Soon after the Government of India announced the banning of 59 Chinese apps in the country including top social media platforms such as TikTok, WeChat and Helo, the average time per day on Instagram more than doubled (2.3X), while Facebook too saw a significant 35% jump in time-spent on the platform, a study conducted by data, insights and consulting company Kantar revealed. The company’s Web Audience Measurement (WAM) panel, released insights on the impact of the ban on consumers’ digital behaviour. The ban came into effect on June 29, 2020.
According to the report, the bulk of this additional engagement is being driven by smaller town consumers. Meanwhile, among the youth audience aged below 24 years, the average time per day on Instagram grew by 35%. Sharechat, the country’s own video sharing platform which focuses content around regional languages too witnessed a 2.5X increase in time spent primarily being driven by the younger faction of internet audience. Although consumers lost access to some of their favourite short-form video sharing apps, the bulk of consumers switched over to alternate platforms in an almost seamless manner, Akhil Almeida, vice president (Insights), Kantar, said. “We saw that overall time-spent online was not as strongly impacted as one might have expected, given the size and scale of the affected platforms,” he added further.
Interestingly, the report also noted that there was no significant impact on engagement as the average time-spent dropped only marginally (-6%), indicating that consumers were switching over to rival platforms much faster than anticipated. Infact, platforms such as YouTube saw a further 25% increase in time spent. The report also observed that other players such as OTT also enjoyed their fair share of rise in engagement levels. Video OTT player Hotstar, for instance, saw their daily time spent grow by over 25%. Time spent in the video OTT space grew by 40% overall once the ban was imposed.
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