‘In the kids’ network, we are narrowing the gap between ad & subscription revenue’

BY Sonam Saini

Nina Elavia Jaipuria, Head – Hindi Mass Entertainment and Kids TV Network at Viacom18, talks about the launch of the network's 10th IP, plans for the festive season and much more   After the launch of nine successful IPs, Viacom18’s kids network that owns three kids channels, including Nickelodeon, Sonic and NickJr, has announced its 10th IP ‘The Bhoot Bandhus’ on Sonic. With a reach of 48 million, Nickelodeon as a franchise continues to lead the category now for six years. Speaking about Nickelodeon and its franchise journey, Nina Elavia Jaipuria, Head – Hindi Mass Entertainment and the Kids TV Network at Viacom18 shared, “2019-20 was a fabulous year for us. We continued to be the number one brand in the country for the six year. It's a fabulous journey we have had over the last decade, and in the last six years Nick has been the number one brand in the category.”

She further shared, “In the lockdown period, we were among the few genres which catered audiences with fresh content. The category was preparing for the summer break and therefore we were ready with the lot of content for the kids. We had a fabulous summer despite lockdown.” According to the numbers shared by the network, it's franchise Nickelodeon has the maximum ad revenue share in the category and led with 35% in FY 19-20 followed by Turner on second position with 24% share and Disney at third spot with 23%. Sun TV’s kids entertainment franchise was at 10% and Discovery and Sony was at 4% respectively. Jaipuria says despite all the headwinds in FY19-20 including the economic slowdown, Nickelodeon has had the largest ad revenue share in the category. “The ad sales pie has grown 5-8% in a year which has been great (FY19-20).  Most importantly, at Nickelodeon, our topline grew 12-15%. We were able to leverage and monetise the pole position that we have. With the 12% growth in ad sales with 35% market share, we also delivered growth in subscription revenue owing to NTO and digitisation. The subscription has grown upward of 30% in FY19-20. There is a lot of subscription catch up to do and we still depend heavily on ad sales and that's not going away in a hurry but at least we are narrowing the gap between ad sales and subscription revenue.” Even though the kids genre witnessed a spike in ratings but like others genre, kids category too faced low advertising revenue during that period. She said, “We didn’t see full utilization in the summer months like we would have as most advertisers stopped advertising on Television. But now all the advertisers have started spending and we see AdEx coming back. In fact, September-October period was slightly better than last year.” Jaipuria also said that the kids category was the least discounted during the Covid period when other genres were giving heavy discounts on ad rates. “In the last two-three months we have seen the volumes have come back. We hardly gave any discount to get the volume share and even today we are at zero discount on the franchise. We hope that with one-third market share that we have in the category we will be able to increase our rates. The category is still under indexed. While we serve 7% in terms of viewership, we just have 3% of ad sales. As we enter the festive season and are launching our 10th IP, we are hoping to take our ad rates up as well.” The Nickelodeon franchise has delivered 10 IPs in 10 years. They started with ‘Keymon Ache’ in 2011, Motu Patlu in 2012, ‘Pakdam Pakdai’ in 2013, ‘Shiva’ in 2015, ‘Gattu Battuin’ 2017, Daduji and Rudra in 2018, Golmaal jr in 2019, Ting Tong in 2020 and now are launching another one Bhoot Bandhus. “Our whole strategy of becoming a number one was based on the fact that we wanted to expand our library in depth and that's what we really did and hence launched IP after IP every year. Last year we created 150 hours of new content and we now have 700 hours of local content with us. We are hoping to create more than 100 hours of content and aim to create 800 hours of library sooner or later which includes series, mini movies, and television movies,” shared Jaipuria. On the marketing front, the network has a robust cross channel TV plan across leading channels which includes the network channels itself and others like Sab TV, Zee Marathi and 9xm. The network will also be advertising on KET cable and DTH platforms pan India. “Current marketing plans are looking at digital in a big way, we are looking at cable and DTH as we believe that if you want to do a localised marketing that is particularly segmented then the best way to go through the local MSOs, cable or the DTH operator. We are also partnering with music apps like Gaana along with games. We have changed our marketing plans from malls to something different which we have never explored.”

Tags : latest-stories Nina Elavia Jaipuria Nickelodeon Viacom18 Bhoot Bandhus