Our forecast for digital video viewers in Canada highlights greater consumption of the medium during the pandemic.

Digital video viewership in the UK will continue to rise this year. The pandemic has provided a particularly significant impetus for subscription video-on-demand services, while connected TVs have become the consumption device of choice.

With citywide lockdowns and ongoing social distancing measures in place, people throughout the Asia-Pacific region are spending more time at home consuming all forms of media—especially digital video.

The consumption of at-home media and entertainment thrived amid the coronavirus pandemic, but the total shutdown of live events and the pause on film and TV production will cause digital ad spending to decline in 2020.

Consumption of digital video is booming. The number of new formats and innovative content has flourished. And traditional broadcasters are experimenting with digital channels to keep pace with the changing user behavior.

Digital video consumption was more common among younger respondents and the affluent, though these distinctions are diminishing as penetration rises. Despite this, time spent with broadcast TV was still well ahead of time spent with online TV in New Zealand, at 1:56 per day per day and 1:11, respectively. Broadcast TV also claimed more time than social networking, which averaged 1:48 each day.

Meanwhile, paid-for digital video consumption rose considerably. In H1 2020, 68.7% of respondents accessed a subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service such as Netflix in the preceding month—a gain of more than 9 percentage points. As in prior years, take-up was stronger among 16- to 34-year-olds and affluents.

Digital video consumption was nearly universal among China’s internet users in 2019 and remained so this year, with 95.2% accessing video-on-demand (VOD) services in the previous month. Nearly 92% of respondents listened to digital audio as well. Figures for time spent also highlight the growing popularity of digital video and audio.

Growing interest in smart TVs reflects a modest rise in digital video consumption. More than 94% of internet users polled in Portugal had watched live TV during the prior month in H1 2020. Yet only 41.2% had watched TV shows via a broadcaster’s catch-up service—a decline of 3 percentage points since 2019, but an option used by 63.2% in France and 68.7% in Spain, for example.

That said, most streaming video consumption is happening without advertising. According to separate studies by Nielsen and Comscore in Q2 2020, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and Disney+ claimed roughly half of all time that US consumers spent with streaming. Marketers must take this development into consideration during the campaign development process.

Daily time spent with digital media will surpass traditional media in 2018. Increased time with digital video, which will reach 1 hour, 26 minutes, is a main driver of the increase of time spent with digital media.

Meanwhile, digital video consumption increased rapidly between H1 2019 and H1 2020. Over 76% of internet users polled in H1 2020—including 95.6% of those 16 to 24—streamed video content in the prior month. Engagement with subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) offerings such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video rose to 68.6%.

Greater consumption of digital video options boosted overall penetration of video streaming to 84.6% in H1 2020. Internet users spent an average 1 hour, 40 minutes (1:40) per day watching online TV and video—18 minutes more than in H1 2019. Time spent streaming audio had a marginally higher daily average (1:41) but was less popular (used by 75.1% of respondents).

Today’s kids are more digital than previous generations at the same age. But, while digital video is certainly an important part of kids’ media diet, we estimate that just over half of those ages 11 and younger (52.4%) will be digital video viewers this year. TV penetration is still much higher (close to nine in 10), although time spent is declining.