In excess of 5 million households were subscribed to Netflix by the end of 2015, meaning almost a fifth of the population are now using the subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service. With a reputation for producing and serving high quality original television and film content – House of Cards, Narcos and Beasts of No Nation, to name a few – the streaming service saw as many as 1.4 million new subscribers during 2015 alone.
As such, Netflix is now streets ahead of its competitors in terms of reach; Amazon Video (1.6 million households) and Sky’s Now TV (300k households). But, more to the point, more than 6.5 million households in the UK are now signed up to some form of subscription video streaming service.
Moreover, individuals are now spending longer watching video on SVOD. In 2014, the average person spent 40 minutes per week watching video via SVOD services. The latest BARB data shows that this figure almost doubled during 2015, up to an average of 77 minutes viewing.
All Response Media Viewpoint
With the evident growth of internet video services in recent years, what does this mean for UK advertisers? Especially, what does this mean for DRTV advertisers, who are looking to reach audiences as cost efficiently as possible? The apprehension regarding the effect of this growth is based on the belief that VOD services haven’t always catered for the needs of the direct response (DR) advertiser, with Netflix and its complete lack of advertising offering no inventory at all.
However, fear not. TV is still king. Traditional TV viewing – whether live or via playback – accounted for 73% of all video consumption in 2015. To further quantify this; the average viewer still watches 45 TV ads a day. Even within the tech-savvy 16-24 audience, 51% of their average daily video watching (all 3 hours 25 minutes of it) is in the form of traditional TV. Despite the evident growth of Netflix and SVOD as a whole, viewing remains incremental to linear TV.
Rest assured, in the face of increasing competition and distractions, traditional TV stands steadfast and remains one of the best ways to reach a broad – or niche – audience.
