Viewer increases will be slow going forward, but the addressable market is enormous

Nearly everyone in the world who is online is a digital video viewer. In 2025, 3.88 billion people will watch video online, or 79.0% of all internet users. It is one of the most common digital activities in the world, but many of these viewers won’t yet be watching OTT video via familiar platforms like YouTube or formats like paid sub OTT streaming—also known as subscription video-on-demand (SVOD).

OTT video entertainment is mainstream and available almost everywhere, but billions of people still haven’t come onboard. Although viewer growth will be in the low single digits for nearly every worldwide metric we track in the digital video space, the longer-term opportunity for OTT is clear. While nearly 48% of the global population will watch video online in 2025, just 30.7% will watch YouTube and 27.7% will watch sub OTT. Those share gaps represent potential.

However, the largest OTT players face challenges in reaching those missing cohorts. Some of the penetration gaps owe to pricing and others to regulatory restrictions (e.g., YouTube’s ban in China). Hundreds of millions of people do not yet have the financial resources to pay for any kind of video services. Still, international OTT providers have potential viewers in the billions of internet users who watch digital video only via social media, other short-form platforms, or local free services.

Read the full report, Worldwide OTT Video Viewers Forecast 2025.