India Time Spent with Media 2019

Executive Summary

In India, time spent with digital and traditional channels will continue to increase in tandem—proving that mediums like TV and print are still healthy contenders.

How much time will adults (ages 18+) in India spend on traditional media vs. digital?

Adult consumers in India will spend an average 3 hours, 30 minutes per day with traditional media in 2019, or 70.1% of their daily media time. Digital platforms will account for the remaining 29.9%, or 1 hour and 29 minutes. Both digital and traditional will grow through 2021, but digital will grow at a faster rate.

What are the key drivers of internet time spent?

A large part of the growth for time spent with digital comes from content consumption that takes place over the mobile internet—fueled by affordable data, cheaper smartphones and a growing number of smartphone users.

How much time will adults in India spend on traditional TV vs. digital?

TV takes the largest share of total time spent at 58.7%, or 2 hours, 55 minutes. Digital is the second most popular medium and, as previously noted, will claim 1 hour, 29 minutes daily, on average—a little under one-third of media time each day

How much time will adults in India spend on mobile?

In 2019, adults will spend 1 hour, 12 minutes online, and the majority of that time (76.5%) will be via mobile devices.

How closely is ad spending aligned with where consumers in India spend their media time?

We forecast that digital and traditional will, respectively, account for 29.9% and 70.1% of adult time spent with media in 2019. As for media ad spending, digital will account for 20.8% of the total, and traditional will account for 79.2%.

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

KEY STAT: In 2019, adults in India will spend 29.9% of their 4 hours, 59 minutes of total daily media time on digital. TV will make up 58.7% of total media time.

Behind the Numbers

Our methodology for our India time spent with media forecast is based on an analysis of 397 metrics from 38 sources. This analysis involves the collection of third-party data—primarily survey data—from adult respondents, asking them about their media use habits. Data is also sourced from online and mobile activity tracking services, government data and interviews with industry experts.

Using a bottom-up analysis, we assess and analyze reported time spent with each device and media activity across various sources. And where definitions differ, the data is normalized and interpreted in terms of our definition (i.e., the population in India ages 18 and older). The data is then aggregated with the time contributions from each device and media type to arrive at an estimate for average time spent with media per day.

In order to arrive at forecasts for growth rates by media and by device, this analysis is followed by extensive assessments of historical and expected future growth patterns with regard to device adoption, multiple and overlapping device usage, population and demographic factors, and competitors to existing devices and activities.