Aaj Tak crosses 50 million subscribers on YouTube

“Trust has always been the foundation for audience engagement at AajTak. It’s no different with our YouTube channel, but on a much wider scale with hundreds of videos getting uploaded every day. We place equal emphasis on having new audiences discover our channel while ensuring loyal viewers revisit, and invest in figuring out what works on YouTube – whether this is a nuanced understanding of thumbnails or producing hero content frequently,” Purie said.

Aaj Tak started its digital journey by launching its YouTube channel in the year 2009, and started streaming news live on YouTube for the first time in 2017. Popularity gained by the channel subsequently led to its Diamond play button from YouTube in 2019 for crossing 10 million subscribers.

“Constant experimentation with new formats like Shorts and investment into our community page has really paid off, and consistently breaking stories has helped create a very loyal fanbase,” Purie said naming events like the Presidential Elections of 2022, Solar Eclipse and the Cricket World Cup as drivers.

To capture younger audiences who are increasingly spending more time online, television news channels are expanding their reach through digital channels as well programming on YouTube and Facebook.

While most channels run websites with stories in text, video clips on news and cover softer lifestyle subjects such as film, food and fashion floating on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, some others are going beyond it. According to the Ficci-EY media and entertainment report of March 2021, the online news audience grew to 450 million in 2020. India has the second largest digital population in the world at 468 million and time spent online increased 32% in 2020.