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“Marketing in the Future, Lesson 1.0”: Anita Nayyar
2015 is bright and action time for delivery over the 2014 euphoria of India on the world stage, sentiments of economic revival and investments worth $43 billion in a year where ad spend was buoyed by the General and Maharashtra elections.
Comparatively the ICC World Cup, Delhi elections and IPL are expected to be major ad spend contributors this year. Modest growth is expected of the global economy with Asia Pacific and India leading the pack. India being a major exporter of oil, the drop in prices as also low inflation will have positive effect on the Indian economy and consumption. And herein lies India’s vantage point – its momentum will be paced more internally, by domestic consumption and domestic investment. Primary Target – the Indian consumer, the driver to put India on the map.
To talk to this Indian consumer and gain a larger share of his wallet, many marketers across the industry will attempt to make a paradigm shift in how they communicate, not only in newsprint story but to market to real customers in real life. It is nothing short of a fundamental rethinking of silos-marketing to marketing. This gains increasing importance as customer touch points increase exponentially in our world of wearable tech, smart homes, smart devices and fresh inventions everyday also yielding unprecedented data of user behaviour.
Agencies and brands will have to put their algorithms to actionable use today omni channel else they risk losing control or in the least abandon rich insights to the path to their customer as marketing progresses.
In Lesson 1.0, some marketers will learn with success, failure or aborted attempt, to blur the lines between all communication channels – TV, Print, OOH, Social, Mobile and Online; across platforms, each channel leading to the next to drive conversations; to create the conversion funnel based on brand message, objective and audience; to adapt, alter and be measurable. They are the marketers who will be future ready also making the best use of available technology and techniques today.
THINKING is at the core, of course aided by technology, technique, data, etc.
Marketing Moves we will see more of in 2015:
1. The Traditional Partnership
Traditional is not dying anytime soon in India and is still the foundation of M&E ad spend in India. All the channels have upped their programming with new channels in the offing; Radio and OOH are to play an active role in 2015 and Print will continue to be important. It augers well for marketers to view traditional as an asset on the balance sheet. E-commerce mapped it to an ROI Win-Win situation for everyone in 2014.
2. Programmatic Advertising Implementation
We will see increased implementation of programmatic potential as agencies and brands use it increasingly in campaigns. Yet most will use it more as a buying tool for best rates in 2015 with newsprint on its importance; the exceptions learning to unlock its value. It is pure play right message, right audience, right time, media agnostic drawing from complex algorithms and trend insight of the customer.
3. The Ubiqutous #, Selfies, Crowd sourcing & CSR Campaigns
The ‘Hashtag’ will become ubiquitous, marking every readable media. Campaigns with Selfie stories, CSR and Crowd Sourcing as campaign and content will assume greater prominence.
4. Brand Integration, Experiential Marketing & Activation
Brand integration will become more prevalent yet just touch the tip of the iceberg of what it will become and how innovatively it will be portrayed; case in point Zandu Balm and Fevicol in the Dabangg 1 & 2 songs. As will Experiential Marketing and Activations around it.
5. Grappling with Personalisation & Social Media to the Fore
Marketers will grapple with ‘personalisation’ the other buzzword, which needs very clean databases, algorithmic audience behavioural – preference mapping and apt customised content.
Social Media will be used for engagement and interaction, its customer behaviour data logs of understanding them.
6. Launches on Social, Ecommerce& Mobile
We have seen the launch of Burger King on eBay, Good Day Chunkies on Amazon, Motorola’s MotoX 32GB on Flipkart and Xolo phones on Twitter. More brands across sectors will take the social, E-commerce and Mobile route to launch.
7. Mobile Marketing, Apps, Chat leverage
It’s not only the Smartphone story. The feature phone can scale audience and markets.
8. Videos , In-Video Ads, Web Series, Native Advertising
There will be an explosion of these.
9. Rise of Technology & Logistics Companies
The e-commerce boom will see these as advertisers and investment worthy.
10. Tier 2, 3, 4 cites in Focus
It will not only be about the cities but also in their regional languages.
In the end really in Twitter language – It’s being Meaningful. It’s ‘Thinking how to Market’ or ‘Re-thinking how we Market’.
(These are purely personal views of Havas Media Group, India & South Asia CEO Anita Nayyar and indiantelevision.com does not necessarily 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.
