Executive Summary

In India, the young and the affluent are rapidly adopting smartphones and enthusiastically increasing their internet and digital video time, but time spent with traditional TV is still growing.

How much time are adults in India spending with traditional and digital media?

Adults in India will spend an average 3 hours, 45 minutes per day with traditional media in 2020, or 69.5% of their daily media time. Digital platforms will account for the remaining 30.5%, or 1 hour, 39 minutes. (For simplicity, our style for presenting such a number in the text that follows will be 1:39.)

How has the pandemic affected our India time spent forecasts?

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, we have increased our 2020 forecast for TV time spent growth by 4.5 percentage points to 7.5% growth. We also increased our estimate for time spent with smartphones in 2020 to 7.2%.

Which media will see the biggest gains?

Digital and traditional media (mainly TV) will grow through 2022, but digital will grow at a faster rate. TV will still be the dominant media platform this year and remain so for the foreseeable future. Next year, the average adult in India will watch 3:10 of TV per day, compared with just 31 minutes of digital video. Among digital video users who watch at least one digital video per month, time spent is skyrocketing. This year, that figure will rise 14% to 2:25 per day.

How much time do consumers in India spend on mobile internet?

Internet users in India will spend 3:18 per day online this year. And 2:44 of that total will come from time spent on mobile devices, 12 minutes more than last year. We estimate that mobile internet time per user will pass the 3-hour mark by 2022.

WHAT’S IN THIS REPORT? This report presents our latest estimates for time spent with media in India, including TV, digital, radio and print.

KEY STAT: In 2020, adults in India will spend a record 5:24 per day with media. Time spent is growing or at least holding steady across every category in India, including all traditional media, unlike in many developed markets.