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TV Continues to Be the King – this time way ahead in the Rural

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Some years back we have written about Television’s continuing supremacy in India and it retaining the lion’s share in advertisement in the country in the near future. After the latest reports from BARC and TAM, our predictions stands vindicated. But this is not the reason we are authoring this piece! We have analysed that the TV viewership mix has changed fundamentally and these are certain important dynamics that the advertisers must be aware of.

This time, the focus has shifted to the rural. Almost 10 Crores (9.9 crore precisely) households in the rural are having a TV, against 8.4 Crores households in the urban areas. But the rural TV penetration is still at 52%. This is posed for significant increase in the near future. The rural viewership is also a tad higher at 34.3 Crores than urban viewership of 33.1 Crores.

While Digital India continues to grow, however the Digital India is pretty much limited to urban India only. India has one of the slowest internet speed, which is prohibiting a higher adoption of digital in India. It is estimated that against a 25 Crores urban population adopted digital, the rural digital population is about half of that, at 13 Cores.

So in both urban and rural, the reach of TV is higher; and significantly higher in rural. Marketers and advertisers will definitely have to keep in mind these ground realities while design a product or campaign.

The gender divide in terms of TV and Digital adoption is also quite wide in the Rural markets. While the rural women viewership is at 17 Crores (nearly 50%), the rural women digital adoption is insignificant. If we safely assume that the purchase of FMCG and other consumer products in rural markets are determined by women; the advertiser has to have TV as the prime media in their plans. And the mix will not going to change immediately.

We bet print as the next best media; as with increasing literacy and affordability, the print penetration is also increasing fast. We plan to write a separate note on the same.

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