With 13% growth in 2018, vernacular content startups draw in brands for advertising

India's language internet users are growing at a rapid pace in comparison to English-speaking Internet users.

The regional language users have registered 13 per cent growth in the country whereas English users showed only 1 per cent growth in a year, said a report by Redseer Consulting.

Adoption of Internet among vernacular population has also given an impetus to content players such as ShareChat, Newsdog, Dailyhunt and UC News among others, who are gaining double-digit growth and attracting brand advertisers, it added.

Dailyhunt, as per the report, has witnessed close to 80 per cent growth in user base in the third quarter of this year. Whereas other vernacular platforms Sharechat, Newsdog and UC news grew at 30 per cent in the quarter.

In India, digital ad spending is in evolution stage. It currently accounts for 24 per cent of total ad spending by brands, which is $12 billion. Digital ad spending is growing at 2.5 times the overall growth, said the report.

At present, Facebook and Google between them claim 68 per cent of India’s digital ad market last year, according to advertising buyer Magna.

In India, digital advertising spending is expected to grow 30 per cent this year.

For regional content platforms, it is imperative to have high-quality content and paying users to convert them into a source of revenue. The only hurdle they face now is user-generated content on these platforms.

User-generated content will find hard to scale without proper checks on quality, said Ujjawal Chaudhary, associate director of Redseer consulting.

The further added that Facebook, YouTube, Dailyhunt and Instagram have better content from more trusted sources and have been able to rope in paying users.

In comparison, NewsDog and UC News have low-quality content.

Of late, a lot of language content platforms have come up as the next half a billion Internet users are expected to come from non-English speaking regions.