Titans of Bollywood News: India’s masala market
Kapil Purandare
Media Specialist, Survey ProgrammingComscore
Indian media and entertainment publishers are highly sought after on social media and engagement has soared over the last year with growth of 50% when comparing November 2023’s with November 2022’s data1. Social media has transformed the way celebrity news is followed. We look at the biggest social media brands covering Bollywood news across different platforms.
In the last year, RVCJ Media group has the top spot and generated a remarkable 3.5 billion total actions* on social media. Following them, InstantBollywood has impressed with 1.3 billion total actions*.
This brings up some interesting questions: Are all social media platforms contributing to these numbers equally for each brand? Do we have different Bollywood news media leaders for different social media platforms? Let’s look at the media brand rankings across different platforms - Facebook, Instagram, and X.
Behindwoods, the #4 ranked in total engagement, is the biggest Bollywood news brand on Facebook. This account drives 53.1% of total engagement compared to others on the list.
Instagram is the biggest contributor to the total actions* amassed by these brands. This is where RVCJ Media shows their dominance by driving 60.3% of total engagement compared to others. InstantBollywood comes at a distant second with 22.7% of total engagement.
X
Social media X (previously Twitter) seems to be a less preferred platform for Bollywood content, largely it might be because of the micro blogging nature of the platform. On X, RVCJ Media is ahead of the rest by a huge margin.
Social engagement trends on Facebook and Instagram
Let’s look at yearly trend lines for these social media accounts.
On Facebook, Behindwoods picked up steam in April 2023, and didn’t look back. RVCJ Media was leading before being surpassed by Behindwoods.
On Instagram, RVCJ remained unchallenged for the most part. But we can observe a slight dip in their engagement between July 2023 and September 2023. InstantBollywood is certainly creeping in and reducing the gap between them. But there is always more nuance to these trends than what meets the eyes.
This year was very big for all the content developers. Accounts which cover entertainment news are no exception. In fact, the heavily contested market for social audience is a good indicator that the Indian market is ripe for major investment in marketing through these well-established channels.
To find out more about how audiences engage with brands or social media data, contact us.