Indian media’s Cola war moment? Moneycontrol launches print campaign against ET

Indian media is seeing a repeat of cola wars of the 90s. Moneycontrol has launched a full-fledged offensive against The Economic Times, claiming the leadership in the business news segment.

In a front page advertisement issued in the Indian Express on January 29, Moneycontrol claims to have beaten the legacy leader Economic Times on all parameters.

According to the latest viewership data from Comscore, which measures digital readership. With 30.02 million unique viewers, Moneycontrol grew by 9 percent in December 2023 to forge ahead of ET (28.6 million) in readership size and monthly traffic.

Moneycontrol consolidated and extended its lead over ET in page views and time spent. These are the two key metrics of digital reader engagement and sustainable competitive advantage.

The platform garnered 368 million page views in December - more than double the page views of the No. 2 in this category, ET (173 million).

Moneycontrol’s complete dominance in this domain was also evident in time spends. The 863 million minutes Moneycontrol readers spent reading its pages in December was four times more than that spent on ET (199 million minutes).