Ten-year-old Vedant is happy watching Super K , an animation feature about a superkid created to combat Badmess and Dr Ojox. He is warming up to Suddenly and Accidentally, the two bumbling blokes, when a quick call for snacks interrupts him. He presses pause to freeze the scene on screen, puts his dad's laptop on sleep mode and runs over to mom. Vedant is not in a theatre but at home watching Super K online.
Entertainment in India is sure hitting a new note. And the Internet is emerging as a medium that's being increasingly preferred over others. Super K, a children's animation film in Hindi and English, was recently premiered on Yahoo! Movieplex, a video destination on the Internet. While one would think that's a marginal audience being targeted, it couldn't be farther from the truth. According to digital marketing intelligence firm comScore, each month, 71 per cent of the total Indian Internet audience spends over 9.1 billion minutes consuming online video content, with entertainment as the leading category of consumption.
With its 83 per cent reach over the Indian Internet audience, Yahoo! is the premier digital media company. Yahoo! Movieplex is a premium video destination that allows users to enjoy licensed full-length movies for free through the Internet on demand. Vishal Maheshwari, head of Yahoo!'s mobile and business development, APAC, says, “The explosive growth of video viewing is resulting in the surge in demand for vibrant and innovative content. With the right partners joining hands with Yahoo! it has been possible to offer best-in-class entertainment to our consumers.”
While Super K was released on November 11, it is difficult as yet to gauge the exact response to it. But children, especially pre-teens, form a rapidly growing market and Yahoo! and Shemaroo seem to have hit it right. According to the latest I-Cube report released by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB, pre-teens constitute almost half a million of the Internet audience in India.
With animation still in its nascent stage, for Shemaroo, the content providers, this medium was apt. “Big movies release every Friday and it becomes difficult for animation films to get the right slots in theatres; this is especially so for parents with school-going kids. Obviously box office collections fail. Since most parents and children are present on the Internet and today's children being extremely tech-savvy, releasing the film online allows us to reach millions of film lovers any time, any place, across many devices and multiple times.”
“With more and more people migrating towards the digital medium for consuming entertainment content in the form of videos and movies, the trend (of online entertainment) will definitely see tremendous growth in the days ahead. Further, the advertiser growth in the video space continues to increase and engagement metrics around video consumers are significantly higher than those in standard rich media buys,” informs Vishal of Yahoo. Online video ad spending is projected to quadruple in 2011 to $1.9 billion, says online analytics company eMarketer. Yahoo! Movieplex is currently ad-supported.
A new step has several hurdles to be handled and this is no different. Streaming a long-format movie has its regular challenges such as bandwidth and the local machine's processing speeds. Yahoo! is trying to cope with its cloud technology. Says Vishal, “We even handle live streaming of videos with ease as we did the recent Clinton concert in the U.S. Also, the Royal Wedding, one of the most trafficked events ever, was streamed with ease.”
HARSHIKAA UDASI
