Short-form content grows 1.37x in terms of monthly active users since June 2020: Report

Shortform content has grown 1.37x in terms of the monthly active user (MAU) and 1.1x in terms of daily active users from June 2020, when Chinese app TikTok was banned in India, a report by RedSeer Consulting said.

"Despite the TikTok ban, domestic apps have significantly grown in the past one year and short-form video continues its growth journey, as it shows a continuous increase in the engagement outside top-50 cities and currently accounts for 9 per cent of time spent on overall content consumption," the report said.

Also read: Over 20 million viewers in India streaming YouTube on TV, consumption of Indic language content rises

Although global social media dominates in the top 50 cities, Indian social media platforms and shortform video platforms garner a major chunk of share in the return on investment, it added.

The overall time spent growth in social media has been organic at about 8 per cent, and non-social media (shortform video) time has grown at 57 per cent, indicating a shift from social media consumption to shortform video, the report said.

While traffic has increased, content creation velocity has grown 4.4x in the last 2 quarters due to improvement in filter tools leading to users becoming creators at a higher pace; access to a studio and high-quality content creation facilities for large influencers; and growing “mainstream-ing” of the space for advertisers leading to higher monetisation for creators, it added.

“While shortform 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 3X in last 6 months and as the user base continues to rise, ad revenue will continue to grow," RedSeer associate partner Ujjwal Chaudhry said.

Live stream gifting and live e-commerce are also showing early signs of growth and will form an important monetisation opportunity for shortform players, he added.

A number of homegrown apps, including Roposo, Chingari, Josh (Dailyhunt) and Moj (ShareChat), have seen a massive upsurge in user base and engagement after the ban of TikTok in India. Instagram launched Reels, while YouTube introduced 'Shorts' as they jumped on to the shortform video bandwagon.

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