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Election Campaigns: How they boosted OOH sector
Since the 2014 elections is being touted to be one of the toughest elections of all time, parties are more than willing to dig deep into their pockets and spend on advertising…especially outdoor since their vote bank lies within the masses on the street of not just the metros but also the tier II, III, IV markets. Therefore, outdoor has become massively important for them. It’s much more rigorous this time.
Election season has given a boost to outdoor advertising industry by more than 30 per cent. Understand, unlike television and print which also exude national presence, the power of outdoor lies in its local behaviour. It helps put up a larger than life picture wherein literacy is not a heavy requirement. You can easily look at the picture and understand the message. As a result outdoor has become a very significant medium for the parties to reach out to the masses who stay in the hinterlands of this country. They are their vote banks, most of whom who may not even have a television at home to watch an ad or are not literate enough to read the paper. It’s outdoor that helps the candidates and parties to reach out to such regions. Now talk of metros like Mumbai, where time is limited and people do not have the leisure to watch TV and read papers, since people are constantly on the run and outdoor helps capture their attention in a very big way. Outdoor inventories such as hoardings, transit medium, street furniture, mobile vans, railway media all can be placed at strategic locations and just cannot go unnoticed by the target viewer. In a city like Mumbai where consumers are constantly travelling, hoardings play an exponential role in capturing their attention.
The government has estimated a 4.9 per cent rise in economic growth this financial year, against a decade-low of 4.5 per cent last year. Parties have majorly used larger than life hoardings without much innovation in a bid to keep their campaign language simple and direct. National political parties such as Congress, BJP, NCP and the latest entrant in the political game Aam Admai Party (AAP) have also rolled out an outdoor campaign to woo voters pan India. Outdoor has come up as an effective mass communication tool for targeting people on the go as soon as they step out from their home. This has given rise to the demand of outdoor inventories on big scale especially large size hoardings. Taking the professional approach, these parties have engaged highly lit, strategically located, clutter free hoardings along with bus media.
Interestingly, political parties have also raised ad spend on OOH medium to cater to large number of diverse voters. Focused on innovation, diverse range of outdoor inventory and tactical media planning have brought national political parties closer to outdoor medium.
Digital Marketing and OOH: Combination used?
These political campaigns came up with single objective to influence the decision of voters. Therefore, the demand of quality outdoor products coupled with highest reach gained popularity amongst parties.
Parties used combination of digital and outdoor campaigns for various political promotional events such as rallies, public appearance of prime ministerial and Lok Sabha seat candidate in every constituency, awareness campaign of party’s agenda and promises to the voters and many more.
This year we have noticed many new trends such as advertising via mobile vans, LED, huge display screen at traffic junctions, public announcements, heavy advertising on railway and bus stations etc. A lot of BTL activities are also planned around the city like Narendra Modi T-shirts, Arvind Kejriwal’s Cap and Rahul Gandhi’s Mask to list a few.
What after election?
The elections this year is expected to boost the ad revenues across sectors in double digits. And this boost will help sustain even the OOH industry for the rest of the year. It is only an addition to the already existing and growing business of OOH as a whole. So, we do not think that there should be any coping issues. There will be business as usual. Elections are a once in a five year phenomenon. We do not depend on elections alone, therefore…right?! The elections will get over in a few days. And April-May are the best advertising months. Its summers…and holiday season for schools too. So, a lot of advertising happens across the summer FMCG brands, tourism and education too.
(These are purely personal views of Global Advertisers MD Sanjeev Gupta and indiantelevision.com does not subscribe to these views)
MUMBAI: 2025 will be remembered as the year India’s OTT industry stopped chasing scale for its own sake and began reckoning with how audiences actually consume content. Completion rates fell, patience wore thin and the limits of long-form excess became impossible to ignore. In this guest column, Pratap Jain, founder and CEO of ChanaJor, traces how micro-drama moved from the fringes to the centre of viewing behaviour, why short-form fiction emerged as a retention engine rather than a trend, and how platforms that respected time, habit and emotional payoff were the ones that truly grew up in 2025.
If there is one thing 2025 will be remembered for in the Indian OTT industry, it’s this: the industry finally stopped pretending.
Stopped pretending that bigger automatically meant better.
Stopped pretending that viewers had endless time.
Stopped pretending that scale without retention was success.
What began as a quiet reset in 2023 and a cautious correction in 2024 turned into a very visible shift in 2025. Business models matured. Content strategies tightened. And most importantly, platforms started aligning themselves with how Indians actually watch content, not how the industry wished they would.
At the centre of this shift was micro-drama—not as a trend, but as a behavioural inevitability.
When OTT finally understood the time problem
For years, long episodes were treated as a marker of seriousness. A 45–60 minute runtime was almost a badge of credibility. Shorter formats were pushed to the margins, labelled as “snack content” or “mobile-only.”
That belief quietly collapsed in 2025.
What platform data showed very clearly was not a drop in interest—but a drop in patience. Viewers weren’t rejecting stories. They were rejecting commitment.
Across platforms, the same patterns appeared:
* First-episode drop-offs on long-form shows kept increasing
* Completion rates continued to slide
* Viewers were sampling more titles but finishing fewer
At the same time, shows with episodes in the six to 10 minute range started showing the opposite behaviour: higher completion, higher repeat viewing, and stronger daily habit formation.
Micro-drama didn’t win because it was short. It won because it respected time.
Micro-Drama didn’t arrive loudly. It took over quietly.
There was no single moment when micro-drama “launched” in India. It crept in through dashboards and retention charts.
By mid-2025, it was clear that viewers were happy watching four, five, sometimes six short episodes in one sitting—even when they wouldn’t finish a single long episode. Romance, relationship drama, slice-of-life conflict, and grounded comedy worked especially well.
This wasn’t disposable content. It was compressed storytelling.
In shorter formats, there was no room for indulgence. Every episode had to move the story forward. Weak writing was punished faster. Strong writing was rewarded immediately.
Micro-drama raised the bar instead of lowering it.
Where ChanaJor naturally fit into this shift
ChanaJor didn’t pivot to micro-drama in 2025 because the market demanded it. In many ways, the platform was already built around the same viewing behaviour.
From the beginning, ChanaJor focused on short-to-mid-length fictional stories that felt close to everyday Indian life—hostels, rented flats, office romances, small-town relationships, young people figuring things out. Stories that didn’t need heavy context or cinematic scale to connect.
What worked in ChanaJor’s favour in 2025 was clarity:
* A clearly defined audience
* Tight episode lengths
* Storytelling that prioritised emotion and pace over spectacle
While several platforms rushed to copy global micro-drama formats, ChanaJor stayed rooted in familiar Indian settings and conflicts. That familiarity mattered. Viewers didn’t have to “enter” the world of the show—it already felt like theirs.
Why audiences started responding differently
One of the biggest misconceptions going into 2025 was that audiences wanted shorter content because their attention spans had reduced. That wasn’t entirely true.
What viewers actually wanted was meaningful payoff per minute.
On platforms like ChanaJor, episodes didn’t waste time setting the mood for ten minutes. Conflicts arrived early. Characters were recognisable within moments. Emotional hooks landed fast.
A typical consumption pattern looked like real life:
* One episode during a break
* Two more before sleeping
* A few the next day
This is how viewing habits are built—not through marketing spends, but through comfort and consistency.
Viewers came back not because every show was a blockbuster, but because they knew what kind of experience to expect.
2025 was also the year OTT faced business reality
The other big change in 2025 was on the business side. Subscriber growth slowed. Discounts stopped hiding churn. Customer acquisition costs rose.
Platforms were forced to ask harder questions:
* Are viewers finishing what they start?
* Are they returning without reminders?
* Is this content worth what we’re spending on it?
This is where micro-drama began outperforming expectations. A well-written short series could deliver sustained engagement without massive budgets. It didn’t peak for one weekend and disappear—it stayed alive through repeat viewing.
Platforms like ChanaJor benefited because they weren’t chasing inflated launch numbers. The focus was on consistency and retention, not noise.
Failures Became Visible Faster
2025 also exposed weaknesses brutally.
Several platforms assumed micro-drama was a shortcut—short episodes, quick shoots, instant traction. What they discovered was that bad writing fails faster in short formats than in long ones.
Viewers dropped off within minutes. Episodes were abandoned mid-way. Weak stories had nowhere to hide.
Micro-drama didn’t forgive laziness. It amplified it.
The platforms that survived were the ones that treated short storytelling with the same seriousness as long-form—sometimes more.
OTT Stopped Chasing Prestige and Started Chasing Habit
Perhaps the most important shift in 2025 wasn’t technical or creative—it was psychological.
OTT stopped trying to look like cinema. It stopped chasing validation through scale and awards alone. It began behaving like what it actually is in people’s lives: a daily companion.
Platforms like ChanaJor found their space here because that mindset was already baked in. The goal wasn’t to dominate a weekend launch. It was to quietly become part of someone’s everyday viewing routine.
That shift changed everything—from release strategies to how success was measured.
What 2025 Ultimately Taught the Industry
By the end of the year, three truths were impossible to ignore:
* Time is the most valuable thing a viewer gives you
* Retention matters more than reach
* Format must follow behaviour, not ego
Micro-drama didn’t take over because it was fashionable. It took over because it fit real life.
Looking Ahead
Micro-drama is not replacing long-form storytelling. It is redefining the baseline of engagement.
Longer shows will survive—but only when they earn their length. Short-form fiction will continue to evolve, becoming sharper, more emotionally confident, and better written.
Platforms like ChanaJor have shown that it’s possible to grow without shouting—by understanding the audience, respecting their time, and telling stories that feel real.
2025 wasn’t the year OTT became smaller. It was the year it became smarter.
Note: The views expressed in this article are solely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect our own.
