A MIDiA Research study has found that watching TV is the most popular pastime for consumers in the peak attention economy, ie. “where there is no more free time left for digital services to tap into.”
According to the analysts, “trends forged in the analogue era still dominate entertainment consumption,” with 40 per cent of consumers spending 10+ weekly hours watching TV, compared with seven per cent on YouTube or Facebook videos.
The report added that the top five US SVoD services saw double-digit growth in subscriptions in the last year, but streaming still lags 26 per cent behind traditional TV consumption.
MIDiA Research noted two unique selling points of TV:
- A “lean-back entertainment” format, appealing to those who want to be passively entertained rather than pushed to interact with content
- An inherently social medium, enabling watercooler moments and ‘zeitgeisty’ appeal
“Video’s two USPs provide it with an unparalleled competitive advantage,” the survey concluded. “The challenge for all video direct-to-consumer (DTC) services is how to leverage engagement market share gain from the incumbent competing media offerings without over-investing in content and while cutting through the virtual static noise that reverberates across the digital economy in 2019.”
