Over the top (OTT) platforms are reigning supreme with urban India’s millennials and Gen Z audiences, according to a report by The Data Sciences Division of Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN) India.

The survey found that streaming was the popular form of entertainment among Gen Z and millennials during the lockdown, with 70% of the respondents admitting to watching Video-on-Demand (VoD) and only 8% taking to gaming.

The report also highlighted that nearly 49% of India’s youth spend 2-3 hours a day binge-watching content while four hours is the average time spent in consuming OTT video content in a day by millennials and Gen Z. On average, the report reveals, people subscribed to three new streaming platforms during lockdown.


While the number of new OTT subscriptions purchased during the lockdown period spiked throughout the country across demographics, the DAN research found that millennials and GenZ’s purchased two and three additional OTT platform subscriptions respectively since the start of the lockdown.

In addition, 65% of millennials and Gen Z Prefer consuming video content on an OTT platform over TV.

GenZ’ s tended to have a larger number of OTT subscriptions in general and therefore were more likely to have Amazon and Netflix subscriptions. This was not the case for regional platforms as millennials were marginally more likely to have Hotstar, Voot and Jio TV subscriptions when compared to their GenZ counterparts. Furthermore, when it came to less popular regional platforms like Zee5, Sony Liv and altBalaji GenZ were once again more likely to be subscribed to them.


“While a large chunk of India is a single TV household, affordable data and advancements in mobile technology have been a huge boost to the country’s growing online content and gaming consumer base. This, coupled with the effects of the lockdown has led to the dramatic growth of online video content consumers and gamers with a high increment of audiences coming from a very young segment of the population," Gautam Mehra, CEO, DAN Programmatic and chief data officer, DAN - South Asia said in a statement.

The study was conducted among 570 respondents in urban India, including the top eight metros with 78.5% of the sample classified as Gen Z and 21.5% as millennials. More than half, i.e. 52.2% of the respondents were females and 36% were employed.

Sourced from ETBrandEquity, Live Mint, Financial Express, DAN India