By 2020, 30% of total digital advertising spend will be on local languages: study

Increase in local language content on the Internet will lead to a growth of 39% in the current Internet user base, says the study by IAMAI and IMRB Intl

With the increasing availability of digital content in local language, the share of digital advertisement spending on local languages is expected to reach to close to 30 per cent of the overall spending by 2020, said a study.

The overall digital advertising spending in India is expected to reach Rs 3,575 crore by the end of December 2015. The proportion of digital ads spends in the local language will be five per cent of the entire market i.e. Rs 179 crore, said the report "Internet in Local Language 2014" by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB International.

The report also said that to widen consumer base, companies across sectors are adopting tothe trend of advertising in local languages. The digital commerce companies are going multilingual with descriptions of goods and their prices in local languages.

Increase in local language content on the Internet will lead to a growth of 39 per cent in the current Internet user base, according to the report. Rural India will be the primary driver of this growth (75 per cent) while in urban India, the growth will be 16 per cent.

On television, irrespective to the channel's broadcasting language, on an average four out of five ads are in local languages. Even the online channels like YouTube and online broadcasting sites are producing and disseminating the ads in local languages.

With around 125 million English speaking people in India, close to 88 percent of Indians converse only in local language. Hence the local language is a big opportunity in Indian context. Hindi is the most widely spoken language with 50 per cent population using it, said the report.

According to the report, local language user base reached 127 million in June 2015 growing by 47 per cent y-o-y at a penetration level of 47 percent among Internet users in India. Local language user's witnessed a high penetration of 57 per cent in rural India with the overall base of 46 million. Whereas urban India base crossed 80 million by growing at a faster rate of 51 per cent.

Although there has been substantial growth in the adoption of Internet in the past few years with a penetration of close to 40 per cent in urban India and 10 per cent in rural India, there still remains huge potential to connect the population through this medium. The Internet usage in rural is catalysed by the reach of mobile phones and the mobile Internet users in Rural India have grown by 60 per cent annually to cross 45 million by the end of 2014.