It’s Covid, Covid, everywhere, on social media

Covid-19 is changing behaviour on social media for both consumers and brands. As the world’s biggest democracy settles down in the fifth week of the lockdown, social media platforms are clocking a rise in consumer interest.

Content around Covid-19 is flooding social media platforms, with more than 3 billion views on videos uploaded on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram since March. YouTube, being a video-centric platform, outperformed Facebook and Instagram in terms of average views on videos around the topic, with a report noting that Instagram took the lead in gaining high engagement.

India has 380 million active social media users. Facebook and YouTube are the most popular social media platforms. A report by media agency network Mindshare India and Vidooly, an online analytics platform, showed social media consumption surging, with consumers spending an average of four hours on social media, compared to 1.5 hours in previous months.

Popular brands, celebrities

Tracking the most-viewed genres on YouTube before and after the lockdown, the report shows news and politics, food and recipe and gaming gaining a high share of eyeballs in the lockdown.

While news and politics secured the top spot among all the genres, the surge was mostly related to national news on the pandemic, which was played out on TV news channels 24x7. The report showed news broadcasters AajTak and ABP news turning out to be the favourites with audiences during both pre and post lockdown. Post lockdown, IndiaTV climbed up two ranks to reach the third spot with 90 per cent growth in views.

While creators are channelising content around news and updates related to Covid-19, brands have been using it as an opportunity to promote their products even as they spell out preventive measures.

The report registered several brands publishing videos vigorously on Facebook and Instagram, with health, fitness and personal care brands primarily developing content around the coronavirus.

Content-analysing the 4.8 million views on YouTube, the report showed Apollo Hospitals, Patanjali Ayurved, Tata Motors, 1mg (digital consumer healthcare platform) and Motilal Oswal (investment brokerage) were popular brands, while Madhuri Dixit and Kajol were popular celebrities seen in the advertisements of personal hygiene brands like Dettol and Lifebuoy.

The campaign, ‘Preventing the Spread Of Viruses #ApniSurakshaApneHaath’ by Dettol India featuring Madhuri Dixit garnered 9.7K views, while ‘A public service message from Lifebuoy’ featuring Kajol had 2.9K views.

The brands on YouTube had a 51.8K engagement rate and 55 uploads.

Facebook views

Personal care brand Godrej, with 2.2 million views, was the most active brand on Facebook, apart from other healthcare brands like Fortis and Max with 0.3 million views and BFSI brands like BajajAlliance with 1.1 million views.

Some of the popular videos on Facebook were Godrej's ‘Coronavirus has been causing much panic. But there’s something you can #SpreadToProtect more people from falling ill’ campaign, as was Bajaj Alliance's ‘In these troubling times, can you be the #TrueFriend that our society really needs?’ campaign.

Tupperware India brought in 0.5 million views on Facebook, while World Bank India had 0.2 million views. The IPL franchise have also been active in spreading awareness on Facebook, showed the report.

Celebrities Shahrukh Khan and Preity Zinta, along with cricketers from IPL franchise Kolkata Knight Riders and Kings X1 Punjab, were active on Facebook, promoting awareness. Trending topics were #SRK's message to everyone out there: ‘Don’t panic, stay safe, keep away from misinformation’, as was Preity Zinta’s word of advice: ‘Don't spread the virus, spread love!’.

The report showed YouTube performed better in terms of viewership on its videos. The average views on YouTube videos by brands were 65 per cent more than that obtained on Facebook, while the report showed Instagram’s average views were not even close, though it did compensate by obtaining a high share of engagement.

YouTube high

M A Parthasarathy, CEO, Mindshare South Asia, says it is important to keep a finger on the pulse of the consumer, more so in these unprecedented times. “Mindshare’s partnership with Vidooly enables us to leverage data and digital analytics to truly understand the shifts in consumer behaviour when it comes to content consumption on online media platforms. Insights from this study will help us in crafting relevant, timely and effective content solutions.”

Subrat Kar, CEO and Co-founder of Vidooly, pointed out that retention rate and watch time of videos would be the key metrics to filter and identify the best performing channels. “The world stage has been set to witness the new normal,” he added.

In order to garner better engagement, brands are going in for thorough marketing through Facebook and Instagram. The government’s efforts to spread awareness have also gained mileage over YouTube.

As a primary video sharing platform, YouTube alone garnered over 300 billion views in Q12020 which is 13 per cent more than Q42019 and 11 per cent more than Q1 2019, according to the report. Millennials remain the most active group on YouTube in India with 70 per cent of viewership coming from the 18-34 age group.

Entertainment, music and news were the top three genres based on content consumption contributing to over 70 per cent of views in Q1 ‘20. Over 90 per cent of the views on YouTube were through mobile devices.