KOLKATA: The Covid2019 pandemic induced lockdown has made people take refuge in the virtual world more. Total time spent on the internet jumped immediately in April by 11 per cent reaching to1466 billion minutes. While all segments of the online ecosystem have witnessed a spike in consumption, entertainment was definitely not behind given the fewer options of social life. 

According to a report from Comscore, 97 per cent of internet audience consumed entertainment content in April. Entertainment sites witnessed surge in engagement as total viewing minutes touched 329 billion minutes in April, up by 15 per cent compared to March.

The market leader YouTube had the most unique visitors followed by MX Player and Hotstar. Among the video-on-demand platforms, Hotstar had the highest viewing minutes, 121 billion minutes. MX Player achieved 118 billion minutes. International OTT players Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Prime Video.com witnessed a high surge of 26 per cent, 21 per cent and 38 per cent respectively.

Among other segments, news has seen a huge jump, going 15 per cent up from March. While Times Internet attracted the highest unique visitors among multi-platform new entities, Dailyhunt attracted the same among news apps. Moreover, India leads worldwide news on mobile.

As online learning has seen adoption during the lockdown, the education segment saw 33 per cent growth in April. Younger audience, especially 15-24 age group has driven the growth. Udemy has acquired the place of top education app. While health has also seen a good spike, the official Covid2019 tracker Arogya Setu has seen significant adoption among health-conscious audiences.