse, while earlier it was more of an individual experience. 75% are actually viewing more than they were the previous year.  We've continued to see the growth in terms of the access, and especially where we get involved which is around the advertising part of that. There we are asking them how they're looking to activate, in terms of how they can look at access. “

The study found that free or ad-supported content is preferred to paying for an ad-free experience. 80% of streamers prefer to watch ad-supported content versus subscribing to an ad-free platform for a monthly fee, with Buxton noting that consumers don’t mind watching ads, as long as they’re getting to consume free content.

“We asked them how many ads in an hour they were willing to watch, in exchange for free content, and gave them an option of picking between 1-20+ minutes. The average came out to eight to nine minutes, which means that consumers understand that there is an exchange of value with ads, which is quite a change.”

“There are close to 40 OTT platforms in India, and so there's a lot of choice. People spend a lot of money on the content, and in acquiring consumers. 70-77% people said that if they have a bad ad experience, they’ll just use another platform. So if the ad experience is not good, they could lose that user. So that bad ad experience was put down to too many ads, coming at the wrong times, too much repetition of the same ads, or just bad ad experience,” elaborates Buxton, adding that while there is a growing acceptance of ads, there's also a tolerance threshold.