BARB, the organisation that measures the UK’s television audience and viewing habits, has just released a new SVOD Report based on data from its Establishment Survey which covers 53,000 household interviews every year. Distilling the document down, here are three top-level findings from the report:

#1. “Unidentified Viewing” climbs to 19% in Q3 2018

BARB defines “unidentified viewing” as SVOD viewing, playing games and watching programming more than 28 days after broadcast. These activities now form 19% (or 46 minutes) of all daily television viewing – up from 16% (40 minutes) in Q3 2017. 

#2. 11.6m UK homes have use at least one SVOD service

Those SVOD services being either Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or NOW TV. This is a YOY increase of 22% between Q3 2017/18. Overall, Netflix has added 2.2m households over the period, Amazon more than a million homes and NOW TV accounts for nearly 200,000 new subscriptions. The number of households using two or more SVOD services has risen by 40% from 2.8 million to just under 4 million in the past year.

#3. Amazon has the biggest penetration among ABC1 subscribers

From the report: “Possibly unsurprisingly, 64% of households that subscribe to any of the three SVOD services are ABC1, well ahead of the 53% that ABC1s represent in the UK population overall. The biggest player, Netflix, and Now TV are both in line with this average, with 63% ABC1 households. Amazon, however, has an ABC1 profile of 73% – indexing at 38% ahead of the UK.

BARB’s SVOD Report, including all numbers from its Establishment Survey since Q1 2014, can be found here https://www.barb.co.uk/trend-spotting/the-svod-report/ 

 

ABOUT KAUSER KANJI

Kauser Kanji has been working in online video for 19 years, formerly at Virgin Media, ITN and NBC Universal, and founded VOD Professional in 2011. He has since completed major OTT projects for, amongst others, A+E Networks, the BBC, BBC Studios, Channel 4, DR (Denmark), Liberty Global, Netflix, Sony Pictures, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation and UKTV. He now writes industry analyses, hosts an online debate show, OTT Question Time, as well as its in-person sister event, OTT Question Time Live

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