All India Bakchod registers staggering 100 Mn impressions in record 4 days

Penetration of low-cost 3G/4G smartphones and so-called ‘Jio revolution’ have triggered a spike in video consumption for the past two years. While Hotstar, Netflix, Amazon Prime, ALT Balaji and a few others are eyeing subscription-based OTT service, All India Bakchod (AIB) has been targeting millennials through a slew of parody, memes and original series.

With about 3 million subscribers on YouTube, All India Bakchod has claimed to clock nearly 100 million impressions in four days (during February 9 to 12).

Revealing the staggering stats for its Valentine’s week campaign ‘#PyaarEkDhokhaHai’, Tanmay Bhat announced on Twitter that it garnered the massive impressions primarily across four channels -- YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat.

AIB distribution network clocked nearly 100 million impressions in the last 4 days. Insanity.

— Tanmay Bhat (@thetanmay) February 13, 2018

In another tweet, he emphasized that Instagram is the largest impression puller for the week advancing Valentines’ Day. The Mumbai-based company has released 9 short video parodies (less than a minute) and memes under the campaign.

YT, Insta, Snapchat, Twitter. But honestly a bulk of this number is off our Instagram. We haven't done much on the other platforms this past week.

— Tanmay Bhat (@thetanmay) February 13, 2018

Notably, Instagram only allows less than 60 seconds video post. The campaign has garnered 5,770 public posts on Instagram. AIB has about 1.5 million followers on Instagram.

A quick snapshot of OTT space in India

Some rough industry estimates outline that 50 million users in India and about half of its user base fall in age bracket (18 to 24 years). Besides YouTube, Instagram has been emerging as a choice for many brands targeting the young audience.

Meanwhile, Indian online video industry is expected to touch $1.6 billion in revenue by 2022, from the estimated $340 million in 2017, as per media research and consulting firm Media Partners Asia (MPA).

Over the past two years, OTT space in India has been crowded as many players jumped on video streaming bandwagon. Besides Amazon, Netflix and Hotstar, Alibaba and Facebook are also slated to enter video streaming market soon.

With OTT offerings Alibaba eyes at entertainment-centric short video space (less than 20 minutes). Short Videos are fast becoming the most popular form of content consumption in China. Alibaba sees huge potential for this format in India too.

Facebook has also announced to launch its original video offering ‘watch’ by March this year.