Executive Summary

The Global Media Intelligence Report is a concise yet detailed compilation of data and insights about consumers’ traditional and digital media usage in 41 key markets worldwide. For this 2019 edition, we’ve retired a couple of metrics and added some new ones, but the focus remains the same: to provide the in-depth information about consumer behavior that advertisers and marketers need to create and execute effective campaigns. The consistency of GlobalWebIndex’s methodology means we’re also able to offer 2018 vs. 2019 comparisons; these provide vital indicators of exactly where and how quickly changes are happening.

Here are the key trends dominating the media landscape this year:

Digital video is gradually closing the gap with broadcast TV. Television is still the most widespread content-based medium worldwide. But the proliferation of digital video content and services, both paid and unpaid, has brought video-on-demand (VOD) into close contention. In Australia, for example, 68.8% of internet users polled in 2019 had watched a subscription VOD service such as Netflix in the prior month, according to GlobalWebIndex. In Brazil and China, the comparable shares were 82.4% and 74.2%, respectively. In China and India, the percentage of respondents watching some form of VOD was greater than the percentage viewing live TV.

Moreover, the number of digital video viewers worldwide is rising steadily. eMarketer estimates that 2.63 billion individuals will watch streaming or downloaded video at least once per month this year; by 2022, that number will approach 3.04 billion. In turn, that will push digital video ad budgets higher. Net digital ad revenues for YouTube alone are expected to pass $15 billion in 2021.