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.

On today's episode, we discuss how Spotify did in Q1, what to make of its new subscriptions for podcasts, and how we expect audio consumption habits to change this year. We then talk about why people still listen to the radio and best practices for voice ads. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer forecasting analyst at Insider Intelligence Peter Vahle.

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.

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.

As a result, in 2021, CTV devices will account for nearly half (48.1%) of digital video consumption time among US adults, surpassing half (50.7%) by 2023. That growth has been stark: Just five years ago, CTV’s share of digital video usage was still 25.6%, while mobile captured 41.6%.

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.

By the end of 2023, that share will grow to 39.0%, with adults watching digital videos for 1:52 daily. Almost a third (32.8%) of digital media time will go toward digital video viewing this year. Digital Video Choices Have Expanded. The increased consumption of digital video is certainly because people are spending more time at home during the pandemic.

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.

The only major deviation is the spike in digital video consumption. Adults in South Korea increased their time spent with digital video by 10.9% last year, and we project 9.3% growth this year and 9.1% growth next year. The amount of time that adults devote to watching digital videos each day will increase from 1:16 in 2019 to 1:41 in 2022.

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).

For our recent report on digital video in the UK, Graeme Hutcheson, director of advanced advertising strategy at Sky Media, the company’s advertising sales arm, outlined how the firm is dealing with changing consumption habits of its UK subscriber base and how it’s altering its advertising proposition as a result.

Over-the-top (OTT) video consumption leans heavily toward subscription services, as viewers increasingly gravitate away from traditional TV, a medium with high ad loads. There’s every reason to believe that lighter ad loads are still important to OTT video viewers, as people continue to spend time in ad-free services like Netflix.

In France, total TV and digital video viewing time in 2020 rose by a massive 31 minutes, to 5:01. But while digital video time increased by 8 minutes to surpass the 1-hour mark, TV time increased by 23 minutes to a substantial 3:58.

The apps in this category are competing not only for social network time spent (and the accompanying ad dollars), but also digital video time spent (and its ad dollars).

Digital Video Viewers. There has been significant changes in the number of users for some digital video subcategories, such as (subscription) OTT and CTV/smart TV users. Yet many newcomers to these subcategories were already digital video viewers of some kind. As a result, the impact on digital video viewer numbers will be positive, but growth won’t be statistically significant.

On today's episode, we discuss how time spent watching TV is changing, how TV ads favorability stacks up against other formats, and what's contributing to TV ad spending's resilience. We then talk about Paramount+ introducing a new tier with ads, how much time people spend with subscription-based vs. ad-supported video, and how much money are people willing to spend for the video streaming entertainment. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer senior analyst at Insider Intelligence Ross Benes.

The faster speeds enabled streaming services, the rapid expansion of the app economy, and more immersive content. 5G networks will have faster throughput speeds, but performance improvements will also apply to features like latency, connection density, and energy consumption. Throughput Speed and Capacity.