But podcast listeners may increasingly be listening hands-free on smart speakers or even connected TVs (CTVs). Mobile Games. Mobile gamers least like the ad formats that cover up the game and that force the user to experience the ad, such as when ads take over their screens. They feel most positively toward rewarded ads, whether video or static display, versus any other format in mobile games.

This report summarizes our forecasts for nine countries—the US, Canada, France, Germany, the UK, China, India, Japan, and South Korea—and offers comparative analyses of the major time spent numbers for each.

More than three-quarters (76%) of media buyers in the US, UK, Germany, and Australia at least somewhat agreed that “TV” refers to both linear and streaming, per the report. The majority (86%) agreed at least somewhat that cross-platform TV measurement and attribution was a leading priority for their company or clients.

This report explores our latest forecast for time spent with media in France and Germany, and how COVID-19 will affect media usage patterns in 2020 and beyond.

According to an AGF Videoforschung and Kantar survey of video-on-demand users in Germany, Disney+ was already the third-most popular streaming service by June, despite having only entered the market in March.

Over 34% of internet users owned a smart TV in H1 2021, compared with 29.5% a year prior. Yet—as in previous surveys—penetration in France remained well below that of several other Western European countries. In Germany, Italy, and Spain, for example, about 56% of respondents had a smart TV this year.

After a complicated 2020, most industries in Germany will accelerate their digital ad spending growth in 2021. The rebound for travel and auto will underwhelm, but retail spend will soar.

Smart TV ownership also climbed 3 percentage points to 46.2% of internet users this year. Yet the US does lag several other developed nations by this measure. In the UK, for example, 49.6% of respondents said they owned a smart TV in H1 2020; in Spain and Germany, those shares were 50.1% and 50.8%, respectively. Meanwhile, penetration of some key devices declined in the US between H1 2019 and H1 2020.

In a difficult year for advertising worldwide, digital ad spending in Germany will see only 0.8% growth. Most of the industries we break out will decelerate their digital ad spend to some degree, while travel and auto will reduce theirs dramatically.

The combined reach of voice assistants was just 16.2%— below the penetration recorded in France (21.2%), Germany (26.0%), and the UK (30.2%). Younger people are still the main consumers of digital audio and video, but all internet users embrace social media.

Nearly 30% of internet users said they owned a smart TV—a greater share than in H1 2019, but that was still well below the level reported in several other Western European countries. In Belgium, Germany, and Ireland, for example, ownership has been above 40% since 2019, and in Denmark it reached 49.9% this year.

This was, however, a much lower percentage than in Germany (69.8%), Spain (70.4%), or the UK (84.2%), for example. It was more common in Portugal to record TV shows for later viewing (65.0%). As recently as last year, Portugal’s digital video landscape was relatively undeveloped compared with other countries in Western Europe.

Of the Western European countries we track, Germany, France, and Spain will be WhatsApp’s largest markets this year, but the strongest growth will come from France, Italy, and Finland. The pandemic has given more of a boost to Messenger in most places in Western Europe than it has to WhatsApp, in part because it simply has more room to grow.