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Digital video advertising faces a recall crisis: R K Swamy study
MUMBAI: India’s advertisers are pouring between Rs 12,000 crore and Rs 22,000 crore into digital video platforms. They’re getting precious little bang for their buck.
A sweeping study by R K Swamy Centre for Study of Indian Markets has exposed a dismal truth: viewers can barely remember the brands they’ve just seen advertised. Across 3,000 respondents in 10 cities—Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kochi, Pune, Patna and Ludhiana—the average person recalled just 1.5 brands. That’s despite watching 2.17 hours of video daily on their mobiles.
The findings are brutal. Whilst over 600 brands were recalled in total, only 11 managed to lodge themselves in the minds of more than 3 per cent of respondents. The lucky few? Quick-commerce darlings Zepto, Zomato, Meesho, Blinkit and Swiggy, alongside e-commerce giants Flipkart and Amazon, plus Nescafe, Country Delight, Rummy Circle and Dream 11.
“Many respondents had difficulty in remembering and accurately identifying brands,” said R K Swamy executive vice-president and chief digital officer S Narasimhan. “Very few were able to recall specific details of the creative content itself. In the light of major expenditure in digital video platforms, this was a disappointment.”
The study, conducted by Hansa Research between August and September 2025, interviewed respondents aged 18 to 50, split evenly by gender and across income groups. Researchers physically checked mobile devices to verify app usage and screen time—no self-reporting fudge allowed.
YouTube dominated viewership at 64 per cent, trailed by Facebook at 19 per cent and Instagram at 17 per cent. Yet recall remained stubbornly low across all platforms. Regional languages ruled: 93 per cent of respondents watched videos daily, with most preferring content in their native tongues over English.
The ad experience itself is punishing. Three out of five respondents skip ads whenever possible. Half mute them. Nearly three in five consider the ads served to them irrelevant. Seven in ten detest seeing the same ad repeatedly.
“While YouTube was highly viewed, the recall of brands on the medium was poor,” said Hansa Research Group chief executive Praveen Nijhara. “So was the case with Facebook and Instagram. A significant majority of the respondents report skipping ads and muting them.”
One bright spot: WhatsApp. Three out of four videos received on the platform get viewed and forwarded, confirming the power of peer-to-peer sharing over paid placement.
The study suggests several culprits for the recall catastrophe. The digital video landscape is vast and fragmented, lacking television’s appointment viewing. Ads are easily skipped. Frequency of exposure to individual messages remains unmeasured. And the scattered nature of consumption means no mass audience ever accumulates.
For advertisers accustomed to metrics like impressions, views, click-through rates and cost-per-thousand views—all supply-side and self-certified—the findings pose uncomfortable questions about what they’re actually buying. R K Swamy plans to continue the study monthly. The white paper is available on the company’s website.
The message for brands burning through crores on digital video? Your ads are vanishing into the ether. And nobody’s noticing.
eNews
PNB partners Kiwi to launch credit-enabled UPI for users
Targets 180 million customers; RuPay card offers 0.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent cashback
MUMBAI: Swipe, tap, or scan credit is quietly slipping into the rhythm of everyday payments, and Punjab National Bank wants in on the action. The state-run lender has partnered with Kiwi to roll out credit-enabled UPI payments for its 180 million customers, marking a significant push to blend traditional banking with India’s fast-evolving digital payments ecosystem.
At the centre of the collaboration is the launch of the PNB Kiwi Credit Card on the RuPay network. The card is designed with a digital-first approach, offering fully online onboarding and seamless integration with UPI, allowing users to transact via scan-and-pay while accessing credit.
The offering also brings in a rewards layer, with cashback ranging from 0.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent on online transactions, positioning the product as both a convenience play and a spending incentive.
The move comes as UPI continues to dominate India’s digital payments landscape, increasingly blurring the lines between debit-led transactions and credit access. For PNB, which operates over 10,000 branches around 60 per cent in semi-urban and rural areas, the partnership signals a targeted effort to extend formal credit to segments that have traditionally remained underserved.
The collaboration also reflects a broader industry shift, where banks and fintech platforms are converging to embed credit directly into payment flows, reducing friction while expanding access.
With RuPay credit cards gaining traction and UPI evolving beyond peer-to-peer transfers, the PNB–Kiwi tie-up positions both players at the intersection of scale, accessibility, and the next phase of digital finance in India.
