Small Helpings, Please

Snackable content is the new wave in content consumption.

- Rohan Choudhary

Content consumption has significantly evolved in the past decade with the rapid diffusion of the internet and the smartphone. Be it news, entertainment, gaming, or sports, consumers are now increasingly demanding content at the snap of a finger and with the ease of a click.

However, in the era of limited attention spans and umpteen priorities, engaging the audience is becoming increasingly difficult. Studies have found that the average consumer decides whether to engage in content or not, after only eight seconds—which is comparable to the attention span of a goldfish1 People are spending a very short amount of time deciding whether or not a piece of content is right for them. This does not mean that people are spending less time on content overall, it means that they are spending less time per piece of content.

In India, the average time spent per day with smartphones has gone up by 17 per cent in 2019, compared to last year, while that of digital video has increased by 32.5 per cent. However, the average length of video viewed in India is less than 20 minutes, and 62 per cent of content consumed on YouTube is short form.2 Consumer preferences are increasingly moving towards short-form content. India’s millennial population, especially, presently at a staggering 400 million, need content to be available in small helpings to fill their micro-moments throughout the day.

(Snackable) content is king

With the vast sea of content at our fingertips, it is easy to feel lost as we bounce from TV show to mobile app to social media, and back. As a result, we spend far less undivided time on one individual thing. Because there is so much new content coming out all the time, losing interest is easy and we tend to look at many more things but we engage with each thing for a shorter period of time.